A post on Timelines on the other blog

[jacey]

I nearly screwed up royally with my timeline of the work-in-progress (the book formerly known as Empire of Dust) so there's a post about timelines on my Wordpress writing blog: Tales from the Typeface.

OK, back to slogging through writing out my timeline.

Comments

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I find the files cards on Scrivener are helpful. I keep timeline stuff on them and look at the book in pinboard form. That protects against accidental chapter shuffling (but won't help with accidental cut and paste).

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I keep the plot outline/synopsis on the file cards, but for the timeline I need a grid, marked off in columns for characters and rows for days, to make sure I know where all my charcters are at any time in relation to each other. I have to make sure that their individual timelines are consistent with their various points of interaction and that everything lines up with external events.

It can also be a bit confusing when a day on one planet may be two days on another while a space station has a human-friendly 24 hour day (for old times' sake) but it's not necessarily aligned with any specific time-zone anywhere else.