Otdfbt

My novel takes place in a big world, with MANY POVs. Although I know when things are happening, I am afraid my reader doesn't know, due to the aforementioned fact. I do not want my reader to be confused, and become unfocused on the story because they're constantly wondering when this is all happening. It's bad confusion in my opinion, simply impractical (unless it's intentional like in the movie Memento).

So, the first solution I thought of was making my own version of the weekdays, months and some random year, and featuring them as a subtitle to every chapter. This would work terrifically (in a practical sense) to keep the reader completely aware of when everything, from the many events happening within a small time periods, to the larger plots taking years.

But is this organic? Is it good story-telling, or is lazy. And lazy in an unacceptable way? Does it take the reader out of the story?

I also thought of just writing in the characters sometimes mentioning what day it is, though this seems like it could very easily become unnatural and inorganic.

So, what is the widely used alternative, and what alternative has worked best?

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.

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.

Another option beyond was has already been mentioned in other answers is to employ the descriptions of the surroundings. The specific use will of course depend on your timeframe.

If your story spans several weeks or months, you can drop hints about phenomena such a changing seasons, weather, holidays, etc. Small phrases like "first snows has fallen the day before" or "the heat over the last weeks was unbearable" will help the reader realise the passage of time.

You can do the same thing with shorter timespans like a day, dropping hints about the first light, streetlamps turning on, etc.

Of course, you need to adapt it to your setting: you won't have descriptions of first cherry blossom if your story takes place in a desert, or of natural sunlight if it's set on a space station.

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.

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.

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.