Calendars in Your World

[wordwalker]

Sounds like there are two things to watch about calendars:

One, they can give a feeling for your own world. If you have a list of heroes, elemental forces, poetic images, or whatever else you want to say your world would pick for this, there's some value in using it rather than just "they never say Monday."

The other is, some days and months are worth presenting along with an implication. You can't say "Gluurgsday" with the same effect as showing someone stumble into the shop from a long weekend and say "I hate Gluurgsdays." (Assuming they have weekends. Most Earth cultures seem to have developed at least a one-holy-day-a-week-off system, although in Asia it's more likely to be a lot of events over the yearly calendar.)

 

[Trick]

My calendar is base thirteen. There are Thirteen totems for which the days, months and 'fortnights' are named. Fortnights are thirteen days with the 7th, 13th and 14th days off (Imagine a long week with both a weekend and a middle day off). Two fortnights is one month = 26 days. I have actually planned it down to the second. There are 52 seconds in an minute, 52 minutes in an hour and 26 hours in a day. Having done the math I found that people living by my created schedule would actually be slightly younger at a given age than they are in the Gregorian calendar but it's minimal enough to matter very little.

There are four seasons of three months each and a separate month between Haerfast (Fall) and Haeberna (Winter) called Haerftide when farmers take a month long break before harvest. All of this plays into the central theme of the book but I will not be describing it all in detail because... well... I want people to read it.

I even created a circular calendar that serves as a year long clock, showing the Season, Month, Day, Hour and Second at once. The use of this device by characters will be the closest I come to describing the calendar. I'd rather just make it clear that everything is based on the thirteen totems and then move on. Creating it has helped me in outlining though.

 

[Ireth]

@Trick - not to sound nitpicky, but the word "fortnight" literally means "fourteen nights". If you take one off, that makes it a bit of a misnomer. ^^;

 

[Trick]

That's the reason I referred to them as 'fortnights.' I'm not sure what I'll call them. Since it hasn't been much of an issue on the writing side I'm okay with the delay. I've been playing with variations of nomenclature involving thirteen but haven't found something that fits as of yet. I could call them Thirtnights but that sounds more like a condition than a length of time

 

[Malik]

In medieval stasis tropes, the people will have absolutely no idea how their world works. Celestial mechanics are so complicated -- and, we're finding as we discover more systems beyond our own, so varied -- that you can do just about anything as long as it's consistent. The people won't know what's driving the world around them. They'll just map it out and call it normal. Then you can hope to sell enough books that some nerd someplace will do the math for you and map it out for everyone else on a forum.

The calendar is important because it drives the society, and if you're doing heroic / epic fantasy -- or any kind of fantasy that includes social commentary, whether it's implied through something as subtle as Aristotelian syllogism or whether it's outright proselytized by the MC in direct quotes -- then the society is a character of its own and you have to know its motivations.

 

[ThinkerX]

In medieval stasis tropes, the people will have absolutely no idea how their world works. Celestial mechanics are so complicated -- and, we're finding as we discover more systems beyond our own, so varied -- that you can do just about anything as long as it's consistent. The people won't know what's driving the world around them. They'll just map it out and call it normal. Then you can hope to sell enough books that some nerd someplace will do the math for you and map it out for everyone else on a forum.

Again, not all of us are using generic unmodified 'medieval stasis tropes'. Some folks here are scribing tales in steam punk worlds, where a crude form of space travel might actually be possible, and others are writing tales in post apocalyptic settings that only superficially appear medieval. In these cases, a sophisticated calendar and a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy is understandable.

The main nation of my main world is just starting to embark on an industrial and scientific revolution. They are highly organized, with cities topping the half million range, have telescopes, microscopes, hot air ballons, bicycles, and complex clockwork type mechanisms. More, the ancestors of the humans on this world, along with other races, were brought here many millenia ago by the now mostly departed 'Old Ones', or 'aliens', who also taught their favored subjects among these peoples quite a bit of esoteric knowledge, some of which persists. Plus, Lovecraftian monstrosities of various sorts have a presence on this world, and they sometimes divulge advanced lore to their servants.

Yes, there are still armored knights and the rest. But that is changing.

 

[TrustMeImRudy]

And there are some who are using ancient times tropes but not the European medieval stasis. Ancient Mayans and Chinese and Indians all had very complex forms of astronomy and exceptional calendar systems. Egyptians too, and that is reeeeeeally ancient.

 

[Malik]

I'm not saying fantasy has to use the stale Planet England trope. I'd prefer that it doesn't, personally. And good on you for doing something new.

