A question about time.

[westwriter]

If I'm writing a fantasy novel and units of time come up on a regular basis, how do I write it?  I need units like minutes and hours.  Do I invent time units and waste a lot of time at the beginning of the story showing them to give the reader a familiar reference?  Do I describe time?  Can I just use minutes and hours?

[Silk]

This is a personal preference, of course, but I would just use minutes and hours. No need to reinvent the wheel.

I'd save your inventivity for when it really matters.

[sortitus]

Unless you have a good reason for using a different measure of time, I'd stick with earth time.

[westwriter]

Well that's a relief.  I like doing things the easy way.

[Chaos]

In the book I'm currently writing, I have a character who slightly obsessive about checking the time, so I just stuck with earth time entirely. It's simply much easier to say "10:35".

One interesting thing I did see done with time that wasn't confusing was the way Patrick Rothfuss changed how long a "week" was. He called them "span", each eleven days long. That probably doesn't help you with minutes or hours, but it goes to show you can do things like that, too. To my knowledge I don't think Rothfuss changed away from seconds, though he doesn't make it a big deal.

I'd just stick to twenty-four hour days that are sixty minutes long.

[Silk]

There are a lot of books that use different terms for larger units of time like like days or weeks. I think that's a little easier to deal with, probably (at least in part) because those units don't come up as often as minutes or seconds might.

[RavenstarRHJF]

You could also experiment with different means of measuring time.  Not necessarily units, but something other than a conventional clock.  Maybe a candle with a fixed rate of burning, or a clear lens which displays the time of day on the ground when the sun shines through it (hey, that's actually a pretty cool idea..).

[Silk]

Meaning a sundial?

[RavenstarRHJF]

I was thinking a little more high-tech, but yeah... basically a sundial.   

[sortitus]

I thought you were talking about a magical lens that would distort sunlight into numerals that displayed the time...

[RavenstarRHJF]

I was!  But that is, basically, nothing more than a sundial.

[sortitus]

Except that a sundial needs to be oriented very precisely to give you an accurate reading of the time. In fact, if you had a personal sundial, you could get a pretty close reading of the time just by doing the math to set up the dial correctly. So your idea sounds more like an atomic wrist or pocket watch that only works in sunlight. Really, you didn't specify if indirect light through windows or off the moon would work, or even if it would display an incorrect time if not able to get direct or mostly un-refracted light. Behavior with only artificial light was also unspecified. It's an interesting idea, but probably not one that's complex enough to base a (good) novel off.

[Frog]

Well, not a whole book certainly, but still a fun idea that I would encourage. After all, I've seen worse concepts become full books before as it is all a matter of opinion. 

[RavenstarRHJF]

Oh goodness, certainly not a whole book!  It was just a suggestion to give the world a little flavor- something that's close to what we have and are familiar with, but with that "other" feel to it. 

Heh.  Didn't think it'd cause this much debate!

[Silk]

Keeping in mind also, of course, that a lot of cultures probably don't have the fixation on "time" that our culture does. Particularly knowing to the minute if it's 10:15 or 10:17am etcetera.