Chuck Palahniuk on the Importance of Not Boring Your Reader | Literary Hub

The most basic way to imply time passing is to announce the time. Then depict some activities. Then give the time. Boring stuff. Another way is to list the activities, giving lots of details, task after task, and to suddenly arrive at the streetlights blinking on or a chorus of mothers calling their kids to dinner. And these methods are fine, if you want to risk losing your reader's interest. Besides, in Minimalist writing abstract measurements such as two o'clock or midnight are frowned upon for reasons we'll discuss in the section on Establishing Your Authority.