I don’t know whether my solution is too simplistic, or anyone else would find this useful, but for a simple timeline I add the dates in short format dd/mm/yyyy after the title of each document, in the Binder.
That means that, so long as I also have a short synopsis for each scene, when I look at the index card view they are all already labelled and I can see what is happening when, then if I need to move things around I do it from the index card view and fix the date in the title to suit.
NB: I find this works BEST if the chapters and/or documents have titles, instead of ‘Chapter 1’, ‘Chapter 2’ etc., but that’s because I my memory’s not great.
It does looks a bit cluttered but, at least in my case I only need to see the timeline until all continuity is checked and sorted, then I just remove the dates, if I no longer need them.
In order to ensure that I know which timeline I have verified I set the icons of the titles to the “to do” icon and reset it to default when I have checked and fixed any inconsistencies.
If I find inconsistencies I use the “Warning” icon, so I know I have to fix it.
I use the “Sync” icon for folders that still need work.
LOL! I have an off topic story here. I have an Android phone and I use Swiftkey for my keyboard. It’s really intuitive but its auto-correct annoys me because when I need it, it doesn’t work. When I don’t, it works like a charm. For this reason, once I wrote thanks and didn’t notice a Y in place of the T and when I accidentally tapped it, it saved it. Now when I write “thanks” it always writes “yhanks” every single time I ever use that word in my life! It has now turned into a running joke.
Many, many thanks! That’s really intuitive. Just a question though, what do you write for scenes that you’re not sure yet where in time they belong? Do you have a sub-folder of “Not Timed” or something like that?
I’ve been wrestling with the timeline issue for a good while. This is really helpful!
Make an Unplaced Scenes folder (note: Idea stolen from David Hewson) outside the Draft folder. Its purpose is self-evident: if you have a brilliant idea but don’t know where it goes in the working draft, park it there; when you figure out where it goes, drag it and drop it.
Here’s a trick I’ve been using for quite a while for creating a timeline directly within Scrivener. (It’s only works with a strictly linear timeline.)
I simply prefix the date/time of an event to the beginning of a scene (text file) using this format: YYMMDD–hhmm. These will show up in the binder. E.g.
160525-0900 - Jim kills Sam
160525-1100 - Jim is caught by police
Then I just sort the project. All of the individual scenes then fall into chronological order based on that time stamp. (It’s important that you use the YYMMDD-hhmm format to sort properly.)
This makes it easy to move scenes to other time slots. I just change the numbers and then re-sort. The binder will then reflect the new ordering of scenes.
This technique isn’t perfect, but it is easy to implement and is built right into Scrivener
Al -
Let me first acknowledge that your original post was in 2014 (five years ago!). Clearly, at least for me, it had weathered the test of time, and I’m hoping you still participate in this forum.
So, wondering two things:
After five years, is this still your method of controlling timeline? Or have you found an even better way, or you leveled-up this solution at all (not that it needs it)?
If so, can you share?
If not, can you confirm what I’m hearing (reading) is what you actually intended:
For each card in your binder that represents a “scene” (or insert beat or Act or whatever unit of measure you choose), you are proposing a complementary timeline card showing the “scene’s” time frame. These timeline cards would be in either your research folder, or at a minimum, not checked for compile.
