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Eric Rhys Taylor edited this page Dec 16, 2025 · 12 revisions

FAQ

Custom Calendars & Alien Time

Radial Timeline does not support fully custom calendar systems (for example, calendars based on alien star systems, non-Earth day lengths, or culturally specific time units) for timeline planning.

This is a deliberate design decision. While alien calendars are often an important part of worldbuilding, they are not well suited to the structural tasks Radial Timeline is designed to support: narrative sequencing, pacing analysis, and subplot coordination.

Design Rationale

When plotting a story, authors need a temporal reference frame that allows for fast, intuitive reasoning about duration and spacing.

For most authors on Earth, that reference frame is the standard Earth-based time system (days, weeks, months, years). These units are deeply internalized and allow authors to evaluate pacing and narrative pressure without constant translation. No doubt, in 100 years, there will be authors on Mars using the Martian calendar to plan their novels. That's the way it should be.

Introducing a fully custom calendar into the planning layer would require authors to repeatedly convert between unfamiliar units in order to answer basic structural questions, increasing cognitive overhead during development.

Radial Timeline prioritizes reducing that overhead.

Separation of Structure and Presentation

Radial Timeline intentionally distinguishes between:

  • Structural time — used for planning, analysis, and comparison
  • In-world time — used for narrative texture, immersion, and worldbuilding

Custom calendars belong primarily to the latter.

While a fictional setting may include unique astronomical cycles, cultural calendars, or locally defined units of time, those systems are most effective when expressed in the prose, not when used as the underlying units for timeline computation.

How Published Science Fiction Handles Time

In practice, most published science fiction separates story structure from in-world timekeeping:

  • Narrative planning and pacing rely on familiar temporal units.
  • Fictional calendars and time references appear in dialogue, exposition, and scene description.
  • Readers infer urgency and duration through context rather than explicit conversion.

This separation allows authors to maintain clarity during development while still presenting rich and internally consistent worlds on the page.

Environmental Cycles Without Custom Calendars

Alien time does not need to be numeric to be meaningful.

Many science-fiction settings emphasize lived temporal experience rather than formal calendars, such as:

  • Extremely long or uneven solar days
  • Apparent solar reversals or stalled suns
  • Tidal cycles that define travel or labor windows
  • Cultural markers tied to light, heat, or shadow

These phenomena shape character behavior, social structures, and conflict without requiring a non-intuitive calendrical system in the planning layer.

Recommended Workflow

1. Plan in Earth Time

Use standard units (days, weeks, months) to evaluate:

  • Narrative pacing
  • Recovery time between events
  • Overlap and intersection of plotlines

These units allow rapid structural judgment.

2. Translate in the Prose

When writing scenes, express duration using in-world language and phenomena:

  • Lunar cycles
  • Solar positions
  • Environmental or cultural markers

This is where alien time becomes visible to the reader.

3. Maintain Optional Conversion Notes

If internal consistency requires it, authors may keep a simple reference note, such as:

  • 1 local day ≈ 1.5 Earth days
  • 1 orbital year = 112 Earth days

These references support worldbuilding but are not used directly by Radial Timeline for plotting.

Example

Planning Layer

  • Monday: discovery
  • Tuesday: investigation
  • Wednesday: setback
  • Thursday: breakthrough
  • Friday: confrontation

Prose Layer

The evidence surfaced at first-light prayer.
By the next dawn-cycle, she traced it to the station.
The third rotation brought disaster.

The underlying structure remains clear while the narrative surface reflects the fictional setting.

Why This Matters

Timeline tools are most effective when they help authors answer structural questions quickly:

  • Are events too compressed?
  • Is there sufficient breathing room between major revelations?
  • Do subplots intersect at the right moments?

Adding custom calendar complexity to the planning layer makes these questions harder to answer by introducing unnecessary conversion and abstraction.

Radial Timeline is designed to expose structural relationships in a narrative, not to model fictional chronometry.

Summary

Radial Timeline focuses on the architecture of a story: sequencing, spacing, overlap, and escalation.

Alien calendars, solar anomalies, and environmental cycles remain essential to worldbuilding and should appear in the prose, where they shape experience and meaning.

They are intentionally excluded from the timeline’s computational layer to preserve clarity, speed, and intuitive reasoning during story development.

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