Timeline / Storyline ?

[Jeux1d100]

Hello,

I'm new to all these writing tools, i've been writing poetry and short texts for role playing games, for years, for personal use. Also i'm not native english, so i may missunderstand things and all.

Every few years i tell myself, let's try to make something bigger, and exploit all this material i have create and boiled in my head the last... few decades, or so. And of course, i don't do anything. Until this summer, when i started again to "dream"...

Very recently i found out about novelWriter and i love it, compared to all other tools i've found while trying to sort my mind. So, i'm in the process of actually browsing my head and pieces of universe from all over the places, to see how they can fit. And i think they can, as everything i've done is more or less linked to... me, a kind of metaverse filled with way too many voices.

Something i'm missing is a tool to create a timeline, as i'm going Sci-Fi over several thousands of years, but with some precise events, human scaled. So, i need large vision over star lives, and closer look onto people lives.

Just this week, i discovered what i believe is a great, simple, straight, FOSS, TimeLine tool : theTimeLineProj.

Now i wonder, is there anyway to have both greatness, novelWriter and theTimeLineProj, into one ?

[vkbo]

Hi!

Adding a timeline feature has been an on-going discussion since more or less day one. It is tricky to do though, because there are so many possible ways to approach this. There are several related feature requests in the backlog too.

What I'm mostly thinking about these days is to add an analysis tool where you can pull up your story flow in various views to get a sense of where, say characters, appear and disappear. Or how your story flows through different locations. That's useful for getting a bird's eye view of the story you're writing.

For planning universes etc, it's kind of out of scope for novelWriter. It's not designed to be a planning tool. It has the notes feature for describing story elements, but the idea is to pick complementary tools for the detailed planning according to your needs. These needs vary between genres and writers. As a Sci-Fi writer, I do a lot of research behind my stories, and have a lot of scientific reference material. I don't organise this in novelWriter, but in a note-taking app (Obsidian these days).

My idea is to keep novelWriter focused on the writing task, and this is probably all it will do for the foreseeable future.

[peter88213]

@Jeux1d100: Under the hood, timeline software is quite complex, so in my opinion, it is best to leave this feature in a dedicated application.

I find the commercial Aeon Timeline application quite well suited for worldbuilding because it also handles people, places, and other freely definable things that can be linked to events on the timeline. In the current version, this application has been expanded into comprehensive story plotting software, which has also made the learning curve steeper. Besides, it's designed to interact mainly with the Scrivener writing software.

The open source Timeline program you mention, on the other hand, only manages events. Some time ago, I published a FOSS utility that synchronizes events from Timeline with scenes from yWriter. This even allows you to plot a story with Timeline and generate a basic novel outline in yWriter file format.

The yw-timeline Python script

If you are the hands-on, DIY type and want to do something like this, you could use another FOSS utility to create a new novelWriter project from the yWriter file. For this, you even don't need a yWriter installation.
However, I don't see any way to synchronize the novelWriter novel project with the timeline afterwards.

The yw2nw Python script

[Jeux1d100]

Thanks both.

I don't really need (i think) any automated timeline, it's more for a reminder, a postit paper, to have a general view of the events. I didn't like doing it with LibreOffice or similar tools. Not good enough IMO to move parts around, change scenes orders etc, and at the same time, it can do too much...

At first i was going to go with Trello, then kan.bn, then i found out about scrivener and alike, and searched for FOSS alternative. And from here, welcome novelWriter.

Well actually at the very first, i went with pen and papers, but computers help a lot...

I "think" novelWriter is near perfect for me, combined with theTimeLineProj as a side object. It was more a question to have both in one project, but it's not really a necessity, and having (a few) different supports is not that bad neither, so i don't get used to only one way of doing things.

[vkbo]

I see. I am a very structured writer, and plan all my key events ahead of starting writing. The way I track it is to have a Main Plot document where I have a heading for each key event sorted under each act. I create a tag for each event, something like this:

# Plot Points

@tag: Main Plot

## Act One: Reaction

### Hook

@tag: P1.1 Hook

% Grab the reader, provoke interest, and cause questions to be asked.

Summary

### Inciting Event

@tag: P1.2 Inciting Event

% The event that sets the story in motion, and will lead to the Key Event.

Summary

### Key Event

@tag: P1.3 Key Event

% The event that causes the protagonist to be caught up in the story.

Summary

Then, in each scene that includes these events, I mark that with the @plot: P1.1 Hook or whatever is relevant. These tags then show up in the Outline View and I also have them listed in the Novel View. This gives me an indication of the story flow.

[Jeux1d100]

Nice sharing, thanks.

So if i get it right (and it's very probable i don't, as i never used these kind of toys before)... You don't use all the tools, such as the "Root Folders" for characters etc ? You do that, to prepare your novels, but outside of novelWriter (ie in Obsidian) ? And, novelWriter is basically only to actually write the novel itself ?

I'm very not organized myself. I'm in the process of copy/paste my previous "good enough" work into novelWriter. I'm chaotic. Have an idea, start to write blindly, develop as i go. Later i have another idea, more or less linked to the previous one. I start writing. Later, i may or may not try to actually link both texts, add characters or events etc, redo some parts if needed.

"My mental universe" is heavily inspired by cosmic horror (but not as in Cthulhu, more like in we are (not) alone and it's infinite...), madness, voices in head, environmental devastation, solitude in the multitude, alien invasion but more District9 than IDay, and we are the aliens, post humanity, and other fun stuff...

I like to read Asimov, RE Howard, R Silverberg, R Barjavel, Jean M Auel, Bernard Tirtiaux, AF Tognoni, and more. Plus many movies, video games, RPG (Eclipse Phase, Vermine, Shadowrun...) and more more more.

Hm sorry i may have stepped out of the topic...

[vkbo]

So if i get it right (and it's very probable i don't, as i never used these kind of toys before)... You don't use all the tools, such as the "Root Folders" for characters etc ? You do that, to prepare your novels, but outside of novelWriter (ie in Obsidian) ? And, novelWriter is basically only to actually write the novel itself ?

No, not quite. I do background research in other tools. I keep my character notes and plot notes in novelWriter in the relevant root folder types. I have tons of notes there too. Obsidian is more for collecting the information on building the universe I write in, which spans multiple projects. I also use Obsidian to draft story ideas or take notes I can incorporate into stories later. But any actual plot development in started projects is done in novelWriter as well. I use the Plot root folder extensively. As well as the Locations folder.

I'm very not organized myself. I'm in the process of copy/paste my previous "good enough" work into novelWriter. I'm chaotic. Have an idea, start to write blindly, develop as i go. Later i have another idea, more or less linked to the previous one. I start writing. Later, i may or may not try to actually link both texts, add characters or events etc, redo some parts if needed.

The idea of novelWriter is to not prescribe the technique, so that's perfectly fine too and exactly why I didn't incorporate the various organised techniques directly into the app. Like the Snowflake method, which some apps insist you use. I found the technique interesting, but I quickly developed my own approach.