Systems of Measurement

chronomodra · Oct 22, 2008

So I have a fantasy novel where I'd like to present distances in my descriptions. For example, standing inches from someone's face, height being measured in feet, and being able to describe distances in miles.

The problem is, none of these measurements would exist in the world I've created. Nor would the metric system, obviously. I've created my own system of measurement that would exist in this world, but I've been told doing that is too confusing to the reader.

How do other fantasy authors handle this? Do they use their own measurements, or do they just bite the bullet and express everything in earth measurements?

(By the same note, what does one call 'earth', a synonym for dirt, on non-earth planets?)

DeleyanLee · Oct 22, 2008

Personally, I don't mention exact measurements at all.

Instead of "standing inches from one's face" it's "stood too close for comfort"

Instead of height being measured in feet, it's just references of whether or not the POV char needs to look up or look down at someone or something. If they do anything often enough, that dramatizes how tall or short they (and everything else) is.

Instead of distances in miles, use something more relevant to the culture: time, energy, candlemarks, spell duration. Whatever.

I don't use any unit of measurement along these lines because it's just telling and not showing and, thus, fairly meaningless to the average reader.

Smiling Ted · Oct 22, 2008

chronomodra said:
The problem is, none of these measurements would exist in the world I've created. Nor would the metric system, obviously. I've created my own system of measurement that would exist in this world, but I've been told doing that is too confusing to the reader.

None of your characters are speaking English, either, but your book will be written in English, and not in some language you've made up yourself. Your units of length will sound like "foot" or "meter" to the characters in the story, and that's what's important.

Danthia · Oct 22, 2008

I used inches and regular measurements or time and distance, as this is something readers know and it doesn't change the story or the world any. Readers gloss over that stuff unless it's anachronistic and jumps out.

If you use your own measurements, just make sure it's clear from the context what those measurements are and how they relate to what readers know. We're pretty used to different words. Stones, leagues, summers, turns, etc. Just make sure your system makes sense to the world you've craeted, and you're not just making up words.

For example, I just saw the play "Wicked" and a line there was "Now wait just a tick" instead of wait just a minute, which I thought was great. I knew exactly what they meant, but it fit the world created on stage perfectly. Chances are you can't rely on American cliches to set context, but you can easily do it in other ways.

I just say dirt, ground, mud, gravel, etc.

Sarpedon · Oct 22, 2008

Well, prior to the metric system, all other systems of measurement were anthropometric. (meaning that they were related to the human body) A foot is obvious, a Rod is variously explained as being the height of a man, the armspread of a man, or, literally, the height of a man's walking staff.

Other units worth considering is the span (the spread fingers of a hand, or 10 inches) the cubit (the distance between the finger and the elbow) the furlong (I actually don't know how long a furlong is. Its supposed to be as long as a furrow in a field, however long that is) the pace, the finger, the fathom, the grain, the league, the stage, and so forth.

I for one, would wonder why the 'normal' units of measurements wouldn't exist. Don't people have feet in your world?

I think any exoticness you get out of making your own units would be nullified by the annoyance of the reader having to convert everything. For example, when I was reading the Chinese Classic the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I was annoyed by characters being a certain number of spans tall, carrying a a halberd weighing so many Jin, who had traveled hundreds of li in order to find a few hou of land to build a farm on, arriving during the third watch, and drinking six measures of wine in the time it takes for two rolls of the drum. It got old, and soon I wished that the translator had just translated the units along with everything else. (of course some of the poetry would have been lost. The 'Thousand Li Horse' would have become the 'Three Hundred and Thirty Three Mile Horse.')

I hope that helps.

Kitty Pryde · Oct 22, 2008

I throw my vote in for using regular old mundane units of measurement. I have seen some spec-fic authors soothe their inner worldbuilding nerd by including a little note before or after the body of the novel, that says something like, "For ease of understanding, time and length in this novel have been converted from Planet Nibbleglork units into Earthly equivalents."

waylander · Oct 22, 2008

What Sarpedon said.
I used handswidth, stride and day's walk or day's ride.

