Hi all, and thank you once again for taking the time to read this post, and I hope it finds you well. In this post I will talk about the importance of timelines and how I use them.
When I first began writing the Lore of Tellus series, I couldn’t have imagined the amount of work needed to keep up with the ever-growing series. One of the key issues was trying to make sure that events didn’t jump around, and that characters also followed their own timelines within the books.
Larger events, which occurred before the books were written, needed to be logged for future reference. The latter comes down to thinking logically about how long takes one character to carry out certain tasks, like travelling from point A to point B, and making sure that they aren’t moving too fast or too slow.
I found a piece of software called Aeon Timeline, which can do both of the above and more. It’s worth mentioning at this stage that I am not sponsored or paid to talk about this product, only that it’s something I have found useful going forward. It allows you to set up a timeline which suits your needs, depending on what you need it for. I use the fiction mode, as this suits my needs.
It allows me to upload the story to the timeline, and add events that have already happened in the past. You can add the characters as you go along your journey in the story, assigning them a date of birth and significant events that have happened to that character. You can also use it for story arcs and keeping track of character relations.
I'm sure there are more features I could use within the software, but that will come with time and exploration. I am busy trying to keep up with the writing, so am currently using it for the basic needs of keeping track of everything and everyone in the books.
It's important to keep track of characters when you are writing, as you need to make sure they don't jump around to random locations. It also helps when you need to remember an event which happened two books back if you need to reference it.
I will have to leave it here for now, but if you have any questions, please send them across to me and I will do my best to answer them. Thank you again for taking the time to read this post, and until next time, happy reading!