Multiple storyline management?

Scrivener Wish List
1

I posted this in the PC forum, but I’m posting it here too, since it’s technically a feature request/wish.

I’m one of those PC people who used to drool at the Mac-only Scrivener, and I’m so happy that there’s a PC version now. I’ve been trying Scrivener out to fit it to my workflow, and there’s one issue I’d like to ask about.

Before Scrivener, I mainly used Writer’s Cafe, which I love for its Main Sheet. It allows you to arrange/manager multiple storylines separately on individual lanes. This is incredibly useful because anyone who’s ever written a third-person omniscient view novel knows that jumping around between different characters is basically like writing multiple storylines, and if we can lay out the storylines of each individual character’s plot progression on individual lanes visually, it’s incredibly intuitive and helpful.

While Scrivener allows you to label with color-coding, the corkboard or outliner does not allow limitless multiple lanes or simple drag n’ drop between lanes. I “think” the latest Mac version might have something sort of like it, but since I’ve never used the Mac version, I have no idea, and from the screenshots I’ve seen, it’s not quite the same as I’m talking about.

This is what the feature looks like in Writer’s Cafe:


You can add, delete, drag/drop/arrange, and create as many “lanes” for subplots or characters as you need, and then visually plan and manage them.

Power Structure’s approach looks like this:
write-brain.com/power_structure_intro9.htm

The key here is having individual lanes for each subplot or character. This might seem like a trivial thing, but it isn’t. Separating them into separate individual lanes is the key to the intuitive nature of this approach, because visually we can now see the “rhythm” of the pacing by looking at the overall “shape” of the subplots. For example, if I have a shape like this:

subplot 1|event|-------|event|-------|------|-------|-------|------|-------|-------|event|
subplot 2|-------|event|-------|event|------|-------|event|-------|event|-------|
subplot 3|-------|-------|-------|------|event|event|-------|event|-------|event|

When I look at it that way, I can immediately see that there’s too much of a gap between the events of subplot 1, and I need to rearrange the pacing a bit so the reader doesn’t forget about subplot 1 as the story progresses. That’s just one example of how it’s useful. You can do the same for character arcs and see visually how the different characters have progressed on their own individual storyline, and how it relates to the progression of other characters.

(Note: I’m not talking about some elaborate timeline management, where you have to input data for dates and time periods or whatever–that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a simple, fast, intuitive drag n’ drop interface between separate, individual lanes.)

Anyway, I would really love to see something like this in Scrivener. I think if Scrivener had this feature, it would become the “one writing app to rule them all.”

My dream is to be able to plan, organize, manage, write, edit–all in one software. I’m tired of having to jump between software to get everything I need. Right now I’m using Writer’s Cafe with Word, and I would much prefer to do it all in one place. If Scrivener can pull this off, I would never have to even think about another writing software ever again.

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2

Storylines in Writer’s Café is a very nice piece of software, and one of the nicest implementations of timelines-as-corkboard I’ve seen. However, there is no way it would map onto Scrivener’s other modes, so a timeline will almost certainly never be included in Scrivener, sorry - the trouble is that it would have to exist as a completely separate entity, and if that were the case it would be better off in a different application, supported by developers who can put all their time into making it a great timeline.

Please see my full explanation for why a timeline wouldn’t fit into Scrivener here:

literatureandlatte.com/blog/?p=104

What Scrivener 2.0 does allow is the selection of multiple folders that then appear in rows on the corkboard - this still wouldn’t really provide a timeline, though. You can set up search collections for each PoV character, which would allow you to view each storyline separately.

All the best,
Keith

3

Hi Keith. Thank you for the reply. I read the link and I quite enjoyed it–you really don’t see writing software developers keeping a blog the way you do or writing about more personal stuff–which I really enjoyed. We’re a lot alike I think–based on your “voice” in your blog. If you read mine, you’d probably recognize a lot of yourself in my personality too (www.ethereality.info). I’m now going to read your blog archive.

While I totally understood your reasons for not wanting a timeline in Scrivener, I’m not sure if what I’m asking for is technically a “timeline” in the strictest sense–it’s more like a way to arrange index cards on multiple lanes.