My point was, you don't have to explain it any further than your characters understand it, and we're now finding that there are enough variables to celestial mechanics that you can get away with almost anything. Which is pretty awesome when you think about it.

 

[SensibleRin]

I complicate everything! In my world, Vanity, its all different.
The day is longer, the week is shorter, the months are shorter but in greater number, and the year has more days in it.
The hour, minute and second are really only the same. The day is 32 hours long.
The week is five days long: moonsday, sunsday, starday, earthday, and godsday. moonday is called such because it is always a new or full moon on that day.
The month is twenty days long and four weeks long. Each month contains a full moon cycle, thus beginning and ending at new moon. There are twenty months in a year.
The year is four hundred days long, or eighty weeks long. A Vanitian year is 1.46 earth years. The year begins at winter solstice, so the month names proceed like this: 1. Newest Moon, 2. Ice Moon, 3. Thaw Moon, 4. Stone Moon, 5. Seed Moon, 6. Skyling Moon, 7. Thorn Moon, 8. Lamb Moon, 9. Rose Moon, 10. Dream Moon, 11. Oath Moon, 12. Smoke Moon, 13. Corn Moon, 14. Wheat Moon, 15. Harvest Moon, 16. Fire Moon, 17. Fading Moon, 18. Frost Moon, 19. Snow Moon, and 20. Oldest Moon.
Thus Winter is months 19-2, Spring is months 4-7, Summer is months 9-12, and Autumn 14-17. The people of Vanity have four interseasons called Transin, where the seasons transition from one to another, thus months 3, 8, 13, and 18 are Transin months.
As for holidays, there are various seasonal feasts and celebrations of heroes or a country's founding, or great battles. But the most important holiday is Midwinter, the three days before the end of the year, and the three first new days. Each day is celebrated in its own way, and there is an all night vigil on the last day of the year into the new.

 

[Edankyn]

In my book all of the mathematics are based off of a base 6 system instead of a base 10 system. This also relates to the time/calendar/seasons/etc. I have six seasons instead of 4. Each of these seasons last six cycles (weeks) of six (days). In the end this brings the year on my planet to a total of 216 days. I based my seasons loosely around the southeast Asian seasons which includes the traditional seasons plus monsoon and pre-vernal.

 

[TrustMeImRudy]

Damn lol you guys took that beyond my ability to properly comprehend. So how do you work those into your stories or is it just for your own reference? Mine is mostly the latter.

 

[ThinkerX]

Damn lol you guys took that beyond my ability to properly comprehend. So how do you work those into your stories or is it just for your own reference? Mine is mostly the latter.

'Labyrinth' is written in journal form, hence dates (and a calendar) are needed.

Certain days (solistices and equinoxes) are of immense importance, and therefor carefully tracked.

And being a civilized empire, the calendar comes in handy for the bureaucratic characters who go 'well, that won't happen until the fifth of next month, ten days from now' and whatnot.

Thats Solaria.

Cimmar, a much more primitive realm across the ocean...well, ordinary folk go by the seasons and special days, and only the priests and clerks bother much with actual dates.

 

[SensibleRin]

For me having a regular calendar, with holidays and set birthdays and specific dates is incredibly freeing, ironically. All those little details add incredible verisimilitude to the story.
For example, as I was plotting out a court intrigue, I looked at my timeline for that month and realized there was a major date conflict. My MC Kattala's noble employer was about to have a birthday, but her sister was to be married a day before, on the other side of the country. Suddenly there is a kind of conflict there, and not a world-shaking one. Does she put her job over her family?
If someone has a birthday a day after a big holy day, everyone might be too tired to celebrate properly. The Birthday person may even resent having their day overshadowed by that holiday, much as some Christmas babies do.
Admittedly, I am not a huge fan of math. But I feel having dates that are accurate and realistic add a lot.
I also wanted to give, with my 32 hour day, 5 day week, 4 week 20 day month, 400 day 20 month 80 week year to be so neat and tidy that my natives would look at Earth's calendar and not know how we get on with our day without undue confusion. The answer of course is that most of us do require many aids to keep track of things.
In Vanity it is fairly simple to know when things are.

 

[Xitra_Blud]

They don't have a sun. They tell time and days apart by the moon.

 

[NumberFiftyFive]

Steampunk Fairytales: Calendar and Chronology
On Shaar I dared create an alternate calendar with years nearly twice as long as ours on Earth. It ended up making the characters confusingly aged- For example an 18 year old young woman might introduce herself as 9 years old, making the reader give an interal What? before remembering the calendar system.