JonStonecash is right what he says about investing unnecessary time on a Scrivener workaround. But if you absolutely want a Scrivener only solution maybe try these:
Solution 1:
Because currently without the sorting option there is no way to have your actual scenes reflect both, the narrative sequence as in the binder and also the chronological sequence needed in a timeline you should split these two views up and link them back together. Also useful because you might want to have lots of backstory events in your timeline, which however don’t get a scene in your manuscript.
So create a folder e.g. under Research or on the same level as Research, e.g. / Timeline and create one document per event (all your scenes, historical events which need to be considered and also any kind of backstory events that build the chronological structure of the plot.).
Use custom meta data fields for start and end dates as described in the post you mentioned. Then link these timeline documents to the scene documents by using document references in both ways, so that each scene document points to its corresponding timeline event and vice versa. Probably each scene/timeline document pair should use the same title. You may also have scenes link additionally to backstory timeline documents, if you want to state that a scene takes place at one time but then within this scene a backstory event is being referred to.
Your time line documents must then be sorted (manually) in chronological order. Maybe use the Label metadata field to introduce colors in binder or outliner view of the timeline folder for different types of timeline documents: “Scene” (assign to those timeline documents which hold document references to an actual scene), “Backstory” (assign to those timeline documents which are only for, well, backstory) and maybe “Real Time” (assign to those timeline documents which represent historical events which may never be shifted).
In the end each manuscript scene should be linked to at least one timeline document. You view your narrative flow in the outliner from the manuscript folder and your timeline view from the timeline folder. Because of the document links you can easily navigate back and forth.
This will work but is of course highly manual and thus brittle. Just think of the hassle when you e.g. have to shift all your events a month or so …
Solution 2:
Another solution might be to to put the start and end dates on each scene directly, have only additional backstory documents in a timeline folder and merge and view everything together via a collection. Still the sorting will be all manual.
So really, do yourself a favour, download the Aeon Timeline app and play with it for its trial period. Then decide if you want to revert back to any workaround.
Happy writing,
Linus
