Jump cuts: how to collapse time for powerful pacing

In film, "jump cuts" are often used to collapse time. The moniker is literal -- in the midst of a scene the action jumps ahead from one moment to one further down the timeline rather than following all of the action as it happens. The technique accelerates pace and can enhance the impact of the action.

Jump cuts work in fiction, too, but care has to be taken with setting the scene. In a film, the moviegoer has a complete picture given to him at all times. In fiction, we have to supply it. And that's where I see writers missing the mark.

Chapters are a great opportunity for jump cuts. You can end a chapter or scene in one place, wrapping up an action and setting up a future course, and then jump to a completely different scene…as long as you fill the reader in on what that new scene is.

Here's an example from my work in progress. The heroine, Ailia, has been arrested by Homeland Security and a rogue agent has used torture tactics that could take her life. The action takes place in Chicago in the midst of January winter time, and the reader has been freezing along with the character in this chapter.

Ailia escapes, and the chapter ends as follows…Note: I've eliminated some details that would take too much space here to set up.

I hurry down the long hall and find the slender man lying across a desk. I don't need to get close to see that he is dead. More of Drago's work. I go to the man and close his staring eyes -- he wouldn't want to be seen this way. "Sorry."

The old-fashioned floor indicator above the elevator comes to life, the pointer like the hand of a clock moving from the number one and rising steadily, floor by floor. I dash to the doorway marked Exit and hurtle down the stairs.

Okay. In order to get to where I need the character to be next, far from here, in real time she will need to leave the building, go to O'Hare Airport, buy a ticket, get on a plane, land elsewhere, rent a vehicle, and travel. Ho hum. Instead, here's the jump cut to the opening of a new chapter:

Unexpected eagerness builds in me as I guide my airboat through saw-grass marsh deep within the three million acres of the Everglades. The warm air coddles me, such a relief from the drain of having to fight the cold. After traveling all night and most of the day, my strength wanes, and I relish the idea of coming to rest. I gaze to the west, where the sunset colors the sky with bands of pink and mauve. A flock of herons wings across the sky, silhouetted, grace in motion.

The first sentence, a mere 22 words, quickly transports the character to a place a thousand miles away. Note that it does so from within her point of view, giving the reader a sense of character through her reactions about where she is and at the same time enabling the reader to "see" the character's surroundings.

Ailia is not the only character in this trouble; the other primary protagonist, Gabe, was also captured and tortured by the agent. He was broken out from his cell by the Drago character referenced above. Gabe and Ailia are destined to travel very different paths before they are reunited. Here's Gabe's escape scene -- Note: Ailia is, at this point in the story, still in her cell and Gabe has been told that she's all right.

Gabe follows Drago down the hall to find the skinny agent slumped over a desk. He seems too still. "Is he all right?"

Drago glances at the body, then opens a door to a stairwell and says, "This way. Quickly, others may come."

Gabe follows him up stairs toward the roof. What has Drago got up there, a helicopter? A magic broom? It doesn't matter to Gabe, anything to get away from people determined to torture and kill him.

So they go into the night. I need for Gabe to go with Drago to his home place, which would involve climbing the stairs, getting onto the vehicle Drago has on the roof, and traveling across Chicagoland in the dark to a forest preserve. But that's not action that will move the plot along. So, at the beginning of Gabe's new chapter, we jump:

A moan breaks Gabe free from a nightmare and he bolts upright. It was his voice, a teeth-clenched cry forced out by a vision of himself frozen upright, white with frost, blind eyes open and staring, arms reaching for his son but doomed to never embrace him.

A quilt falls from him and cold air strikes his skin. The bed isn't his; it's a bunk fastened to a wooden wall. The rest of the small room is paneled. His shirt and jeans are draped over a single chair. Reddish sunlight glows through a porthole.

A porthole?

So we're off and running in a new place that is clearly very strange to Gabe. We know it is because we're experiencing it from within his point of view, and the description derives from that. I don't tell the reader information, I work to create a sense of being one with the character and what is happening to him.

So, when you jump cut, make sure you give the reader solid footing when he lands so that he knows where he is. If you do it from within the character's experience, then description becomes part of the action, not simple exposition.

For what it's worth.

Ray

Free edit in exchange for posting permission. You send a sample that you have questions about and of which you'd like an edit. I won't post it without your permission.

© 2005 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[Bernita]

How do you feel about the *** scene breaks to allow for extraneous material to be omitted and pov to change?
OK or #&%@#??

[Dee Stewart]

Thanks, I will use this technique for my novel. I was really wondering what to do with all dead action(i like to call it.)