Dealing with time

[Gryffin]

I'm curious as to whether anybody here has tried new ways to deal with time. Have you created a new system for telling time, days of the week, passage of years, anything like that?

 

[Emeria]

In the fantasy stories that I write, the world is surrounded by two moons and the passage of time is chronicled by the relative position of the moons (when the moons are aligned, it is considered a bad omen), as well as the seasons. During the day, it's either "morning", "mid-day", "evening" or "night" because so far, I haven't done anything more descriptive than that. Kind of hard when the narrator is a character who doesn't really care about the time of the day. Years are given by how many harvests a person has seen and after their fifteenth harvest, they have a coming of age trial. If they pass, they are considered to be a legal adult. As far as days of the week are considered, I've been describing them by what is done on that day. Weekdays are for work and weekends are for resting and family stuff.

 

[Helbrecht]

I've always found entire new chronological systems to be a bit too unwieldly to dump upon unsuspecting readers without me feeling slightly guilty about it. However, I do like snazzing up what we're already familiar with - it can add a subtle sort of flavour and authenticity to the world. Consider that our days of the week are named after Old Norse gods (Wednesday = Woden's Day, etc.) and our months are named largely after gods, goddesses and Roman Emperors, and you'l find it's not hard to extrapolate a system of naming for days of the week and months from your preestablished worldbuilding, assuming you've done enough of it (or too much, more accurately). Scott Lynch does something similar in his Gentleman Bastard sequence which I'm reading at the moment and it's worked very smoothly into the narrative.

 

[Qfantasy]

In the fantasy series I have written, time is mainly thought of in seasons and years, but I haven't created any hard fast rules regarding the subject. I don't name days, either.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I created a rigid calendar for my world, but I doubt I'm ever going to mention its details in the story. Mostly because it doesn't really matter; there's still days, weeks, months, seasons (winter, spring, summer, fall), and years (it's 521 GE (Garovan Era) when the story begins).

One of the tricky parts of using a calendar is naming the days and months. All our days and months are named after Earth historical figures (or mythological figures) who would not exist in many fantasy realms. So you can't really call it "Wednesday" when that's named for Wotan (Odin) who probably did not even exist fictionally in your world. So then if you name the days, you have to make up names that fit with your world, and it's really hard for readers to get in tune with that, and usually not worth the effort.

You could still just call them by their English names, and assume that the day names have been translated into English alongside whatever language the characters are speaking. (E.g. Ned Stark, living in Westeros, did not actually speak English. If you were magically transported into Westeros and heard him talking, he'd be talking in some language you couldn't understand. But when GRRM renders his dialogue on paper, he "translates" it into English so that we English-speakers can actually understand what he's saying. The day names could be so translated as well, assuming their calendar has seven days per week...)

There's no problem in general with having a calendar that figures into the plot, but if it doesn't actually affect the story in detail, I wouldn't bring up the details. Maybe in an appendix.

 

[Shadoe]

I've created a new system for my world. The day is split up into four sections: morning, noon, evening, and night. They are split up into bells. So the day would begin with first morning bell, then second morning bell, and so on, until they reached the sixth night bell and started the new day. Yes, the day starts at dawn, not midnight.

The calendar is split into months, which consist of two baseliks, a cycle of two workweeks and a restday.

 

[julienlegault]

The problem I always worried about with changing time (for example, six day weeks instead of seven) was the awkwardness of informing the reader without it being an info-dump. Worries aside, I have always wanted to play with time in an interesting way.

On the subject of English names for weekdays and months, I like to play around with new names. I've seen the months renamed in certain video games before where the seasons stay relatively the same, and it works because it's so similar.*Autumn months ended in -leaf, winter months in -frost, etc., so you would have "Mistleaf", or "Plumbfrost". I thought it worked since the season was easy to distinguish—it would be difficult to memorize new, less intuitive names.

 

[Gryffin]

Everybody's responses have been really interesting so far. I really like learning about different ways that writers work around simple, everyday elements in their fantasy novels.

