My Work-in-Progress: Diving into My Plot with Scrivener and Aeon Timeline

I am starting the New Year with a new resolve to finish my novel. I have confronted the timeline issue that has plagued me for the last couple of months. I moved the starting point of the story a month earlier, and I have finally plugged the hole which that change created. My timeline now meshes with where the story was by about the 25% mark in the book, and I am ready to move on.

To make the timeline change, I have had to abandon most polishing of the text and go back to the basics of plot construction. 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). I’ve been toggling back and forth between the text drafting view in Scrivener (which they call the binder view) and the outline view.

In the outline view, I can see when each scene starts and ends. Of course, that means I have to have input the starting and ending times for each scene. Unfortunately, I was not disciplined in my initial drafting, so many of these fields are blank.

Scrivener files can sync with Aeon Timeline. Aeon Timeline is a very powerful tool for setting timelines in stories, as well as for outlining scenes. But it isn’t a text drafting or editing program. If I had been more disciplined, I’d have a really good timeline for the book. As it is, I am filling in the gaps now.

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. 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.

Of course, there might well be scenes added or subtracted as I undertake the next draft of polishing. And once I’m in Word, I can’t easily go back to Scrivener or Aeon Timeline. But by then, my plot should be baked enough that changing a scene here or there shouldn’t make much difference.

With each book, I tell myself that more outlining rather than less is a helpful thing. But with each book, I am eager to get into the story-telling. An outline doesn’t really tell me what is going to happen or what the story is about. Only by letting my characters talk and act can I discover these aspects of the story.

But at the starting point, Aeon Timeline is a very helpful tool that I have underutilized. And Scrivener, of course, is a wonderful drafting tool.

There are authors who do everything in Scrivener. That program can do it all, if one is disciplined enough to study it and learn to compile to any format. But I would rather stick with the tried and true—Word makes excellent WYSIWYG PDF files that translate well to paperback books.

I have recently purchased Atticus, a new program that wants to be all things to writers, much like Scrivener. I might give it a try on formatting my ebooks. But I might fall back on Calibre or Scrivener, both of which also format ebooks pretty well.

It’s a good thing I like computers and technology. But it is getting harder and harder to keep up with everything available for writers. And, as I admitted in this post, I underutilize the tools I have. Which makes my writing life more difficult as each novel progresses.

Writers, which programs do you like best? Which cause you trouble?