You mentioned:

While Outliner in Writer’s Cafe may not be like the one in Scrivener, it would seem that the way the Main Sheet (StoryLines) works, it is a very simple and straightforward liner structure. The Outliner will detect card positions vertically as first priority, then horizontal positions as second priority, and then arrange in the Outliner according to those priorities. This is very important because of what I’m about to point out. You mentioned special cases where a timeline might have to track concurrent events or two different point of views and so on, but one very important thing makes me think you might have been over-thinking the whole issue, is that regardless of when/who/where/how of events or points of view, the actual reading of the story itself still has to be LINEAR. There is ALWAYS a rigid, linear order going from one page to the next; this will never change, and is in fact, what I think is the saving grace of your dilemma.

If no matter what you arrange in the multi-lane view (let’s stop calling it a timeline because that’s not what I’m asking for) will always end up being read in a linear manner, one page at a time, then isn’t the whole thing all of a sudden very straightforward? Just have the multi-lane view influence the Outliner with the simple behavior of vertical positions as first priority and horizontal positions as second.

Maybe there’s other stuff I haven’t considered, but at the moment, it all looks very straightforward to me. Or maybe the way I use a multi-lane view is very straightforward–it’s really more like a visual aid for me to “look” at the rough frequency in which I’m jumping between characters or time periods or places–all by just eyeballing the “gaps” between the columns relative to the lanes. No actual data input of dates of when events happened, their duration, tracking a timeline, or anything of that sort.

BTW, just out of curiosity, how come Writer’s Cafe isn’t listed in your links section?

4

Hi,

I shall check it out!

But in Storylines, the outliner is just one level deep - Scrivener’s outliner can be nested infinitely.

Yes, but Storylines still uses a two-dimensional structure, a grid with an X and a Y axis, and it’s this that cannot be mapped onto Scrivener’s hierarchical structure. There’s a fundamental difference here which is irreconcilable.

No, it’s not straightforward at all - quite the opposite. How would you represent a complicated nested structure in a two dimensional grid? For instance:

- Folder
   - SubFolder
      - Text Document
      - Text Document
         - Sub-Text Document
            - Sub-Sub Text Document
      - Text Document
         - Sub-Text Document
   - SubFolder
      - Text Document
         - SubFolder
- Folder
- Folder
     - Text Document

Now, try placing that on a two-dimensional grid and working out what moves where. :slight_smile:

For this, you could use coloured cards - different colours for different timelines.

All the best,
Keith

I thought it was, to be honest - obviously an oversight.

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5

I see what you mean–you’re saying that some people might embed more folders/documents deeper than two levels of the standard chapter/scene, and the example in your blog of an event that is not revealed until much later, but might be grouped with an earlier scene demonstrates this problem. But the way I think is more straightforward. I guess the way I work is just very simple.

For example, I will ALWAYS organize the order of my Outliner according to the order the story is to be read. So your example of an event that is not revealed until much later–well, it simply gets place exactly where it shall be read in the chronological order of the pages. I might create a note about it in the earlier pages that reminds me of this event, but if it’s not going to be read by the reader, then I don’t worry about it–the reveal will simply reside in the Outliner exactly when/where it shall be read in the book. I really have no need for an actual elaborate timeline system, and that’s not what I’m asking for. If fact, my post has almost nothing to do with timelines–I just want to order my scenes in multiple lanes, that’s all.

While color-coding works, because the scenes are stacked in the same lane, it’s just not that intuitive to visually gauge the gaps between events/plot points relative to multiple storylines. If we compare this:

subplot 1|event|-------|event|-------|------|-------|-------|------|-------|-------|event|
subplot 2|-------|event|-------|event|------|-------|event|-------|event|-------|
subplot 3|-------|-------|-------|------|event|event|-------|event|-------|event|

to this:

Subplot 1’s event
Subplot 2’s event
Subplot 1’s event
Subplot 2’s event
Subplot 2’s event
Subplot 3’s event
Subplot 1’s event
Subplot 2’s event
Subplot 1’s event
Subplot 1’s event
Subplot 3’s event

I don’t know if I’m being subjective, but the first one looks much more intuitive to me, and easier to assess visually the “rhythm” of the multiple storylines.

So, if all I’m after is simply multi-lanes to arrange the scenes according to the order in which the book will actually be read, is that a much simpler concept than some kind of elaborate timeline system, which I never wanted in the first place?

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6

You’re still not taking into consideration a nested hierarchy - you personally may use a fairly simple folder structure, but Scrivener doesn’t force that on users, and all synonymous views have to allow for any possible structure. (Also, consider what happens when you select a subfolder and view only a partial timeline - a 2D grid can’t be broken up like that and viewed in sections.)

