Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Describing Time and Distance

This is topic Describing Time and Distance in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Tani (Member # 8608) on :

What kind of descriptors are the least distracting in a fantasy world to describe time and distance? I tend to revert to known terms - hours, days, feet, hands, cubits, etc, - mainly because I find it distracting when an author uses terms like "glasses", or other made up terms. I have to stop and convert it to hours in my mind before I read on. But I'm wondering - is it equally distracting to use more modern terms?

Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :

One thing to consider is that this story is being translated into English for a modern audience. Or rather that is what helps me sleep at night.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

I don't think glasses is a made-up term, at least for time-keeping. (I think the term refers to hourglasses.)

You can use whatever the culture of your story would be likely to count: turnings (of the sun, the seasons), heartbeats, breaths, leagues, ells, hands (closed or spread), and so on.

Things like minutes and seconds imply technology advanced enough to measure them.

Posted by Kitti (Member # 7277) on :

I second KDW - it depends entirely on the society and culture you are describing. Whether it's time or distance, ask yourself how and why would they measure such things? The units of measurement can be entirely familiar (or not, if you prefer) so long as you are clear in your mind as to why your characters are using those units and not others.

Some examples.

Suppose you live in a rural, medievalish society. Your life is geared towards the rhythms of the seasons, of the sun rising and setting. Time is circular - planting, summer, harvest, winter... or birth, marriage, children (who start their own cycle), death. Probably the most you'll break down the day is into morning, noon, afternoon, evening - e.g. it's just before noon. You measure distance by things like "a stone's throw" or "a two-day walk." (Trivia: an acre used to be how much land a man could plow in one day, and hence varied depending on the land he was plowing.)

Now throw in a monastery who has regular prayer services at certain hours of the day. But those monks adjust the hours so that the first hour of the day is always dawn, the third hour is always noon, the sixth hour is always midafternoon... so hours vary in length depending on how long the day is. Locals will measure hours by the bells and - if the bells go every quarter of an hour - they'll be able to pin time down to the quarter of an hour, but no further. They'll also begin to subdivide their year by religious festivals and not just by the harvest, the moon and the sun.

But now suppose you're an astrologer, trying to calculate someone's fortunes. You need to be very specific about where something is positioned in the sky, so you use minutes and seconds as a breakdown of degrees. That same astrology/astronomy is what navigators are going to use to measure longitude (and the quest for an accurate time-keeper will obsess kings for generations, because they want their navigators to be able to bring back trade goods and not crash their ships) so they'll likely break down their time into minutes and maybe seconds (though their timekeepers are so inaccurate that they're probably wrong) as they try to measure how far they've gone. (Note how the measurement of distance and time are intrinsically connected in this worldview.)

In "modern western society", the rise of seconds and minutes in the average person's consciousness came from two main developments 1) the city work-day, freed from the rhythms of the harvest or the tides and 2) railroads (also responsible for time zones). You may also thank/curse Napoleon for the metric system which attempted (with varying degrees of success) to stamp out all the local variations in measurement (though if you'd lived in a time when an English, Irish and French mile were all different lengths, and the ratio of ton to gallons varied depending on whether you were measuring ale or wine, you might be a bit more sympathetic...)

Okay, clearly I've read too much on this subject. Back to the main point. Look at the society your characters are living in. Ask yourself - what sorts of times and distances do they WANT to measure and what tools do they have available to do that measuring? Then use whatever terms make sense, both to the internal logic of your society and to you as a reader.

Posted by rstegman (Member # 3233) on :

Keep in mind that in Old England, they had measurements such as HOg's head, furlongs, Horses measured hands high. there were acres, chains, rods, stadia (about the farthest a solder could charge and still fight) and so on. Of course, Days, MOnths, years are all naturally caused events that would be natural to use, whatever world you are in. Hours were in use since Egyptian times.
Find old time measurements that fit your needs and use them. They will be different enough to give your region flavor.

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I've had a hard time using the word "kilometer." Sometimes I've substituted "klicks," something I lifted from somebody somewhere, but that seems unsatisfactory, too...

Muddying the water is that "kilo" is used for weight ("twenty kilos of marijuana neatly wrapped in one kilo packages") which prohibits its use as a unit of measurement...

Posted by Kitti (Member # 7277) on :

"Klick" is commonly used by members of the US military.

Posted by BenM (Member # 8329) on :

quote:
I've had a hard time using the word "kilometer." Sometimes I've substituted "klicks," something I lifted from somebody somewhere, but that seems unsatisfactory, too...

Over here, where kilometres are the defacto unit of distance we often abbreviate it (in speech) to 'kays', ie I live 10 k's from the city centre. If I said I lived 6 miles from the city centre people would give me strange looks. As a teenager I once had a shop assistant refuse me service while I referred to dollars as 'bucks'.

I've never in my life said klicks

quote:
Muddying the water is that "kilo" is used for weight

Context is all you need. After all, 'kilo' is used for everything in the SI system: Weight (kilograms), distance (kilometres), volume (kilolitres), energy (kilojoules), force (kilonewtons). Still, if I say I live 10k's from the city centre, it's obvious which scale I'm referring to.

And Tani, though I think it's common to use modern terms in fantasy, it is also not uncommon to omit distance measurements altogether, instead substituting time:
'How far to the nearest town?'
'About a day and a half's hard ride.'
or
'About an hour's ride north.'

But I don't think it's necessary. Since many fantasy genres centre around a pseudo-medieval setting, a similar technological level should apply. The Romans placed milestones on roads and measured time in hours and minutes; unless writing a fantasy set in neolithic times I'd be happy, as a reader, seeing a wide range of measurements available.

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I heard somewhere that when the UK decimalized its currency back in, oh, the early 1970s I think, they started calling their loose change "pee" for the letter "P." I'm not sure they weren't making some other comment.

quote:
After all, 'kilo' is used for everything in the SI system: Weight (kilograms), distance (kilometres), volume (kilolitres), energy (kilojoules), force (kilonewtons).

One of the problems with metrics is that the same words are used for different forms of measurement.

Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :

I find paces and lengths to be handy measurements.

Posted by rstegman (Member # 3233) on :

Of course, there is also distant measurements such as
Hop, Skip and Jump,
then there is the Hoot and Holler
Each of these is a fairly set distance. A hoot has a different range to be heard than a holler.