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Writing Resource
I can't remember if I ever mentioned this here, but I've been working on an epic fantasy/sci-fi/romance novel.
I'm still in the planning stages. A couple weeks ago I started looking for good apps that would help me keep track of my story's timeline -- a lot of my major plot points are dependent on part of one character's backstory being revealed to another character at a key moment and basically I was having trouble keeping track of who knew what about who when.
I did not find an app that did what I wanted
I did, however, figure out how to make a spreadsheet do what I wanted:
Events in chronological order, on the top header row. If you hover over a box a description pops up. Dividers to separate out major story milestones. Symbols and colors so I can get a quick overview of who is where at any given point in the timeline.
As you go down to the you see that each row represents a scene, and there's a checkmark for the event actively taking place plus other symbols for past events that are being referenced (like when a piece of backstory is revealed in dialogue).
I uploaded the template + thorough guide explaining how it's organized my google drive:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1F9g3DcpA-iQPkAUUZuqAmgWeCeb0_4Dn
Feel free to use the template. You can download it and put in your own story content using your native spreadsheet app, or edit it in google drive. Note that the link I've provided is not editable -- if you want to edit the template on google drive, you have to download it as an xlsx file, and then re-upload it to your own google drive and save it as a new google spreadsheet.
I'm still in the planning stages. A couple weeks ago I started looking for good apps that would help me keep track of my story's timeline -- a lot of my major plot points are dependent on part of one character's backstory being revealed to another character at a key moment and basically I was having trouble keeping track of who knew what about who when.
I did not find an app that did what I wanted
I did, however, figure out how to make a spreadsheet do what I wanted:
Events in chronological order, on the top header row. If you hover over a box a description pops up. Dividers to separate out major story milestones. Symbols and colors so I can get a quick overview of who is where at any given point in the timeline.
As you go down to the you see that each row represents a scene, and there's a checkmark for the event actively taking place plus other symbols for past events that are being referenced (like when a piece of backstory is revealed in dialogue).
I uploaded the template + thorough guide explaining how it's organized my google drive:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1F9g3DcpA-iQPkAUUZuqAmgWeCeb0_4Dn
Feel free to use the template. You can download it and put in your own story content using your native spreadsheet app, or edit it in google drive. Note that the link I've provided is not editable -- if you want to edit the template on google drive, you have to download it as an xlsx file, and then re-upload it to your own google drive and save it as a new google spreadsheet.