For instance, imagine if Event 1 had Event 2 and Event 3 as subdocuments; if Event 1 were then moved, Scrivener would have to start restructuring your binder for you, taking Event 2 and Event 3 out of Event 1 and placing them as subdocuments of Event 1’s parent before moving Event 1. But what if those subdocuments weren’t events but notes, which should get moved along with Event 1? Scrivener has no way of knowing the difference. What if you try to move the parent document after its subdocuments? Again, lots of re-structuring needs to be done by Scrivener on your behalf. Then there will be cases where, in order to move a document into the right linear position, Scrivener would have no idea whether to place it as the last subdocument of a folder, as the subdocument of the last item in the folder, or as a sibling of the folder… The logic would be tortuous and would need to know the users’ intentions, which software - as yet! - cannot.

In other words, it would just be such a destructive process - and this is only talking about your proposal which, unlike Story Lines, doesn’t allow for concurrent scenes. Given that Scrivener’s main interface is based on a nested hierarchy, having a view mode that could allow the user to completely destroy that hierarchy in just one or two moves would cause a lot of frustration. And these are just the very basic problems.

Trust me, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this; it’s not something I’m dismissing with no thought. I understand how Storylines works, and how Scrivener works, but these are very different systems that cannot be reconciled. You could probably show everything in a 2D grid, but if the user were allowed to move anything on that grid, all hell would break loose. (I’d really need to start drawing you some diagrams to explain further, and I’m afraid I don’t have time to do that at the moment - maybe when I get a spare moment I will, so that I can make this clearer. Also, you might want to search the forums, as I have explained this to several Story Lines users before. :slight_smile: )

As I say, along with colour-coding things, you can also use collections to view only one storyline at a time.

All the best,
Keith

7

Windows doesn’t have this yet, but a freeform corkboard mode is coming, and while that won’t automatically snap you into different lanes, it will be possible for you to arrange your cards in that structure–you could even create a background image with the colored lanes for your convenience. By creating a flat collection of all your scenes, you’ll be able to lay them out in any way that is visually telling without being bound by the binder hierarchy. It will be a little more work to take the view on the corkboard and structure your binder accordingly–it’s possible to commit the order to the collection and then move that back to the binder, but it would lose any hierarchy (which may be less important for you since you only work on one level–it would just mean moving scenes back into chapter folders, which shouldn’t be too hard). You could also just keep that open in the editor and rearrange items manually in the binder using your multi-line corkboard as a reference. Either way, if this is something that will help you a lot with structuring and comprehending your story, the bit of extra time spent remapping it to the binder is well worth it.

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8

@Keith - Thanks for your patience, Keith. I guess the divergence between what I’m asking for and what your concerns are, is simply that I’m only interested in the way that I work, which is to map out how the book will actually be read, page after page, in chronological order, regardless of the actual order in which the story is told. I have no need to have extensive folder hierarchies–my mind doesn’t work that way, since I’m always looking at my book from the perspective of a reader first and foremost. My mindset using multiple lanes doesn’t add any complications for me, but you are concerned with issues far beyond my simple workflow, and in order to accommodate my workflow, will create lots of complications beyond my needs. I won’t press this any further–I see that what I’m asking will only create headaches for you. People with such special needs should just use another software in conjunction to Scrivener, until one day a developer miraculously thinks exactly the way I do and develops a software that fills all my needs. I’m never going to be able to put in the time to learn to program, so it’ll likely never be me. :smiley:

@Jennifer - That sounds like a decent workaround. When is the Windows version going to catch up to the Mac version?

I guess if that still doesn’t float my boat, I’ll just have to continue to use two software instead of a one-in-all solution. Life just isn’t that simple–so many things I do on the computer often require more than one software to get done. I’ll probably end up using both Writer’s Cafe for structural planning and then duplicate the structure in Scrivener for the actual writing.

9

@Keith

I think the underlying issue is that users tend to treat Chapters as parent entities, when actually Scrivener is flexible enough not to need this.

Another approach is to treat the chapter break itself as a structural element, represented by a document (I keep wanting to call them topics!) containing just the “Chapter n” text.

Users who did this would end up with a very flat structure, which would be be compatible with a “snap to lanes” view in Corkboard.

Moreover, when there are multiple POVS and timelines, the chapters really do become breaks, rather than units of story.

My novel-with-agent would certainly have benefited from this.

