Hi, folks. I’m already using Aeon and Timeline 3D. I love where Aeon is going, and maybe it will eventually integrate to Scrivener, but I really need a full-fledged timeline app right now, as I’ve been working on a big novel for a month and it’s getting unwieldy.
I really do think Aeon is going to be incredible in about a year, but it’s so fledgling right now (hardly anyone uses it, and I can’t seem to get hold of the developer), that it’s not working out for me. Timeline 3D has all sorts of problems and just isn’t good for novel structuring.
A “scalable” timeline, like that in OmniPlan, would be super helpful. (The zoom in and zoom out buttons in Aeon don’t work, and the magnifying glass slider doesn’t seem dependable.)
Is anyone using TInderbox for timeline? Or can you recommend anything else?
Hi,
I am the developer of Aeon. Sorry if you have been unable to get hold of me recently. I have been away from the computer for a few weeks, and have only had very sporadic access. I will be trying to catch up on correspondence in the next week or so.
Development on Aeon is continuing, it is just another major update, and so is taking a little longer to spit out than the last one.
In the mean time, good luck finding something to suit your immediate needs.
I think it depends on what kind of timeline you need. I’ve used Excel, before, for a skeletal one that mostly has character marriages and births. You may have to seek an Add-In to make the timeline to function how you want, though. Mine’s vertical, so that was a bit tricky to figure out.
Random,
Have you considered Writer’s Cafe < writerscafe.co.uk/ >? I find its StoryLine feature to be quite useful in this regard. It can handle any number of storylines (which can be color coded) spanning across acts, chapters, scenes, index cards and detailed notes. It also has an easy way to enter/track basic character information, locations, tags and the like. And it exports to RTF. It does NOT have any direct capability to keep track of events by date, though, so I find it necessary to work around this limitation either by assigning dates to chapter/scene titles, or by adding date tags to scene cards. I’m pretty sure the Mac version is based on PC, so the interface is pretty clunky when compared to Scrivener & Aeon. But from among the story/timeline apps currently in final release for Macs, the Writer’s Cafe’s storyline feature serves my needs best. Also, like Scrivener’s KB, the Writer’s Cafe developer is very responsive and helpful to inquiries made to the Writer’s Cafe Yahoo group.
Given that a picture is worth a whole lot of my words, I hope this screen shot clarifies what I wrote above. Notice that there is an Outline Window displayed (upper left), StoryLine Window (across bottom of screen), and a Report Window (upper right). As can be seen in the Outline and Report Windows, other tabbed options are available for display. Also notice, that in order to create the effect of a TimeLine in the StoryLine Window (ie.; to track sets of scenes & events by date) I have assigned Dates in the places where Chapter Headings would normally appear. Further, each card within a scene can be annotated with a whole lot of additional verbiage and tags – some of which appears in the Report Window.