MagicMan · Oct 22, 2008

If you absolutely require a unit of measurement, due to a trade the MC is an expert, then ensure you use it and explain it using dialog. I like to use a child that wanders into the scene, asks "What's a glinch?" "Well, little one, see my hand, a glinch is the size of my hand." "But your hand is smaller than my father's." "Ha-ha, that's why I make more gold than other smiths."

Smiles
Bob

Straka · Oct 22, 2008

I tend to shy away from exact measurements in general, often in my WIPs its a good indicator that I'm telling, and not showing.

tehuti88 · Oct 22, 2008

When I'm in a situation where some sort of distance needs to be mentioned, yet the POV characters have no concept of "miles," "feet," "inches," etc., I do things like

He moved close until their faces were a finger's-breadth apart.

He stood several paces away.

It's about two days' travel away from here.

Things such as that. You just work with what you've got.

Regarding "earth," I don't mind using it in a place where the term "Earth" is unknown as long as it's kept as a synonym for soil, dirt, etc. and is not capitalized. I just see it as a word akin to soil or dirt. Not in reference to the planet.

Every word we use is translated in some way from some concept that doesn't exist everywhere; I recently learned that "slave" is from the word "Slav," but it's become so generic a word that it's regularly used in stories where Slavs don't exist. Nobody ever complains, "Hold on, they have slaves on this world but there are no Slavs in this reality! How false is that?"

On a related note, it did niggle at me severely when I wanted to use the term "inched" as a verb meaning to move slowly, because the measurement of an inch didn't make sense for my characters. Using my reasoning regarding the word "earth," I could have kept it, but I decided to substitute a different word that admittedly didn't sound as descriptive to me. Ah well. :/

Mr Flibble · Oct 22, 2008

I try not to sweat it. Most of the time I show height etc rather than state a height. I use inches etc when it would be too convoluted to say something else.

Which means think I used inch twice and miles about the same. *shrug* if you're only going to say the word twice, why make up a word that the reader will forget soon enough and then go *huh?* when they encounter it the second time?

Unless you're writing a fantasy about a mapmaker, then measurements probably won't be vital to your story and if you can show most of them ( as said above 'three weeks away' or similar) without using actual measurements at all, don't sweat the occasional one you do use.

Nivarion · Oct 22, 2008

sometime is use feet to describe an object and at a latter time compare said object to something else.

such as, it would be impractical to mention (going to use nivarion as the example again) that he is 9' 8", but if he is helping a Carpenter and has to go get a board eight feet in length, and while looking said board over, sets it on one end an looks over the other, then you know he is really tall.

i use the translation method, since all of the elves in my story would be giants compared to us, so a pace, a hands with, etc. wouldn't translate or compare. you would have an idea in comparison but....

depends on your world, would anything be distorted by using a new measurement.

badducky · Oct 22, 2008

If I ever write an alternate history story, I'm using my favorite, real unit of measurement:

the smoot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot

fullbookjacket · Oct 24, 2008

You might try just throwing the units of measure into the narrative. For instance if the basic unit of measure is a "kril", you might say:

He lunged forward and got right in my face, mere krils away.

Or:

The journey across the desert would be a long one, of many bantkrils.

MattW · Oct 24, 2008

The flangdoodle was fifty-quince laggs away, as the Smeerp glips.

Dgullen · Oct 24, 2008

badducky said:
my favorite, real unit of measurement:

For me that would be either:
the microfortnight, approx 1.2 seconds
the millihelen, beautiful enough to launch 1 ship.

Phoebe H · Oct 24, 2008

tehuti88 said:
Every word we use is translated in some way from some concept that doesn't exist everywhere; I recently learned that "slave" is from the word "Slav," but it's become so generic a word that it's regularly used in stories where Slavs don't exist. Nobody ever complains, "Hold on, they have slaves on this world but there are no Slavs in this reality! How false is that?"