10

At the risk of butting in, I personally use Scrivener for non-fiction, academic writing in the fields of psychology and history. For me, writing is one of the ways by which I arrive at an understanding of what I’m studying (if I’m lucky – sometimes you only arrive at an understanding after the book has been published, which is a shame). Often, you don’t realise an idea is garbage until you’ve tried to write it down. Not only that, but in trying to explain ideas, it is crucial to present them in the right order, or to unfold them in the best possible way. That means a lot of shifting things about (at least, it does for me, because I never seem to be able to hit on a good flow). I habitually keep each sentence on a separate line, with a carriage return between each one, so that concepts don’t get run together, and only reformat everything as continuous prose right at the end of the process. I also keep each paragraph in a separate document inside Scrivener. Naturally, the process of trying to get things in the right order, with sub-themes and ideas under the right headings, usually means a lot of sub-folders. Then of course there are footnotes, which are indispensable in academic writing, and those may have to be shifted around as well. (Supposing you explain something in a footnote the first time you mention it in the main text, but then move that piece of text somewhere else, so it is no longer the first time to mention the subject – you get the picture.) In short, my writing is usually some kind of spaniel’s early morning muesli and orange juice, with bits and pieces scattered all over, and sometimes nested several layers deep. I used to write in Word, and keeping track of everything, and imposing order on the chaos was not a nice task. It is still a desperately difficult thing to achieve, but Scrivener makes it very much easier – especially now the footnotes are so much better :slight_smile:. In other words, not only are there lots of ways to skin a cat – there are loads of different kinds of cat to be skinned, and it is remarkable how adaptable Scrivener is to the different needs of different cats.

Best of luck with your scrivening,
Martin.

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11

What if Keith added the multi-lane feature just for people who are writing fiction? While the academics and non-fiction and journalists might not use it as much, at least all the fiction writers (a substantial portion of the users, I would imagine) would be able to use it exactly the way we are describing.

Seriously, if I can get this feature, I’ll never even look at another writing software ever again.

12

hey keith,

thanks for responding to these posts. i replied in the other thread and i was wondering what you thought about this take on timelines:

"
hmmmm,

I understand the developer resisting timelines if they don’t fit in the paradigms laid out in scrivener but as it is in your examples, it seems like it’s just an additional mode in corkboard.

  • still working with scene cards
  • just an emphasis on a horizontally long board of arbitrary length
  • order on the board is decoupled from order in the binder but-
  • that model is somewhat akin to COLLECTIONS where it is an arbitrary grouping for the writer’s purposes.
  • so in this case, the “collection” would manifest as a LANE.

this would be a nice feature and probably wouldn’t be super hard to implement. I hope they consider it.
"

so in my formulation, the third point is the most important i think - DECOUPLING the link between the arrangement in timeline to the binder.

and it is conceptualized in the same way that this decoupling already happens with collections.

so no new entities are created - just the same data that exists already as index cards - oops, actually, that’s not entirely true, you’d be creating a LANE entity that works like collections - actually, you could just make it that every collection creates a lane if you didn’t want to create a separate kind of class of object.

but there is a different kind of corkboard that is akin to a spatial realization of a collection. for the purposes of tracking chronology of events or whatever else the lanes can be used to track.

jin

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13

In my opinion, This:

subplot 1|event|-------|event|-------|------|-------|-------|------|-------|-------|event|
subplot 2|-------|event|-------|event|------|-------|event|-------|event|-------|-------|
subplot 3|-------|-------|-------|------|event|event|-------|event|-------|event|-------|

Conveys exactly the same information as this:

Subplot 1’s event
Subplot 2’s event
Subplot 1’s event
Subplot 2’s event
Subplot 3’s event
Subplot 3’s event
Subplot 2’s event
Subplot 3’s event
Subplot 2’s event
Subplot 3’s event
Subplot 1’s event

I think there is plenty of scope within the labelling, metadata, collections and old school giving-sections-names-that-mean-something approaches already in the system.

At this point in the debate, there is scene from a movie that strikes me as appropriate.
youtube.com/watch?v=SKvQrmNiiXw

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Hi,

I think decoupling the timeline would make it pointless - lots more code to do something that is no more useful than storing the information in a separate application that has a developer working full time on such a complex feature.

Likewise, adding a timeline “just for fiction writers” makes no sense. For a start, it starts to fragment the program; more importantly, this assumes that every fiction writer uses the program in the same way. But you should see the structure of my current work-in-progress - text documents within text documents within folders within text documents within folders. Having a feature that only works if you structure things in a particular way and otherwise beeps at you or tells you that you can’t use it because you haven’t followed certain opaque internal rules required by this feature is not the way of good software.

