: How to continually and organically let my readers know what time it is in my story? My novel takes place in a big world, with MANY POVs. Although I know when things are happening, I am afraid

There are a lot of good answers above, and I'd like to reinforce what others have said: having timestamps around can be good or bad depending on the type of story being told.

I am now going to focus on the idea of timestamps as chapter subtitles. I say timestamps because, depending on the story, it can be hours, days (as in day 1, day 2, ...), dates, months, years, or centuries.

If the story has a 'countdown' feel to it, then it makes sense for every chapter to reinforce it. However, if one chapter is day 1, then all the events in day 1 should be contained in that chapter. If it's not feasible and each day will consistently require more than one chapter, then create the section day 1 and have all the chapters you might want with no more need for timestamped subtitles.

Stories that have a constellation of events happening in August, then a lull in action till December, then another lull and so on, may benefit from a similar approach: start a section titled 'August' then make no more time references.

I find that having every new chapter include a timestamp has two consequences:

1) the timestamp isn't really that important for every single chapter and the reader stops noticing it, so when the timestamp really is important, the reader will gloss over it.

2) the timestamp is important every single time it's given and not having them would diminish the tension (again, the story has a countdown feel to it)

In the specific case of organising lots of POVs within a large plot and its subplots, timestamps would probably be necessary only on occasion so having them at the beginning of every single chapter could be overkill and have the opposite effect as they'd become invivible to the reader.

You could add an in-universe reason for one or two characters to constantly obsess over time and dates, as @Monica Cellio mentions in a comment to the question, but they must make sense within the story and not be artificially created simply to be character-calendars.

Alternatively, have the narrator or characters mention time (seasons, months, celebrations, past events, etc) either at the beginning or the end of the chapter. I feel time references are more likely to be remembered then than in the middle of the chapter. If you do it always at the beginning of every chapter, it becomes unnatural, so it's important to mix it. Moreover, if the events of next chapter follow closely, a time reference at the end of a chapter might mean you need no time reference at all in the entirety of the next chapter.

If you have a chapter end with the general saying 'I have one week to prepare the battle' then the next chapter shows the troops advancing to the battle field, that's all the time reference you'll need. If the chapter after the three-chapter long battle (which required no time references) kicks off with the hero checking his bandaged arm and grumbling that the wound is still far from closing after five days, again, that's all the time reference you'll need.

But if there are spies infiltrating the battle preparation and trying to sabotage the fortress, then you can start each chaper with

day 7: the door must be reinforced and there's not enough material - quick! raid a nearby warehouse!

day 6: the door is still not finished and now the well has been tampered with - find the culprit and fix the problem

day 5: the door is fixed, but there's still no water

day 4: half the soldiers have diarhea from the tampered water - which is nearly purified - but will the doctor fix the soldiers in time?

and so on. In this scenario, avoid very specific time references within the text (narration or dialogue) because that would make the subtitle timestamps unnecessary, but do drop subtle time references. If the section was titled August, do mention the summer heat or the sudden shower so uncharacteristic for the month. It will remind the reader of the timestamp without actually having to repeat it per verbatim. While this isn't that dire for a month, having an actual date as a chapter title and then mentioning it again within the text makes the chapter timestamp completely unnecessary.

Also, avoid long chapter titles. If you want to go with the timestamp, let them be not the subtitle, but the title itself. Then they aren't an extra information in smaller font, but the element around which the chapter was written.

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As of this answer, this question is marked as being "asked 19 hours ago". Is this a lazy way of SE to tell us when the question was asked? Should they have found a more organic way of telling us when questions are asked?

Books are full of numbers: they generally have page numbers in the corners, chapter numbers at the beginning of the chapter, etc. The show 24 started each episode saying which hour of the day it takes place in, and showed the clock throughout the episode. Star Trek peppered references to "star dates" throughout the show (albeit not in an entirely consistent manner). Flowers for Algernon starts each "diary entry" with the date.

This does depend a bit on the genre: constant reference to dates goes well with the science fiction genre of Star Trek. A constantly ticking clock goes well with the suspense genre of 24. If you're writing a medieval novel, having a chapter subtitle of "21/03/1421" might take away from the atmosphere, but if you're writing a steampunk novel, it would add to it.

You shouldn't rely on only chapter subtitles, though. If your novel makes sense only if the reader is constantly checking the subtitles, you should think about how it can be clearer. There are lots of ways of organically telling the passage of time: a character wearing the same clothes can mark that it's the same day, a different hair cut indicates longer time periods, ski trip can indicate that it's winter, an injury can slowly heal over time. Time can be given in reference to important events: a character has only three days to get a gift for their friend's wedding, or they're still learning the ropes after starting a new job a few weeks ago.

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I found using dates/hours gets hard to track for the readers. They get ignored and the reader gets confused by the time skip.

I believe the best way is to have an overreaching "loud" story arc in the sidelines, echoes of which are accessible from every single other arc. Election campaign with scandal events unfolding in news. Celestial bodies in the sky going through a sequence of events, like two moons crashing. War campaign progressing, battles and skirmishes, spies captured, infrastructure bombed. In general, an easy to follow sequence of events that will be known to everyone involved, regardless of their location and time, will appear in the backgrounds of their scenes, and as result provide the reader with an easy set of anchors in time to see which events happen in parallel, when we're doing a backwards time skip, and how the consequences of one arc influence another... never mind providing a wonderful opportunity to foreshadow big events of a different arc - as the current arc faces big echo of some unknown so far climax, and then you skip back to that other arc and bring it right up to the climax previously mentioned.