The problem I always worried about with changing time (for example, six day weeks instead of seven) was the awkwardness of informing the reader without it being an info-dump. Worries aside, I have always wanted to play with time in an interesting way.

I agree. I am concerned with any sort of info-dumping. I guess a lot of the information might not really be vital to the story and could just be hinted to over the course of the novel or series.

 

[julienlegault]

I also feel like it's an issue of is this necessary? One way around info dumping is having a character depend on this change. Maybe a character has a job that changes based on what day it is, or has responsibilities to keep track of on a regular basis and a six-day-week or 10-month-year is explained through this. But then the another question arises: is this relevant to my story? Most times, it sadly is not. I can't imagine any editor letting you get away with it without saying, "Why not make it a seven-day-week instead?"

 

[Hans]

I still have the normal names Days Month and so on. But I count them a little bit different.
A normal year on my world has 362 days. Every sixths year has 363 days with the exception of every 108'th year. Every 324'th year has 361 days.
This is not mentioned much in any stories I write. But I like worldbuilding even without any stories. If it is not necessary for a story I do not mention it in that story. That does not stop me from creating such stuff.
I have written my own timeline program to keep history consistent. Existing tools for real history are not flexible enough.

 

[Amanita]

I'm really unsure about this myself.
Weeks with seven days which are named the same as in our world make me uncomfortable somehow, but I don't really see a way of doing this any other way without getting too confusing. The problem is that in my world, there's no reason for people in different countries to use the same system. I'd need two different ones at least. Introducing them both would definitely get too much though.
I believe, this might be easier to get around in a pre-technological world where most people's work has to follow the seasons and lenghts of days while precise dates aren't that important. Mine is beyond this stage though, and it would feel strange if the CEO of a multinational corporation started measuring his life in winters or harvets he's seen. On the other hand, why not...

 

[myrddin173]

In my personal world I use the standard Gregorian calender. I justify that with the fact that the ancestors of the people were originally from Earth, circa 1350.

Over in the Mythic Archipelago we have the Archipelago Universal Calender which is based off of the French Revolution calender.

 

[ascanius]

This is what I did. The year is divided into two main parts based on the summer and winter solstice. There are 377 days in a year. With each year divided into 13 months. The full moon comes three months and seven days before the summer solstice, and follows the winter solsitce by 2 months and 22 days. The winer solstice is six months and 14 days after the summer solstice. There are two moons the nearer one orbits the world while the other does not. It takes 411 days for it to complete one lunar year and restarts the cycle every 12 years. Every five years at the beginning of fall and and ito winter the two moons are very close together in the sky, and on the 25 day of Burin are in perfect alignment. The ilignment of the moons on the fifth year every twelve years causes extreme tidal fluctuations and weather. Otherwise the tides are relitively normal. The one further away is about half the size of the nearer one. A twelve year cycle of the nearest moon is one epoc or one cycle of the further moon. Years are counted in relation to the twelve year cycle almost like a number system based off twelve. So it would be something like Character x is two passing's and one cycle old or fourteen years old.
I have a full set of thirteen months that differ from our own along with festivals and important dates. I kept the days of the week similar but a little different Wednesday is Midweek. I went a little detailed in my time system. It took me forever to calculate the length of the twelve year cycle and along with which days the solstices, and equinox were on.

 

[ShortHair]

My viewpoint is, how can you not have a different calendar? How can you assume that a planet and a culture (or group of cultures) are identical to Earth in this regard? How many things have to correspond to give you the same number of days in a week, the same number of days in a month, the same number of months in a year? Or even to develop the concepts of day, month, and year?

 

[Gryffin]

My viewpoint is, how can you not have a different calendar? How can you assume that a planet and a culture (or group of cultures) are identical to Earth in this regard? How many things have to correspond to give you the same number of days in a week, the same number of days in a month, the same number of months in a year? Or even to develop the concepts of day, month, and year?

Interesting viewpoint. I am really curious as to whether or not you have implemented a new system in some of your writing?

