: Re: How do I cleanly show the passage of time, with multiple, varying time scales? I was re-reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone recently to get a feel for the way J.K. Rowling passes

@Debbie451

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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.

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