Rambling Sage

the story i am writing spans a huge amount of time. i am running into trouble when showing that time because i do not want to show it by saying what happened in each year for like a thousand years. anyways, i want to keep that feeling of the passing of time, because it is important to the story, without having to actually write it. so are there any suggestions as to how i can show the passing of time without saying "a hundred years past" etc or by stopping the story and picking up fifty years later?

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Ilasir Maroa

This seems like a fairly large time scale for a single story to cover. Could you give more details?

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Rambling Sage

it is not exactly a thousand years, but basically the main character is immortal. He is searching not only to right a wrong he brought about early in his life, but also to answer certain questions he has. during the search for these answers and his quest to right the wrong, the rise and fall of empires, races, and societal trends get mixed in, playing a major role in the plot and theme.

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If one is lucky,
a solitary fantasy can totally transform
one million realities.

Destroyer

While it's not quite as drastic as yours, I am attempting the same sort of thing. I want my first few books all to cover three years so they'll match up with the teaser in the first book. I find it best to change time between chapters, and add a brief - note brief - summary of what's been happening in the gaps. Don't go into great detail into it, that'll bore your reader. But just explain what your characters have been doing. Maybe they've been travelling, etc. And it's best to state how much time has passed.

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CodeRed

Since it sounds like the fantasy genre, maybe consider a single page visual 'montage' - comic book style.

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rumpole40k

Why not start each chapter by having the character reflect on the world around him - but just a single, short paragraph and make sure the info included is important to the story.

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Erik Buchanan

Or you could put the date at the beginning of each chapter.

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