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Going into detail

I'm at the beginning of third draught editing and I've come across this line from one of the characters:

"Technically we're even the same age, both nineteen, though our births were sixteen months apart."

And I was wondering: do I need to explain how this works (and it does, honestly) or will the readers just accept it as a bit of conworld trivia?
 

Gryphos

Auror
Umm, how exactly does that work? Are years longer or something? Time travel? Whatever it is, it definitely needs some kind of explanation.
 
No, the year is 360 days long, divided into eighteen months of twenty days each. The way that the particular religion to which these two characters belong is that, rather than celebrating birthdays, a year's age is added upon the 15th of Ture, the first month of the year. One character, Michael, was born on the 18th of Ture, so he had to wait practically a whole year before he was counted a year old, while the other, Miranda, was born in a much later month, close to the end of the year, and so celebrated her first kalends much sooner. That's why, even though Michael is twenty in real terms, the stated age of both is nineteen.
 

Gryphos

Auror
Ah, well, so long as all that is explained beforehand somehow, or in the scene in question, I don't see a problem.
 

Trick

Auror
If it's not pre-explained, and you don't want to go back and do so, I'd say, 'though our births were nearly a year apart.' Since your years are only a few days longer than Earth days, it will lend the right impression to the reader without bogging them down with confusion about the lengths of months etc...

The calendar in my WIP is 13 months, 26 days each, lending to a shorter year. It is semi-explained throughout but never in great detail because it will just throw readers off where it isn't necessary. Whether the explanation is necessary, however, is up to you.
 

Nimue

Auror
Is there a religious or social reason why age is reckoned in this way? Out of curiosity, is there a real-world culture you've drawn this from? Rather interesting... It could be strange in a more orderly/civilized setting because there would be no way to account for physical age

If this custom has no bearing on the story or cultural significance, it might be one of those details that's better left out. Otherwise, though, a good way of putting it would be to say "Michael is older than I, but he was born so early in the year that we shared the same [Nameday, Yearday, year's beginning, whatever you'd like to call it], and so we're both nineteen."
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
I'm at the beginning of third draught editing and I've come across this line from one of the characters:

"Technically we're even the same age, both nineteen, though our births were sixteen months apart."

And I was wondering: do I need to explain how this works (and it does, honestly) or will the readers just accept it as a bit of conworld trivia?
What's interesting is how easily this sentence throws us off. I also was thrown off by the sixteen months, and even though I've created worlds with seven-month years and even one world with no moon—its year was divided into seasons—my mind refused to entertain the possibility that a moon could revolve around a planet more than sixteen times before said planet would revolve around the sun…

…which, in hindsight, should have been obvious.

So yeah, seeing how I'm the kind of guy who's into worlds in which the writer considered things like "not all worlds have 12 months," and I was thrown, my guess is that either readers need to be familiar with the calendar (not an appendix, but through tidbits that come up earlier in the story) or change "sixteen months" to "almost a year." Or both.

In a time travel story that took place on a moonless world, I started each chapter with the date. That was an easy way to convey the calendar without any kind of info-dump. It was my first novel, which was newbie-ish in some ways, so I'm not saying this is necessarily something you should emulate. Just one way to say, "my world's calendar is different" without breaking immersion. I'm sure there are many ways to do that, and some more effectively.
 
Is there a religious or social reason why age is reckoned in this way? Out of curiosity, is there a real-world culture you've drawn this from? Rather interesting... It could be strange in a more orderly/civilized setting because there would be no way to account for physical age

I don't know if there's a culture who did this exact thing, but I got the idea from Herodotus, when he talks about the Persians and how strange they are because they celebrate their birthday. Unfortunately he doesn't say what, if anything, the greeks celebrate instead.

I suppose the justification would be that it is the month named for their god, as well as the end of winter and the beginning of a new year.
 
In the Baha'i religious calendar there are 19 months each of 19 days so there you go, it does happen here on planet earth!!
 
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