Timing in Novel Planning

[Azoraa]

I find myself starting chapters with waking up, and ending chapters with people going to bed, and once I noticed found it a bit dumb. But not sure about the alternative. It's probably better to have a plot-reason for starting/ending a chapter than the day-and-night rhythm.

I have a similar problem with the timeline and pacing. I have different parts in my novel, some are really on the micro-level, where every minute/hour is described with plenty of dialogue, so that a whole part of the story is 2 days. Then 10 days are summarized by an exchange of letters -- that was my maybe not super-creative solution for spanning 10 years without going into too much detail, but still giving a sense of time by dating the letters. And then again the story zooms in on a few days/weeks.
I have no clue how that will work in the end...

I find it exhausting working with a detailed timeline, but seem to get to a point repeatedly where I feel I need it to avoid contradictions...

 

[Dragonlady]

@Azoraa I end up doing that too. I'm spanning several months with jumps between chapters. At the moment I'm just starting some chapters randomly and dropping hints about time passing - a chill autumn wind in one, shopping for midwinter festival in the next - but I may have to go back and be more explicit when editing.