Aeon Timeline is a powerful bit of software that helps those who like to visualise their story outline on the screen. It can be used quite simply or scaled up to various levels of complexity. It’s similar to Scrivener in that way and also in its flexibility. Speaking of Scrivener, Aeon syncs with Scrivener too. Here’s an example of what a story looks like in Timeline View with each Event displayed at the time it took place. Character avatars for each Event are shown in red with Locations displayed in white against a black background.
Here’s the same view, configured with a darker background and ‘Inspector’ field – similar to the Inspector in Scrivener:
If you were writing Historical Fiction for example, you could plot the events of history on the timeline and weave your fictional story around the events. The possibilities are infinite.
Another handy view is the Relationship View where characters, locations, story arcs etc can be displayed against events.
One game-changing feature of this software is the ability to display events in chronological order (Spreadsheet View) then take those events and display them in narrative order (Narrative View), without changing the chronological order. Scrivener syncs with the Narrative View. See the split screen example below:
Another really useful feature is the Subway View where you can see which characters are involved in a particular event in sequence:
The screen can be split into a number of displays, enabling simultaneous viewing of Timeline, Spreadsheet, Narrative, Subway and Mindmap views. I haven’t explored the Mindmap feature yet. There is a filtering option too, if you wanted to view scenes with select characters. Needless to say, a large screen is very useful for this software!
For those who love exploring tech, you can easily go down the rabbit-hole experimenting with Aeon Timeline. I would encourage setting up a TRIAL project to play with and try out ways to manipulate what you see on the screen. If you wish to sync with Scrivener, then set up a TRIAL project in Scrivener too. Use your TRIAL project to figure out how to use features of the software where you don’t feel confident before applying these features to your real work. I continually go back to my TRIAL project to try out various concepts when the need arises rather than trying to learn how to use all the features of this software prior to starting a project. It is the type of software best understood by doing and you can trial it for free for a limited time. The Aeon Timeline website is also full of very helpful resources and ‘how to’ guides.
This article has provided a broad overview – just the tip of the iceberg, of the many features and ways to use Aeon Timeline.
Enjoy!