But I would rather stick with the tried and true-Word makes excellent WYSIWYG PDF files that translate well to paperback books. That program can do it all, if one is disciplined enough to study it and learn to compile to any format. There are authors who do everything in Scrivener. And Scrivener, of course, is a wonderful drafting tool. Only by letting my characters talk and act can I discover these aspects of the story.īut at the starting point, Aeon Timeline is a very helpful tool that I have underutilized. An outline doesn’t really tell me what is going to happen or what the story is about. But with each book, I am eager to get into the story-telling. With each book, I tell myself that more outlining rather than less is a helpful thing. But by then, my plot should be baked enough that changing a scene here or there shouldn’t make much difference. And once I’m in Word, I can’t easily go back to Scrivener or Aeon Timeline. Of course, there might well be scenes added or subtracted as I undertake the next draft of polishing. This might be an unnecessary step-heaven knows I haven’t done it in my earlier books-but it will clearly point out any holes or other problems in my timeline. I think I am past the worst of the timeline problems now, but I am committed to finishing this draft by toggling back and forth between Aeon Timeline and Scrivener to fill in the starting and ending times for each scene. If I had been more disciplined, I’d have a really good timeline for the book. But it isn’t a text drafting or editing program. Aeon Timeline is a very powerful tool for setting timelines in stories, as well as for outlining scenes. Scrivener files can sync with Aeon Timeline. Unfortunately, I was not disciplined in my initial drafting, so many of these fields are blank.
Of course, that means I have to have input the starting and ending times for each scene.
In the outline view, I can see when each scene starts and ends. I’ve been toggling back and forth between the text drafting view in Scrivener (which they call the binder view) and the outline view. I am still drafting the novel in Scrivener (though for the next draft, I will probably compile the text into Word to start seeing how the book will look on the page). To make the timeline change, I have had to abandon most polishing of the text and go back to the basics of plot construction. My timeline now meshes with where the story was by about the 25% mark in the book, and I am ready to move on. I moved the starting point of the story a month earlier, and I have finally plugged the hole which that change created. I have confronted the timeline issue that has plagued me for the last couple of months. I am starting the New Year with a new resolve to finish my novel.
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