How do I cleanly show the passage of time, with multiple, varying time scales?

Question

Semi-complex idea, more easily seen than explained, but here we go.

I was re-reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone recently (notice I bring those books up a lot...I think they're brilliant) to get a feel for the way J.K. Rowling passes an entire year in a fairly short book that feels content packed, and I noticed something very common which I hadn't previously put any thought to.

With respect to the passage of time, the book's voice changed drastically here and there. For great lengths, it would follow the minute-to-minute actions of the character, i.e. "Harry walked to the bathroom and donned an owl costume. Thus clad, he ran out among the crowds of Rockefeller Plaza and began to scream at random, throwing his arms in the air and leaping wildly."

But at other times the voice would zoom out and pass hours in a sentence:

"Hermione didn't turn up for the next class and wasn't seen all afternoon."

Maybe this seems simple, or obvious, but I think it's a tiny piece of brilliance, and something that all good writers can do and frequently do do but which does not necessarily come easily to new writers and which maybe many people don't think about.

I see this happen with days, weeks, months, even years. And it isn't trivial to just drop it in there. In fact I've found it's very easy to interrupt the flow of your writing by shifting the rate of time passage in anything less than the smoothest manner.

So the question is: how to cleanly change time scale and avoid making a somewhat jarring break in temporal continuity? How to go from following a character second-to-second to briefly relating what the character did over the afternoon, the summer, the rest of his forties? Tips/Exercises for practice are always good, if anyone knows any clever ones.

Answer 1

If your concern is the how-to of changing perspective, you can do it a few ways, but the idea should always be that you finish one beat, and the next beat starts the different time-voice:

1) End the current chapter and start a new one.

That allows you to have a different POV, a different time-scale, a different location, anything.

2) End the current scene and start a new one.

Create a definitive end to Harry romping about in Rockefeller Plaza and a definitive beginning to the next scene. Two hard returns is a typical method.

3) This is the tricky one I suspect you're concerned with: End the current beat but continue to focus on the same character(s).

To use your own example, let's say we've just gone through another torturous Potions class, in typical detail — that is, we've sat through more or less every moment with the Power Trio. Now class is over, and they're in the hallway:

"What's next, Divination?"
Ron groaned. "How are we supposed to make it up to the old bat's tower on time from down here in the dungeon?"
Hermione gasped. "Oh! I just remembered! I have to go get something. I'll see you in class." She hurried off, leaving Harry and Ron to stare at her retreating back.
But she didn't show up to class at all, and they didn't see her for the rest of the afternoon. In fact, Hermione didn't materialize until well into the evening, climbing through the portrait hole into the common room with an armload of books. "I found all these at the library," she said breathlessly, dumping the books on the floor between Harry and Ron where they sat curled up in their favourite squashy armchairs.

In that snippet, the "time voice" moves from immediate to one remove back to immediate again, on the beats. It isn't necessary to explain what happened all afternoon, at dinner, and after dinner, because, as Schroedinger's Cat notes, nothing important happens during that time period. But we've stayed with Harry's and Ron's point of view — they didn't see Hermione during that time, so we're skimming the afternoon along with them.

You scale the time-voice in and out depending on how important the action is to the plot of the story. At the end of book 6 (I'm going to assume I'm not spoiling anybody here...), Rowling describes the few weeks Harry and Ginny have together as kind of a golden haze. She doesn't go through each afternoon, but blends all the days together as one large beat. What's important to the plot and the characters is that Harry and Ginny have time together to be happy and build their relationship, not single specific incidents, so that's the level of detail Rowling provides.

Answer 2

What you are talking about isn't "voice", but a scene change.

If something is important to your to your scene, you need to describe it in detail. This is especially true in scenes with danger or suspense. So if your heroes are entering a dungeon, where you know there is a monster hiding, you may describe the dungeon in great detail, making the characters jump at the smallest noise. This will make the reader tense with anticipation on what will happen next. Of course, the more suspense you build, the greater must be the threat and resolution. You cannot then end the scene saying "There was nothing there but a grumpy fairy in the dungeon." The reader will feel cheated and throw the book.

At other times, you need to show a great time has passed, without boring the reader with all the trivial details. So you can just say "3 days passed, and Hero X was too busy to see his friends about the grumpy fairy they met in the dungeon".

As another example, if a child moves to a new school, you can describe his first day in detail, as he will be lost, confused and scared. He will be taking a lot in, and the reader can share his fears/hopes. But if you then start describing every day hence, it will become a boring journal, and the reader will rightly throw away your book.

So you can skip past the boring parts with the words "And five years passed in the blink of an eye, before Sam heard about the scary dungeon where people vanished. He made a plan to check it out with his friends. 'Golly gee, I hope I find something more dangerous than a grumpy fairy down there' he said to himself".

So to summarise: Scenes that matter, describe in detail, but only if it is relevant to the plot, or to increase suspense. If you then want to move to the next important scene, you can do so in 1-2 sentences, and expect the reader to understand that some time (hours or days) have passed.

Answer 3

Firstly, while I like HP, I am not sure they are the best style guide for a writer. They are not all especially well written. The stories and concepts behind them are superb, which is what captured the readers imagination.

Secondly, the writer is describing the critical events, and giving the timescales around them. The time for Harry to put on the owl costume, and walk to the centre of the plaza are irrelevant, and so ignored - you get a sense of immediacy. The more detail you put into your descriptions of events, the more closely you will appear to be following them:

"Harry walked slowly to the bathroom, and started to put on his owl costume. He lowered the main part over his head, and let the straps rest on his shoulders, feeling the weight, balancing the costume. Carefully and slowly he tried moving like an owl would - slowly, but purposefully...."

You get a sense of every moment being described, and the sense is even slower than your example.

Then, if you brush over events or times - this can be an afternoon, or weeks or months, then they will pass quickly. But make sure things are happening - don't leave your characters in limbo. So:

"Hermione studied hard, attending all of her classes that term, and spending most of her spare time doing homework"

You have most of a term taken, not doing nothing, but doing nothing that is specifically relevant. So making sure that you know what your characters should be doing when not progressing the plot is important, and varying it, or tweaking it to reflect their emotions. This is their background, their core persona, and there can be something useful in this for later....

"Suddenly, Hermione remembered something she had studied last term - something about the Burberry tree." - her constant study provides the justification for her knowing some obscure piece of information.

HTH.

Edit - so, to take a previous example, you may do:

"Harry walked slowly to the bathroom, and started to put on his owl costume. He lowered the main part over his head, and let the straps rest on his shoulders, feeling the weight, balancing the costume. Carefully and slowly he tried moving like an owl would - slowly, but purposefully. Harry took an hour, maybe more to don the costume and become happy with it, before starting his afternoons rampage around the square."

OK, a little stilted, and I would write the first part differently if I was doing this, but the concept is there.