This week’s task for How To Revise Your Novel (HTRYN) was setting up an events timeline. For me this meant research. Obviously, I’d done a little before I started writing (of course I did – I’m a research junkie), but now I was having to select exact dates on a calendar. And with my WIP being set in the somewhat distant past (1723 to be precise), this meant digging through volumes and volumes of old journals, encyclopedias and almanacs…
Or, for those of us with only 24 hours in our day, typing some random carefully thought out search terms into Google 😀
Did you know, up until 14th September (coincidentally, my birth date) 1752, the Scots used the Julian calendar – not the Gregorian calendar we use today?
Well, if you didn’t, you do now 😀
This was such wonderful news – converting Gregorian dates to Julian ones was what I’d always wanted to spend my Saturday morning doing (if you couldn’t tell, I was being slightly sarcastic there).
Apparently, there’s a formula for this – I found some nifty instructions HERE:
Fortunately for me (who misplaced the left side of my brain somewhere beneath the dirty dishes and piles of laundry), there happens to be a convenient date converter online: Fourmilab’s Calendar Converter.
Phew! *wipes hand across brow in relief*
So, I converted my most important dates (eg. my MC’s birthday), added the relevant season transitions (I found the 1723 season dates HERE), and then thought…
“Hey, why don’t I sync the moon cycles with my scenes so when a full moon is mentioned in my WIP it actually coincides with a full moon IRL?”
Of course, I would have to think that, wouldn’t I? *rolls eyes*
As it turned out, this was a lot simpler to research. The moon phases for the UK in 1723 were easy to find (I found them HERE all nicely set out in Julian calendar format):
Putting two and two together (and four and six), I came up with a timeline for my WIP, complete with moon phase synchronicity 😀 Now when I’m revising I’ll know exactly when my heroine should be wrapped up in her arisaid and when it’s too bloody dark at night for her to see more than a few feet in front of her lovely self.
Good stuff!
But next time I swear I’m going to work all of this stuff out BEFORE I write my draft!
Well, that’s the plan, anyway…
Yanicke Forfang 