: Re: How can I show time passing with no way to measure time? In the writing, I was doing recently, a character is locked up in a wagon and dragged across the country by rich slavers. How could

@Sue2132873

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What sort of time period are we looking at? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months?

Over a period of hours, it's going to be things like the angle of shadows (how high in the sky the sun is), the temperature, et cetera.

At days, it comes down to water breaks: a dead slave is worth no money, so they need to be given something to drink occasionally. Are the drugged slaves roused from their stupor just enough to manage this without drowning?

Once you reach weeks, you start to notice things like beards growing, or weight loss from not being fed properly. Add food to the water breaks - probably a gruel of some sort, not particularly nice or nutritious, but still an indication that time has passed.

Consider also the Slavers themselves - the guards in the caravan will rotate through a shift schedule, they will (presumably) change clothes every so often. And, finally, geography - different sounds and smells may indicate to the character that they must be at least such and such a distance from where they started. Brine for sea ports, certain types of flowers or animals, the quality of the road or track that they are travelling on, the accents of people talking outside the caravan.

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