: 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

@Fox6458700

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I think George R. R. Martin does this quite well in his various novels. A good few characters in A Song of Ice and Fire are locked up at some point, and GRRM always dedicated a good couple of pages at least to hammering home how long they've been in captivity.

These chapters often deal with the mental toll of being confined to a place with no brain stimulation, just as much as the physical toll of wasting away. At the start of such a chapter, the character attempts to keep track of days by counting how often they're fed. Inevitably they lose count as the days start to blend together. They try to keep their mind occupied by playing games with themselves or by trying to recount old stories, but that inevitably stops after a while, and they find themselves sleeping most of the time. At some point, their dreams and waking become indistinguishable and they feel like they've been in captivity for decades even if the actual time spent is only a couple of months.

Your character's captivity will take a toll on him, both physically and mentally.

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