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It is very important to give your audience tracking data where keeping track of the order of events is a matter of serious difficulty and/or necessity. I can think of several series of novels, of which S.M. Stirling's Nantucket/Emberverse series is probably the best example, which use a chapter header with the date(s) of the action in that chapter, it works well, when the reader knows it's important and takes note accordingly. It works less well in eBook format than physical and I wouldn't want to use such a technique with an audiobook at all since going back for the information is so much harder.

The only real alternatives are to have a character who is obsessed with either:

A. the order of events if the characters are telling the tale to each other after the fact. That character will check in with "when was that?" questions regularly, possibly they're keeping a history or writing an epic and they want to know exactly what order things happened in so they know where to put them in order and where drama will be better served by some changes.

and/or

B. the current time/date if the narrative is told in realtime. I keep thinking of Simon Baker's Character in Margin Call who, under tremendous stress, keeps asking a subordinate "what time is it?". When people are under pressure sometimes small details like a minute or two, that normally wouldn't matter, become desperately important.

or

Have the characters each individually keeping time compared to an important event, this can work well to build tension as well as keeping the reader up-to-date with when everyone is acting in their personal timeline. Lets say all the characters want to attend this cycle's Mass Crossing, they have to get to the venue, they have travel time and things to do before they're ready to leave, time is important to them. They need to keep track for a reason, the reader will keep track with them.

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I have seen the Chapter Subtitle method most often used in novels with complex plots and many moving pieces. It seems to be the most common method used in my reading experience.

One unique method I recall was used in The Neverending Story, where depending in which world the action was taking place in, the color of the text the book was printed in literally was different colors.

It would be an interesting challenge to work it in such the the characters in the book simply checked the time and date often, though that seems to lend itself to CDO characters or an action-based plot line.

CDO stands for obsessive compulsive disorder, alphabetically arranged the way it obviously should be.

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It is probably not going to be possible to keep your readers aware of the time and date all the time, at least not in an organical manner.

However, with regards to telling the timeline, it doesn't matter until your plots converge. And then we know "what day it is" because your characters are in the same scene, or one character's actions cause effects for another character.

I heard of an author who accidentally created an eight-day week in her very contemporary novel. She tried to edit it but finally gave up, just to realize very few of her readers noticed.

So, the reader will likely not care about what day it is.

You could always pick up "Red Storm Rising" by Tom Clancy. I noticed, for all his date and time references, the story was too complex to be read as anything but a chronological account of WW III.

When plots converge, your characters will either be in the same scene, and we'll know the plots are converging.

Or, since there has to be a logic between scenes. Call it cause and effect. Spreading these scenes on several POVs will automatically dictate the time-relation between the POVs.

For instance; in a story with a king in one POV and a rebel leader in another. The king contracts some assassins to kill the rebel leader and the rebel leader defeats the assassins when they make their attempt on his life. We know what came first and what came after.

We can even mix up the timeline and have the assassins attack before the king gives them the contract, and if done right, the reader still understands what came first and what came after.

You can also use different clues to signal that the plots are "touching". For instance, in Ivanhoe, there's a church bell that can be heard in several POVs signaling that things are happening at the same time.

Other things you could do to signal the "time" across plots and POVs is to have one POV hear rumors of the events in another POV or have common events such as wars, coronations, plagues, news reports, etc.

But that's just something you need when you want to add extra spice to the story. Otherwise, you have one character's actions in one POV effect another character in another POV or you put the characters in the same scene and we know it's the day they meet, be that a Wednesday, Mittwoch or the Day of Odin...

Robert Jordan, in "The Dragon Reborn" have his POVs converge at the climax of the story. They are all, for different good reasons, on their way to the same place, so we're expecting it to happen, but before it does, we have very few clues as to exactly when things happen... more than that they happen before the climax.

Using dates and times, Stardates and "Years of the Unholy Dragon" is more there to give the story a specific feel, or following a specific genre (for instance, "Red Storm Rising" did gain atmosphere, if nothing else, with the dates and times).

I don't think you should count on the reader to keep track of dates and times, at least not to the level that it is required to understand the story. It could be an extra spice for your really observant readers, but it should not be required.

You should also be aware that the taste of different readers with regards to dates could differ (see discussion below) or that different stories have different requirements. I suggest checking what other authors in your genre has done with regards to dates or no dates and how, and/or use beta readers to see if your specific story gets a "the dates made me confused" or "I'd love to have dates to keep track of the events".

Keeping a strict record of the date is obviously also going to require more work from you and might make you less willing to reorganize the story in ways it might need to be reorganized because suddenly you have to rewrite that timeline and change the dates in two dozen chapters because of it...

Also, as per the below discussion, you should definitely keep track of when things happen, if you need it, but you could lessen your workload if you don't use it in your chapter headings if that information isn't needed there.

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