The Cultural Convention: Part One – A Matter of Time

 The thing about creating a fantasy realm is – it’s a different world.

Yes, I know that sounds self-evident. But when starting work on any kind of fantasy story, it needs to be borne in mind because it places the author immediately into a dilemma. How different exactly? A different world means different rules, that fundamentals of life that all its readers have in common don’t necessarily apply. Take units of time for example. Is the length of our day the same as a fantasy world’s day? Do they measure time as we do in hours and minutes and seconds? Do they follow the same turn of seasons, the same months, the same year?

It's a tricky one. On the one hand, upending these basics makes one truly feel that the place in which the story is taking place is alien and different. But on the other, it upsets the audience’s equilibrium. They are used to the old ways. Having to remember this world they are reading about has different rules can actually be jarring, it can push a reader’s brain out of the comfort of the story and jolt them out of your carefully constructed story while they try and get their heads around it.

And of course, all of this has to be explained. Exposition is the bane of many fantasy writers. It has to be laid out, early on, what the fundamentals of this world are, in order for the story to make sense. But in doing so, the author needs to insert a massive blob of world building into their narrative before the story has really had a chance to get going. There are various ways this can be done, which I have discussed in a previous blog, as it happens, but the outcome can often be the same. Readers with a short attention span may be turned off by this and abandon ship early on.

And this is why, I suspect, a lot of authors don’t actually bother to change a thing temporally. They leave the fundamentals of time as they are and choose not to mess. The major exception that springs to mind is the wonderful Sir Terry Pratchett with his eight day week and double seasoned year but given he created a realm carried by four elephants riding on the back of a turtle, he probably had to do a bit more fundamental world mechanics than most. In a situation such as that, having weeks, months and years that were conveniently the same would have been more jarring than the alterations so it’s better to roll with the oddness and hope the reader rolls too.

And it’s similar for me - in the Realm I created, normal rules cannot apply so I had to consider carefully what I was going to do in that respect. I left days, hours, minutes and seconds as they were but beyond that – how would a people whose lives are ruled by the arrival of The Narrative measure time? In Quests, of course. Weeks and months and years would mean nothing to them out of Narrative - what matters is how many Quests they’ve lived through. That is how they measure their lifespan.

And then there is another spanner in the works. Time in the Realm doesn’t function in a way that by our standards would be considered normal.

Let me explain. It’s not a story, we have time. ;p

Time and age in the Realm work according to Narrative need. A long ride between two places won’t necessarily take as long in The Narrative as it would in the outside world – hence how quickly the Merry Band keep catching up with our heroes. And people age according to Narrative requirements. A Boy of Destiny may grow up within the folds of Narrative time at a different rate to how he might age out of it. People stay at the age at which they are useful to The Narrative longer – they grow up quickly (unless they are needed as a child), stay at the prime age they are needed at for Quest purposes longer and only start to age properly when their Narrative time reduces. Ironically enough, a Disposable doing his duty dips in and out of Narrative regularly, which keeps him at the age he needs to be until he retires and he will age rapidly at that point. However, a Hero or Heroine, after their lengthy, intense Quest for glory, are done in all but noble cameos and might actually age faster after it’s over because their Narrative time is now more sparse.

This is what happened to the Gods in The Merry Band, most notably The Child – without their glory of the light requiring them, they grew much older than they would have if they were still needed. And grim as this sounds, I’ve always postulated that death from old age, the only way for a resident of the Realm to pass away, is as a result of no longer being required for Narrative use. When the Taskmaster doesn’t need you any more – you get old quickly and then you’re gone.

This is the point at which my authorial ideals come into conflict with my storytelling. I don’t believe I have at any point gone into what I have just explained in my actual novels, published or unpublished. It is something I am aware of as the world builder, but other than a few passing references, it isn’t actually necessary to the story so I’ve never bothered to explain it in great detail in the books. And that’s the line any author has to walk. It’s important to create a full and convincing world that makes sense for the sake of the reader – but it’s also important to bear in mind what the reader does and doesn’t need to know. I could have whacked in a heap of exposition to explain this but as it turned out, it wasn’t relevant to my storytelling. So I didn’t.

That’s what blogs are for. ;)