Often skipping along hand in hand with plot, timelines are about the order in which things happen. Plot is the events of the novel, timeline is when these events happen.
Timelines are defined as graphical representations of a period of time where important events are marked. Timelines for novels often include all the events of a plot, whether that be the main plot events, or the sub plots, and often both. Character developments, setting changes, I put all types of stuff on my timelines, after in different colours to help distinguish between different plots, of whether something is character or plot.
Here’s one of my ones.
This is the original timeline for Black Dawn, a book that is now getting a complete re-write. I’ll probably re-do this timeline at some point, with colours, but this is the first one I found in my stack of writing stuff.
In there I have chapter numbers, when character are first introduced, major developments between characters. I have the major plot points, and minor plot points, I’ve even got some one liners that I thought of and really wanted to put in the book. And you can tell that I was writing it in a hurry because I’m having trouble deciphering the handwriting, and I can peer at the original!
Planners probably use them more than I do. Mainly I use timelines when I haven’t got all the pieces of a novel in one coherent string, like when I have all the major and some minor plot points but not always the bits in-between. Whereas I can imagine that they are a very powerful tool when planning a novel as well.
I can see them being especially useful is there are any types of flashback, or time hoping going on. A couple of my novels have big jumps in time, either months or years, whereas others might visit the past in flashbacks, so whilst the novel might visit them at various places in a certain plot order, the timeline would help someone order them from the point of view of the character, or sequential time.
Thinking about it, I probably need to do a timeline for Archmage. There is just a lot going on over many years, it probably would help me to get everything straight.
Do any of you, my wonderful readers, use timelines for your novels?
Princess of Dragons 
On several occasions, I have attempted to create a timeline for ALL the stories my brother and I have been working on — the “uber-story-arc,” as I call it. I’ve never been able to do it. I can break it down into individual novels/short stories, but when I try to put them all together, I can’t find a way to represent that on a flat piece of paper.
(Sometimes it isn’t easy for a single novel, either. The latest has three major threads that cross or merge at various points. One of those threads happens in 2017; the other two happen in 2957, SIMULTANEOUS with the one in 2017. One of the “joys” of writing in a multiverse — differing time streams and all that.)
I need to find a way to show the overall timeline, though, because as we add more stories, “choreographing” the plots will become more and more complicated. I am far more a “pantser” than a “plotter,” so this is the only reason I’d use a formalized timeline — not for events within one novel, but for events across several novels that aren’t in a series but are linked nevertheless.
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One of the first stories I wrote, and probably won’t see the light of day, I had a timeline for. I had events and ages I wanted to keep straight, so I wrote it all down. No idea if I still have that timeline.
~Patricia Lynne aka Patricia Josephine~
Member of C. Lee’s Muffin Commando Squad
Story Dam
Patricia Lynne, Indie Author
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Ah, the never see the light of day label. That applies to most of my first drafts.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing 🙂
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