Thinking About Writing - What Time is Dawn? #HazardousToYourSanity
We’ve just past the midnight of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The winter solstice, the longest night of the year has just passed and the days are slowly getting longer, minute by minute. It’s a moment where the wheel of the year passes a mark as it turns towards spring. It prompted me to write a little about time and how it can affect a story.
I’m pedantic. You may have noticed that I specified that it was the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. If we were in the Southern Hemisphere, in places like Chile, New Zealand or South Africa, then we would have just passed the shortest night. However, if we’re in the Northern Hemisphere then it could be considered the dawn of the year. As someone who likes to be picky, I have to ask when, exactly, is dawn?
I’ve written about this elsewhere, but I feel that it’s a useful tool for writers and so worth repeating. Let’s say that you’re writing a story with intrepid adventurers, racing towards hidden treasure. Having the time of dawn at 4am on one day and 8am the following day will almost certainly never be noticed – but it’s helpful to keep consistent just in case. So as the intrepid adventurers race towards hidden treasure, it’s worth picking a firm time if they need to be at the magical marker at dawn on 1st of January. So when is dawn?
If the adventurers are racing across the sands heading south from Timbuktu towards Kabara, sunrise is at 6.40am and the air is surprisingly cold after the sharp desert night. Perhaps they’re chasing treasure left as the Mongol hordes retreated after the death of Genghis Khan and are leaving Tashkent to journey to the mountains in the East and dawn breaks in the bitter cold at 7.48am. If, instead, they are chasing the gold stashed by an old miner just outside the South African port of Durban, dawn breaks in the summer heat at 4.58am. If, however, the gold is hidden in an Aztec temple, lost in the jungle just outside Panama City then the sun rises above the steaming vegetation at 6.44am.
You could ask why it matters, and the short answer is that it doesn’t. The reader should be far more invested in whether the intrepid adventurers can reach the marker in time. You can just note that it’s dawn and move on to the action packed chase through forgotten tunnels. Its main importance is keeping things consistent. It can also be useful if you’re tying a plot in to things like office opening hours, rush hour, the night train, church services or any point where the time is generally known. On the whole, the reader will be more interested to know if the heroes rescue the orphans from the dastardly villain than if you have the time of daybreak accurate.
However,
if you’re chasing a vampire through the foggy streets of Victorian London, and you
need the trains on the London Underground to be working to make the plot work,
it’s helpful to know that the mist filled alleys of Whitechapel will still be
dark at 7.30am on 1st January, even though the trains are not only
running but busy (New Year’s Day was a holiday after 1871 in Scotland but didn’t
become an official holiday in England, Wales and Northern Ireland until 1971 so
the trains were almost certainly busy).
Or perhaps your plot can swing on the time of dawn. Perhaps a traveller from the Northern Hemisphere is visiting Sydney, Australia, and is caught out by the time difference, making their alibi all wrong for the mysterious murder.
So dawn and its timing can be one of those little details that can fill out the background of your story, flesh out a plot or just be ignored. As long as the writer doesn’t get caught out, it’s all good.
Have fun writing!
