Months and Calendar

[Marscaleb]

I'm debating about using real months in my fantasy story, or using made-up fantasy month names. In fact, I'm considering using a new calendar system, not just replacing the month names.

On one hand, it makes the world more fantastical to have more original elements. But on the other hand, it is easier to follow the course of events if the time is chronicled in the way that we already understand.

I'm writing a series that takes place over several years, and I suspect that I'm going to have numerous flashbacks. While it certainly would be fun to have all-new month names, that also makes it harder for the reader to follow. Most readers are not going to want to have to flip back to some index every time a date is mentioned just to see what it means. And if I manage to get an audiobook recording, that's not even going to be possible. Plenty of readers will get annoyed every time someone mentions the Fourth of Garfumbleheimerinber and the twelfth of Frubinjuliarkuary as if we expect the reader to know which of those occurs first.
Sure I can reference the months by number, but this doesn't always work in every context. People say month names, not numbers.

But on the other hand, reverting to our own calendar is just unimaginative, and even a missed opportunity.
One thought I had was to have the calendar use twelve months that are all 30 days long, but they have a leap year every six years that has an extra month. This thirteenth month could have a lot of superstitious belief about it, like bad things happen in that month. And it would just so happen to be that a particularly important event in my story happens to occur in this thirteenth month, and it is there where a long-awaited confrontation occurs and a certain character falls in battle. That adds a lot of layers to my story, giving new opportunities for foreshadowing, and its way more interesting than just having that occur in December.

But it's also asking more of the reader, asking them to understand additional elements, and they aren't magic systems that let my characters do cool stuff.
I've already introduced new measurement systems that are going to throw some readers for a loop when they are mentioned. But at the same time, I'm also using the exact same clock as our real world, because it just becomes too confusing to the readers and too important to the story to be able to convey the passage of time.

Ultimately I have to decide this for myself, but I'd love to open up the forum to a discussion on calendar systems in fantasy literature. What other advantages/disadvantages have I missed? What are some examples of when a new system has been done well? Examples of when it worked better to just copy our calendar? What preferences do you have as a reader? What tricks do you use as a writer to know where to draw the line on using original systems?

 

[El_d_ray]

I just finished "City of Stairs" by Robert Jackson Bennett, and in this books he used different animals for the name of the month. It goes like "the month of the Rat, the month of the Rabbit" ect. I fought it was working very well! If I wanted, I could linked different animal with different season (it was not needed, but alas) and it wasn't just some word that will escape my brain for the lack of sense. I will definitely use this idea.
Diskworld by Terry Pratchett have a mix of familiar names and others, which usually explained right there when they are used and it is matter to the story. Can't came up with an example, sadly.

 

[pmmg]

I think if you used it, most readers would accept it, and file it aways as there are different month names, and this stuff happened in a different month than some other event, but...unless I have to piece it all together, I'll just go with some time in the past.

I do think it can help with immersion, but it can also distract, depending on how clear and how heavy handed it is. If you month have convenient names Hot month and cold month, that might help people place it better

In my own story world, I had decided long ago that the year was 360 days, and every month was 30 days (I even thought I would have the days be longer, 28 hours and not 24) and after I thought it all up, I never really came out in the story. So, its just for my own information. I also thought I would go with there being three seasons, a hot season, a cold season and a rainy one, but I never quite got it flowing. It just seemed like having four was inescapable cause they has to be in between hot and cold.

We can all dive into the weeds of this stuff and hope it add immersion, but...story trumps world building. A good story is needed more.

I will add, if you have a fantasy world and use our months, July and August will stand out to me as being particularly unlikely.

 

[Mad Swede]

Before you get to the point of working out the number of days in each month and so on, I'd ask you how many people in your setting can read and write? For illiterate people the names of months and the lengths of years don't have a lot of meaning unless some priest or other official makes a point of mentioning a month or year when something will happen or has happened. That means religion and the way a country or city is run has an impact on how people see things like weeks, months and years. The thing that will matter is the seasons, because these drive what sort of food is available.

 

[skip.knox]

It's fine to invent names of months or whatever else. What's not fine is to invent reasons to use them.

To put it another way, I use the English names, but for the most part the stories I have written simply don't use them. The characters don't have occasion to reference a particular month. They might say summer or even late summer. They might say harvest time or planting season. But to name a month just doesn't fit my thoroughly pre-modern world. Eventually someone one in one of my stories might need to say September, and then I'll use the name.

 

[Karlin]

I've read a fair amount of Chinese and Japanese classic novels. They refer to the Chinese calendar, but usually (at least in translation) as "1st Lunar month" or something along those lines- and it comes with a brief description of the weather. So you don't need to know exactly when the 1st lunar month is- but if you do (it is not difficult to know when the year starts), then everything falls into place. This works because the months are not named, they are numbered. By the way- the days of the week are numbered in Hebrew, and if you look at the Bible, usually months are numbered, not named.

On the other hand, I've run into an hour system that I find confusing. When a 24 hour period is divided into 12 "hours", and each has a name, it requires going back and forth to an appendix to recall when "the hour of the horse" is. Of course, in these cases, the original audience knew what it meant.