Scribes & Archers

This is a topic I’ve written about briefly in the past, but I want to cover it in more depth now with more experience behind me and the added context of my recent posts on building fictional calendars, birthday traditions, etc. I want to talk about how to give your story a sense of time and how to keep that timing consistent and believable within your story through the use of timelines. Let’s dive into some areas in which timelines can help your story!

Maintaining Character Ages and Birthdays

One of my biggest pet peeves with the writers of the Flash TV show for the first few seasons was the inconsistency of Barry Allen’s age. I don’t remember the exact numbers now, but they would make a big deal about how old he was when his mother died (11 or so, I think) and how that had been x many years ago, yet the age they communicated he was in the present day didn’t properly add up; he was a few years too young, according to the numbers that had been given (and reinforced) to the audience.

Don’t be like the Flash writers. Keep a timeline. (Especially if you’re going to make a big deal about the numbers, it’s important to make sure that those numbers are right!)

Now, in some stories this really doesn’t matter. In a world that doesn’t really celebrate birthdays or keep track of ages, for example, or a story that doesn’t cross any character birthdays, or a story in which backstory isn’t terribly crucial (at least in terms of details). But in a lot of cases, you will at least want to know where your characters birthdays (and other critical life events) fall along the timeline and how that relates to your story.

In Calligraphy Guild, it was useful to keep a timeline just to know how long the story spanned, as well as to keep track of how many days of leeway the guild had with different opposing forces before they had to produce the time-changer. In Lightning, a timeline is important for keeping track of when my characters’ birthdays fall because for some of them it’s the last they have before Grantech gets rid of them and for others it’s a relationship-building opportunity with other characters.

It is also worth noting that timelines don’t need to be–and often are not–perfect on the first go. Lightning does not currently align properly with the timeline; that will need to be fixed in the second draft. If adding the years since an event with your character’s age during that event makes them older than you want them to be, you can shift the numbers around and reduce their age or the time since the event took place. A timeline will not automatically iron out all of your timing issues (though it may be a significant aid in avoiding said issues), but it is the tool you need to fix them before your story goes out to readers.

Coordinating Crossing Storylines

Epic fantasy authors, this is for you. Coordinating multiple storylines is hard. Trust me, I know; I have a whole heap of Dark War Trilogy notes to prove it. But timelines help tremendously. Knowing when your key events fall on the timeline makes it so much easier to adjust your characters’ lives and storylines around those events. If you’re writing storylines that cross at critical points, you need a master timeline.

However, this is not only helpful for stories with multiple storylines and points of view on the page; this is also helpful for keeping track of what your antagonist and other characters are doing off-page that will affect your protagonist and other POV characters on-page. I’ll admit I’m talking to myself here, too, but you should know what your antagonist is up to even when s/he’s not shown to readers. This helps to ensure that your antagonist really is active and they’re not off twiddling their fingers any time the protagonist is on center stage, because antagonists (like other characters) should not be passive accessories to your protagonist. This can be a tricky thing to remember and practice, but having a timeline with designated space for what your antagonist is doing will help.

Maintaining Credence

Your story and its timeline need to be believable to the reader. Most readers will not notice all of the precise details that you ought to be keeping track of as the author (unless you point them out), but they will notice if something is clearly taking too long or not long enough. This includes the length of events, travel, healing times, etc.

Your character will not recover from a sprained ankle in a day without miraculous intervention, and if they do your reader will be suspicious that either you forgot or there’s something you’re not revealing yet. (Note: If there really is something you’re not revealing yet, it’s perfectly acceptable to use your reader’s disbelief to your advantage.)

On the other hand, putting two weeks’ travel between settlements in a kingdom that’s meant to be densely populated is also not going to fly, as much as it might serve your fantasy quest aesthetic. (As a side note, if your worldbuilding doesn’t match the aesthetic you’re going for then one or the other needs to change.)

There are obviously additional elements that will go into making time frames like these believable–maps, research and/or knowledge of your setting’s medical practices, magic system development, the fundamentals of the culture of your setting, etc.–but those elements will all come together to make a reasonable timeline, which will serve as a concise and effective reference point. If you’d like, include some of those outside details with your timeline for later reference in case of future character injuries, journeys, etc.!

Aligning with the Calendar

Whether you’re using a fictional calendar, a historical calendar, or the calendar we all use today, your timeline should take it into account. You should know, for example, when weekends or other rest days fall and when major holidays would occur. This is important for a few reasons.

1) If your setting is one in which work and/or education take place outside of the home, you should know when your character would be at home vs. out working/studying. I learned this the hard way when I checked the calendar for Lightning and realized that I’d had Rhys work a Saturday in a job that should have had 9-5 weekday hours. If you check and keep track first, you don’t have to backtrack and edit things later.