I really do think it could go either way, the more I read about it. I think that it can be really great if you find a way to implement a system that doesn't dump all sorts of new info on the reader. If it's not necessary to completely explain the whole system, I guess you can just allude to it. I'm still on the fence but I do like how others have been working with time.

 

[julienlegault]

My viewpoint is, how can you not have a different calendar? How can you assume that a planet and a culture (or group of cultures) are identical to Earth in this regard? How many things have to correspond to give you the same number of days in a week, the same number of days in a month, the same number of months in a year? Or even to develop the concepts of day, month, and year?

I love that kind of thinking, actually! I usually assume it will be too confusing to change time too much (I like to give the reader things like standard weeks or time measurement so that they have something to relate to), but this makes a lot of sense. Though you have to think about how many books actually bring up the structure or days or weeks. Many just use the seasons and measure long amounts of time in the number of days, not weeks, and will describe the time of day without using hours for reference. I just finished reading a novel where every day of the year was named after a different Saint, and it never referenced the names of months or anything; it created the feeling of a new structure for the year without any complex system you needed to know.

I agree that is would be silly to assume that names like "Thursday" or "November" would be the same in a fantasy world, but I still think something as complex as what ascanius came up with is a little over the top. The problem with putting that much thought into a time system—or any system—is that you might find it difficult to come to terms with the fact that your reader may never and should never know all of its details.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

My viewpoint is, how can you not have a different calendar? How can you assume that a planet and a culture (or group of cultures) are identical to Earth in this regard? How many things have to correspond to give you the same number of days in a week, the same number of days in a month, the same number of months in a year? Or even to develop the concepts of day, month, and year?

Well, when one invents their own fictional world, they can do whatever they want, can't they? If you can have a world with magic and dragons, why is a world that has the same number of days as our own so implausible?

From a storytelling standpoint, inventing a completely different calendar can be good flavor, but spending too much time on it is not good storytelling. We're writing stories, not Wikipedia entries. ;-)

 

[ShortHair]

Not to give too much away, but in my current work, there are days, weeks, months, and years, they just don't match our calendar. This world has less than 7 days in a week, more than 4 weeks in a month, and more than 12 months in a year. As several have pointed out, it's confusing to change time telling too much--at some point it becomes a waste of your time and the reader's patience. If you don't change anything, though, why bother writing fantasy? Why invite your audience into a different world if it doesn't feel much different from ours? You have to strike a balance.

 

[julienlegault]

Shorthair, you make a ton of sense. You have actually given me the encouragement to play with time in my own writing. In a world full of flaming and bloated internet egos, you should take solace in the fact that you changed someone's opinion haha.

I feel like this can be taken further. If you look at the days of the week, they are derived from mythology (with a Norse influence if I'm not mistaken?). The names of months were named after Roman gods and leaders. You could reinforce your world's mythology by using this kind of system, or something like the Saint's days I mentioned before. You could even subconsciously get your reader to internalize or memorize the names of certain gods just by having that particular day or month mentioned. If a certain god is quite important to plot, maybe key events could happen during their given month, causing both the reader—and even the characters—to realize the god's significance.

(Side note: Romans didn't use weeks, but noted the first, seventh, and fifteenth days of each month as important. Home-brew calendars aside, there are plenty of interesting alternatives to time measurement throughout history. There are probably people here who have already studied this, but I am just now looking at some concrete examples and it's fascinating lol. Maybe years, months, and days in a fantasy world actually can sync up with ours [parallel worlds, etc.] but are just measured differently!)

 

[ShortHair]

Another point to consider--what kind of timekeeping does your culture need? Monks in the Dark Ages needed to know when to hold services, so they built a water clock. Until then there were no hours, no minutes, no seconds. You could mark time by the sun's movement (assuming it was visible), by full days, by the moon's cycles, and by the solstices. You felt the rhythms of nature, not the ticking of a machine. People today have trouble grasping that concept. The Julian/Gregorian calendar is an imaginary linear structure mapped onto a cyclical reality. The universe doesn't care what day it is.