I remember Orson Scott Card talking about a story he had written which took place in an alternate history where the New World was uninhabited when the Europeans came over. And so he tried to weed out all the words and place names that had come from Native American words, since there were no Native Americans.

The only problem was that on the first page of the story, he mentioned something about a woodchuck. After the story was published, someone pointed out that despite how it looked, "woodchuck" was derived from a word in Algonquin. He was mortified. But no one else cared.

All of which is to say, you can worry about some of this stuff *way too much*.

fullbookjacket · Oct 25, 2008

Good point, Phoebe.

I see new period-piece movies all the time in which a character will use a common phrase or term that I know wasn't coined until years, decades, or centuries after the era in which the movie is set.

Sticktalker · Oct 27, 2008

All good points folks. I'm doing an alternate history novel set on Earth, splitting off from the "real world" in 54 BC. Romans, Caesar and all. Luckily the Romans used the "Roman Mile" which is about 5,000 feet. So I have feet and miles set for me. Similarly, Roma had "hours" (even though they only had sundials) so I had that. I just decided to bite the bullet and use "minutes" along with feet and inches...but I threw in liberal references to "handspans" (and "hands" in talking about horseflesh). Heck, it all seemed to work out even though I KNOW "inches" came later from the English (and they didn't even exist yet in 54 BC. I also was aware they talked in "ten-days" rather than "weeks".. and there were three ten-days in each month... and each month was 30 days long.. with some extra days at the end of the year thrown in. And, yes, I glossed over the fact that "July" didn't exist until AFTER Caesar became dictator (he named the month after himself). I think you have to use judgment here or you'll just confuse the reader.

ccarver30 · Oct 28, 2008

Sarpedon said:
Well, prior to the metric system, all other systems of measurement were anthropometric. (meaning that they were related to the human body) A foot is obvious, a Rod is variously explained as being the height of a man, the armspread of a man, or, literally, the height of a man's walking staff.

Other units worth considering is the span (the spread fingers of a hand, or 10 inches) the cubit (the distance between the finger and the elbow) the furlong (I actually don't know how long a furlong is. Its supposed to be as long as a furrow in a field, however long that is) the pace, the finger, the fathom, the grain, the league, the stage, and so forth.

I for one, would wonder why the 'normal' units of measurements wouldn't exist. Don't people have feet in your world?

I think any exoticness you get out of making your own units would be nullified by the annoyance of the reader having to convert everything. For example, when I was reading the Chinese Classic the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I was annoyed by characters being a certain number of spans tall, carrying a a halberd weighing so many Jin, who had traveled hundreds of li in order to find a few hou of land to build a farm on, arriving during the third watch, and drinking six measures of wine in the time it takes for two rolls of the drum. It got old, and soon I wished that the translator had just translated the units along with everything else. (of course some of the poetry would have been lost. The 'Thousand Li Horse' would have become the 'Three Hundred and Thirty Three Mile Horse.')

I hope that helps.

This helped me. I kind of had the same question and got annoyed by just reading your examples of RotTK. Thanks!

Sarpedon · Oct 29, 2008

That example never actually appeared in the book, its kind of a composite of several different episodes.

Systems of Measurement

chronomodra

DeleyanLee

Writing Anarchist

Smiling Ted

Ah-HA!

Danthia

Sarpedon

Kitty Pryde

i luv you giant bear statue

waylander

Who's going for a beer?

MagicMan

Straka

Bored Fanatic

tehuti88

Mackinac Island Fanatic

Mr Flibble

They've been very bad, Mr Flibble

Nivarion

Brony level >9000

badducky

No Time For Chitchat, Kemosabe.

fullbookjacket

MattW

Company Man

Dgullen

Ustom Ser Itle

Phoebe H

fullbookjacket

Sticktalker

ccarver30

Nicole Castro

Sarpedon