writing distances in fantasy
A provocative delve into the inflammatory topic of units of measurement.
I’ll start up front by warning you: I use modern American units of measurement in all my stories, none of which are located here. If that disgusts you so thoroughly you don’t want to hear my reasoning, I get that, but this is not the post for you. Go ahead and click away, enjoy a short story, we can reconvene over coffee on another day.
If you’re willing to hear me out, I’m glad for a chance to share my philosophy with you. As a card-holding Nerd, this is a subject I’ve invested serious thought in over the years; love it or hate it, my approach isn’t cavalier or off-the-cuff.
why does it matter?
The Goal Supreme of all storytelling — an end so fundamental people often forget it’s there — is to communicate meaning. Characters, plot, worldbuilding, all of that is irrelevant until you arrive at the point where your audience gets what you’re saying. A few ambiguous figures won’t prevent you from conveying 99% of the meaningful action to a reader. But why not nab that extra 1%?
Measurements we’re not conversant in don’t bring the same level of comprehension as the units we’re acquainted with. I’m fond of nature documentaries, but when David Attenborough gives me any distance longer than 5k or mass larger than a few kilos, I have to resort to the internet. It’s just numbers without sense attached, a vague impression of superlative or diminutive. And if that’s all that’s getting across, why bother to attach a number to it?
why not make it up?
There’s nothing to prevent an author from inventing a system of their own — we do peddle fiction, after all, lying about shit is our stock in trade — but I know what a mile is. And 5 miles, and 10. I know how I feel after walking those distances. Would I be winded, would my feet be sore? Would I be ready to walk more?
The same just isn’t true of Blips and Plibs. If I’m supposed to sneakily assume that a Blip is a foot and a Plib is a mile, the most basic reasoning behind NOT using Earth measurements — we’re in a fictional world and units of measurement are all arbitrary — doesn’t hold. It’s an end run around a problem that refuses to acknowledge ‘end run’ is a football metaphor that has no place on a fantasy world where they don’t play American football.
If they DO play American football, your world is hella weird, please tell me more about it.
is there such a thing as intuitive?
But back to my point. This entire train of thought set forth from a station that was a conversation I had years ago with a beta reader who disliked reading about elves walking miles. They tried to sell me on the ‘go with something intuitive’ angle, but is there such a thing? How about paces? That one seems a lot of action.
Well okay, let’s think that through. My mom is 5’2″ and my husband is 6’2″, so imagine the difference between the pace either of them takes.
Then imagine how much farther he’s traveled after 10 paces than her.
Then multiply that by 100.
Okay, they’re in different counties now. Which of their paces was actually correct? Which was intuitive or obvious? And how is the reader supposed to guess?
All of which brings us full circle to the conundrum that we started with. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why authors who choose to invent systems of their own do so. I low-key cringe every time I write ‘inch.’ It’s just a dicey proposition, writing stories (in English!) in a world that’s not supposed to share a history with our own. However you choose to cope with it, commit, and your readers will keep up with you.
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