Mythic Science // Time Rules (So Your Plot Can Breathe)
Micro / meso / macro clocks—because the moment you mention time, you’ve made a promise your plot must keep.
“If your story’s timing belt is off, your reader ends up stranded on the side of the road.” ~Tyr Jackson
Today we install a time stack and baseline travel/comms logic so urgency feels earned—not convenient.
Core Promise // What you’ll walk away with
When you’re done with this issue, you’ll be able to plan the timing of your story and lore on purpose—so scenes don’t feel slapped together, and your world’s urgency doesn’t fight its own clock.
A story whose time belt is off behaves exactly like a car whose timing belt is off: it coughs, stalls, and leaves your reader on the side of the road, with someplace to go and no ride to get there.
This issue is about tightening that belt before the engine blows.
The Bridge Lab is running a stress test.
Hydraulics hiss. Steel groans. The bridge model in the center—half alloy, half constellation—takes incremental load like a living thing, and every added pound throws new numbers onto the screens.
This is where stories fail.
Not at the big moments.
At the between moments—
when characters “get there,” recover, learn, and adapt faster than the world’s time could ever allow.
Creators call it pacing.
Readers call it: Wait… how?
So today, we’ll install the missing structure: Time Rules—the promises your story makes about how long things take—so urgency feels earned and consequences can’t be outrun by convenience.
Lab Note: We’re not chasing realism. We’re calibrating belief under pressure—the kind that keeps tension intact even when the story moves fast.
What we’ll do today
Define Time Rules as story promises (not “realism”)
Install your Time Stack: Micro / Meso / Macro
Set baselines for travel and communication (so urgency hits)
Apply the No-Teleport Rule (physical + emotional)
Run a short drill that builds a usable time spine for your next scene
Main Lesson (Public)
Lecture // What I mean by “Time Rules”
Time in story is a concept. You can bend it. You can stylize it. You can make a world where days are 34 hours long and years are counted in wars instead of numbers.
But if you mention time at all, it becomes a system—and systems need rules.
Time Rules are the promises you make about how long things take—so your characters don’t teleport physically or emotionally.
Even if you have:
a speedster who can run back to last Tuesday
a wizard who can freeze a battlefield mid-swing
…there’s still a before, during, and after you need to respect.
You can break rules with power.
You cannot ignore rules with laziness.
Lab Note: Readers don’t fact-check time. They sense it. When time feels fake, stakes lose their grip.
Example // Micro - Meso - Macro (Your Time Stack)
Think of story time in three layers. You don’t have to use these words on the page—but you should know which layer you’re writing in.
1) Micro-Time // The Scene Lens
Micro is seconds and minutes inside one contained environment.
How many heartbeats to cross a room?
How long to wash hands, use the bathroom, wash again, and leave?
How many exchanges of dialogue fit into “he only had a few seconds to decide”?
Micro-time is one contained environment: diner booth, rooftop, cramped elevator, cockpit.
One unit. One pocket.
If the room’s clock changes, you owe the reader a reason.
2) Meso-Time // The Chapter / Episode Lens
Meso is days, weeks, maybe months—the scale where life happens: training, research, surveillance, attrition, chasing leads, consequences accumulating.
Meso is where you decide:
what gets a full scene
what becomes montage
what becomes a clean time jump (“Two weeks later…”)
3) Macro-Time // The Era Lens
Macro is years and decades—wars, exiles, legacies, institutional rot, the long-haul shape of myth.
Macro only feels real if micro and meso prove the grind.
Lab Note: If micro is where tension spikes, meso is where tension grinds, and macro is where tension echoes.
Lecture // Baselines (Movement + Information)
Most plot holes are missing baselines.
Travel Baseline // how long does movement take?
You don’t need GPS precision. You need consistency you believe.
Once a baseline exists, obstacles become story—because now the reader can feel what it costs to cross distance.
In some worlds, travel isn’t just distance—it’s distance plus survival math: cycles, predators, borders, fuel, visibility, surveillance, weather.
Communication Baseline // how fast does information move?
Information has its own travel time.
A warning arriving “just in time” vs “too late” only hits if the reader believes:
“Yeah… that’s how long word would take to reach here.”
In a high-tech world, a one-minute delay can feel slow.
In a low-tech world, two days can feel miraculous.
Movement controls where bodies can be.
Communication controls what minds can know.
Those two baselines create believable urgency.
Example // The No-Teleport Rule (Even if you have teleporters)
Pet peeve: “We need to be there. Stat.”
Cut to next page. They are, in fact, there. Stat.
Unless you literally have a teleporter, “stat” is not a transport mechanic.
Hard rule: If it takes time, something interesting happens in that time.
Not a travelogue. Not a slog. Just proof the clock exists.
Either:
show the travel (and let it reveal character / conflict / world), or
signal the time jump clearly (“Two hours later, after three checkpoints…”)
Soft rule: Emotional teleporting is illegal.
If someone is shattered in Scene A, they don’t get to be fully fine in Scene B unless:
enough time passed, or
something extraordinary intervened (shown, not hand-waved)
Example // Time + Power (Bending without breaking)
Time-adjacent power isn’t “breaking time” so much as operating at a different resolution.
Cause and effect still exists. Recovery still costs.
What time can never ignore:
cause and effect
recovery (power still has a cost)
What power can cheat:
distance covered
perception windows (“no one could track that with the naked eye”)
reaction time
Rule that stays undefeated:
The stronger the time-cheat, the higher the bill later.
Physical cost. Temporal cost. Narrative cost. Pay it on-page.
Command Task // The 10-Minute Time Spine Drill (with professor framing)
Tyr’s framing (why you’re doing this):
This drill teaches you to build urgency that feels earned. Not because the author wanted it, but because the world’s clock demanded it.
Pick one character. One urgent event:
They see a child being abducted in a crowded space.
Answer fast:
Where are they?
How far—really?
How do they move?
Baseline time if nothing goes wrong?
What goes wrong?
What does that do to the clock?
Lab Note: If you can map this fast, your pacing stops being vibes and starts being a system.
Now…
The bridge point groans a little louder when you bring it closer to load.
Because this is the part most creators skip—not out of laziness, but because nobody taught them that time isn’t continuity in Mythic Science.
Time is pressure. And pressure is what makes wonder land like stakes.
You’ve got the stack now: micro / meso / macro.
You’ve got the two baselines that stop most plot holes before they hatch: movement and information.
And you’ve got the rule that keeps your scenes from “solving themselves” through convenient cuts: no teleporting without proof.
But if you want your pacing to stay believable through deadlines, rewrites, long arcs, and OP abilities… you need the calibration rig:
The primary clock, the no-teleport protocol, time-cheat billing, and a weekly maintenance routine that keeps your bridge load-bearing even when life is loud.
Tinkerers: run the Time Spine Drill above on one scene this week. Don’t write the whole scene—just build the clock and add one friction event that changes it.
Engineers: step into The Workshop Bay for the full instrumentation lab: the primary clock declaration, the no-teleport protocol, time-cheat billing, travel + communication tables, and a 10-minute weekly calibration that prevents time drift before revision hell.
Read the lesson first. Then come back and step into The Workshop Bay.
