: Re: How can I get 2 characters to bond while standing alternate watches? Setting is standard space opera. I am writing a story in which 2 characters are crewing a spaceship. The characters are:

@Deb2945533

I know that it doesn't directly apply to your case (two crew, alternating watches), but while sailing on tall-ships, we've used a three watch system where each of three crews had a 4 hour time slot (12-4, 4-8, 8-12) in both AM and PM. In those cases, you usually got up for the tail end of the watch prior, and hung out partway through the watch after your watch.

In similar fashion, there were some maneuvers which required more than a single watch... On ships with only two alternating watches, there were some 'all hands on deck' maneuvers (if able to be scheduled) that would occur on the watch transition boundary. On a three watch vessel, there would usually be enough extra crew milling about that could assist with the maneuvers.

Even if you have 'non-overlapping' watches, there is still some information that needs to be passed between watches, events (or lack there of), maintenance anomalies, passing of landmarks/other ships.

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