I wonder whether you would consider adding a “timeline” management tool for visualizing and tracking the evolution of characters or arc/trajectory of plot within the “Outliner” tool?
It would not only facilitate the process of conceiving stories, but on a practical level, it would be “handy” to be able to identify which scene/act/chapter has which specific characters involved. Certainly, I can “craft” such character or plot development shifts info into the Outliner on my own, yet it would be nice to have a visual timeline which includes identification of key characters’ involvement at nodal points along the storyline.
There are two things coming that will help for this. One is keywords in the outliner, and the other is custom columns, where you could record chronology information. You can already get an overview of keywords in the Corkboard by turning them on in View/Corkboard Options/Show Keyword Colors. This will use the colour assigned to each keyword as though a piece of tape were applied to the left side for each one. If you give each character a keyword with a distinct colour and assign them to the scenes they are involved in, it’s a great way of getting a bird’s eye view of character involvement.
This software is very close to a commercial release, which will come within the next month or two.
The software synchronizes with a Scrivener project, so that you can update meta-data dates in Scrivener and have them sync in Aeon Timeline and vice versa too.
And just so you, Aeon Timeline (which is awesome) is currently Mac only, so that won’t help you out immediately. I’ve never searched for any, but surely in a similar vein there is a program for Windows which can track multiple events, characters and plots on an arbitrary timeline?
Sorry, I forget the good ship Scrivener has Windows users now too.
Windows version is in the planning, although not yet in the works… do tell me if you find any competitors though that mean I shouldn’t enter the space!