On the Mac version, you can already view collections on a corkboard (although not in lanes - lanes are only used for multiple folder view), and this will be coming to Windows eventually.

Anyway, there are definitely no plans for any timeline in Scrivener for all the reasons I’ve given here and elsewhere - it just wouldn’t fit into the program in an integrated way and would end up being a spare wheel; something that had to be supported and updated but which offered no advantage over using a third-party app - the proverbial kitchen sink. Story Lines is a great bit of software, but Scrivener is something completely different. Sorry!

Thanks for the suggestions anyway, all feedback always welcome.

All the best,
Keith

15

cool. thanks for the consideration though!

jin

16

I still think you’ll be able to get something like you want with the freeform corkboard–it won’t snap to lanes or automatically shift things when you reorder, so multiple selections and dragging will be your friend, but still, if the main idea is that you want the visual gaps in each sequence, this will probably do you:
freeformlanes.png
I don’t know yet when this will be making its debut in the Windows version, but it is planned!

17

Is that screenshot of Scrivener 2.0 on the Mac? Can you add as many lanes as you want, and can you add as many cards horizontally as you want? Can you also title each lane with some kind of identifier instead of only having colored lines?

If so, then, yeah, that would do, and it’s going to be a loooooong wait for it to reach the Windows version.

18

It is a screenshot from the Mac version. The colored lines are just part of a background I quickly made, so yes, you can make as many as you want, but it’s a matter of updating a .jpg or .png or whatever you use. for this. Not hard though. Scrivener will tile the background, so you can just make a tall narrow strip with the colored stripes you want and it will go on as long as you like. The order of the rows will repeat if you move down far enough (past the height of the image), but this doesn’t really matter since you can create as many lines as you need in the background and then you won’t have a need to extend the corkboard (which is basically infinite, you can just drag off to the sides to make it bigger) below that point.

A few options for naming the lanes:

  • Instead of a narrow column for the background image, letting the tiling fill out the screen for you, create a long image so that you can put the name at the beginning of the line and not worry about that tiling.
  • Write the name on the line and let the image be wide enough to have a chunk of space beside it, but not so wide that it will necessarily fill the whole width of your screen; the name will then tile along the length of the lane, which could actually be handy for the repeated reference if you’re viewing scenes that come toward the end of the story.
  • Use index cards for this. Since your collection can include anything you want, not just the scenes in the story, you can create a card for each lane with the name and any other details you want, give that a special color or stamp, and stick it at the front of the lane as the identifier.
  • Instead of a line, just use the character’s name and have that turn into a line, like GEORGE * GEORGE * GEORGE * GEORGE * or whatever across the screen. You could get creative with this.

Another note I forgot to mention in the previous post, the corkboard backgrounds are global, so if you’re working on multiple projects at a time, you may need to switch out your backgrounds for this. If you’re just working on one where you’d need this view, it won’t be a problem, and again, switching is pretty easy, just a matter of popping open the preferences pane and switching your custom background file. You could even just save them as different preference settings and load up the appropriate one when you open the project–that’s not really necessarily faster at this point on Windows, but once presets and themes get over there, it’ll just be a matter of selecting from a drop-down menu. As it is it really isn’t bad though, and again, it’s only likely to be an issue if you’re working on two books at once that both need this view.

19

Those are awesome tips. Very, very helpful, and now I can’t wait for the Windows version to catch up to the Mac version! I think this is exactly what I need, and it’s not a hassle either. If you didn’t suggest those tips, I might have given up on Scrivener.

Looks like we might all get to have our cakes and eat them too. :smiley:

Thanks so much!

20

+1 for Storylines mode in Scrivener! As I wrote here https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/storylines-mode/15680/3 …

This mode would probably be incompatible with the current corkboard mode where you can arrange cards freely. Arranging them there would then mess up the order in the Storylines mode so here is my suggestion: Why not let users pick which mode they prefer for their project? I think it would be great to be able if we could choose if we prefer the freeform corkboard or the storylines mode for a specific project.

This feature would make Scrivener the one-stop-writing shop for me. Right now I’m sitting between the chairs with writing software. Writer’s Cafe looks rather ugly and is outdated, it’s not as intuitive in some areas as Scrivener. But it’s storylines approach is so useful that I keep sticking with it. There’s no other writing software I’ve found that nails this as good as Writer’s Cafe.