2) You should know what the world around your character is doing. If there’s a holiday coming up, there might already be decorations out and about where the character would see them, and people might be talking about the events to take place during the actual holiday. Since Lightning takes place October-December, it covers Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (and possibly New Years; that’s in the part of the timeline that needs to be adjusted); these are commonly celebrated holidays, so they get addressed by the characters–even when the characters aren’t celebrating them themselves.

3) You should know whether your character operates with or against the culture they’re in. Going back to the holidays that are only celebrated by some of the cast, characters who don’t celebrate the same things as those around them will make some statement about themselves, the holiday itself, and/or the world they live in. How your characters celebrate can also make an impact, distinguishing them from the world around them and/or the other characters in the story. Even more common things like work can say something about your character; a character who leaves work as soon as the clock strikes five is a very different character from the one who stays until 10 in an empty office trying to work out the source of an inconsistency in their records.

If you’re writing a story set in the future or the past and need a calendar for reference, I recommend this “perpetual calendar” which allows you to input just about any year and easily see which dates fall on which days of the week.

Alluding to Wider Context

Lastly, timelines are great for allowing you to see and allude to the greater context of the world during your story. I keep a master timeline covering the events and births associated with Aleruus and its stories (if you read the Fairy Elves post from a couple weeks ago, Aleruus is that world), which meant that when the prince of one kingdom needed to seek out a bride for an alliance I was able to readily see what princesses might be of the right age elsewhere in the world–and I was surprised by some of the options, as I hadn’t really looked previously at how close some of my MCs from different stories were in age! Turns out that had great cross-over potential with other stories set in the same universe.

Broader context needn’t be restricted to things critical to a story, however, like a marriage alliance. Simply being aware of what large-scale events might be taking place nearby (or have taken place in the past), whom your characters might be acquainted with and mention in passing, etc. can add color, Easter eggs, and a sense of depth to your story and world. This might be particularly impactful if you’re writing historical fiction or if you want to tie some of your stories together, even loosely!

Timeline-Making Methods

Now that I’ve (hopefully) impressed on you the importance and value of timelines for your writing process, let me show you some examples of how you might go about creating a working timeline for your story.

Your first option is the classic pen and paper. This can take a lot of forms, whether you want to draw lines and mark events along them, print a template to work with, create a master list of events in chronological order, etc. Generally speaking, I would say the former allows for more flexibility and is therefore probably a better choice for an early draft or a master world timeline that you expect to add to as you go. A chronological list of events might work better if you’re pretty confident in your timeline already and just want to see it laid out to check for inconsistencies or conflicts you might have missed.

Another option is a simple word document. While a word document lends itself best to a chronological list of events, the fact that it’s digital makes it much easier to add to or adjust later. This is the format I use for my master universe timeline, as it works well for large-scale timelines with less detail. (Though it’s certainly possible to make it more detailed, as well! One of the strengths of a word document is its flexibility to serve an author’s individual taste and needs.)

A spreadsheet is my preferred format of choice for a story-specific timeline, especially one with multiple storylines or perspectives. With a spreadsheet, I can have a column for each character/POV and easily see who’s doing what when, plus it’s easy to insert rows for new events/activities without displacing the events in other columns. Here’s an old example of my Dark War trilogy timeline spreadsheet.

Lastly, there is the option to pay for a timeline program like Aeon Timeline. This is a sleek tool great for both fictional and educational timelines, but it is a little pricey ($60). It also works best for historical, contemporary, or sci-fi projects, or projects set in fantasy worlds with calendars very similar to our own; while it does offer options to customize the calendar used for a timeline and you can adjust, for example, number of months and weekdays, certain details are fixed–such as the inclusion of leap years (which can be circumvented, however, by inputting the same number of days in a leap year as in a regular year). It’s just not really set up well for fictional calendars with a lot of distinguishing features. But that may or may not be a deal-breaker depending on the calendar you’re using! And Aeon Timeline does have the ability to connect with Scrivener* and import your scenes, chapters, etc. as events on the timeline. I haven’t found this feature to be especially helpful to me personally because of the differences between how I break up timeline events and how I break up my works-in-progress, but I know it’s a really useful feature to some authors and may make Aeon Timeline a more compelling choice.

*This is an affiliate link; purchases made through it earn me a small commission at no extra cost to you.

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If you already use timelines for your work, what is the biggest benefit you’ve seen come of the tool? If you haven’t made a timeline yet for your WIP, what benefit is most appealing to you? Which timeline format do you prefer? What are some of the best uses you’ve seen of timelines in storytelling? Comment below!