I am having a hard time rationalizing time in relation to my next book.
It is supposed to take place over years. Decades, even. I am very comfortable with that concept.
HOWEVER.
I have a couple of events that happen back-to-back, narratively. However, I have made them take place years apart on a literal scale. That was kind of by accident, kind of not.
Let’s start with the not.
I intended for the events to happen with a large gap between them. Of course, by large gap, I ment a few months. I am dealing with hours, however, and made it 10,000 hrs (~416 days) and 100,000 hrs (~4166 days).
Now, I could narratively make that gap make sense. I could express how time has little meaning, or do little vignettes further explaining events over that time.
The other direction I could go is to shrink the time by a factor of 10. That would make it ~42 days and ~416 days. That makes a lot more sense, as this is dealing with space travel. I am trying to keep some sort of realism in the story, and oxygen alone would make 11 years difficult, at the best.
If you haven’t noticed yet, I am writing this more out of a selfish need to rationalize my decisions than I am writing this for a concrete answer. I have given myself a plethora of time to figure this out, and it really has little bearing on the grand scope of the narrative.
Just, trust me. It will all make sense in a bit.
plain text. 