I love the night sky. A lot of the scenes in my Meniscus stories happen at night, so I often mention the appearance of the moons (there are two moons on Meniscus). When I am revising/editing, this means I have to keep track of the days (sun-reels) that have passed and what phase the moon is in.

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To keep track of the phases of my Meniscus moons (called Cardoth grill’en and Cardoth roe) I have prepared a guide to phases of the moon. Warning, these phases are not the same as the progression of phases of Earth’s moon. For example, the moons on Meniscus move differently and so the waxing and waning occur in a different order (on Earth, the moon starts with the new moon waxing [growing] to a sickle moon as a left facing bracket and ends with the waning sickle moon as a right facing bracket; on Meniscus, the waxing and waning slivers are right and left-facing).

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Numbers on my moon chart stand for the number of days passing.

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Diagram of Earth’s Moon Phases:

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(Source: By Andonee – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38635547 )

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People have been drawing the phases of the moon for centuries. Here are some of Galileo Galilei’s sketches of the moon:

Source: The phases of the Moon’, drawing by Galileo Galilei, 1616, courtesy of https://commons.wikimedia.org

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For any world building, I find tables to be very helpful during the editing phase. A Chapter by Chapter record of settings, actions, point of view, characters, passage of time,  moon phases … status of water supplies, state of healing, or anything else pertinent to the story can help resolve issues and prevent reader confusion/frustration.

An example of a simple table from part of one of my stories:

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Ch	Setting	Action	Point of View	Characters	Day #	Moon Phase
42	Limestone caves in The Fault	Odymn runs to build her muscle and finds Rafters	Odymn	Odymn	Day 26	waning gibbous moon
43	City of Prell	Slain tells others he is leaving for north	Slain	Daniel, Belnar, Vicki, Madoline, Kathryn	Day 27
44	Themble Woods	Odymn starts her program of parkour	Odymn	Odymn	Day 31	waning quarter moon
45	Village of Themble Hill	Belnar and Vicki arrive at Themble Hill	Odymn	Odymn	Day 32

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All my best,

Alexandra (a.k.a. Jane)