Getting Started with Timelines on Quillry

In this article, learn about how you can manage character, locations, and story timelines on Quillry.

You might be interested in timelines if you're writing a non-fiction book and want to keep track of events that have happened, or writing an epic fantasy, or want to chronicle a character's major milestones for a murder mystery. They are a way to organize events in a story, or for a character or location.

Let's get started by understanding some key concepts.

• About Timelines Types

  • All timelines are given a type.
  • There are three types of timelines: Character, Location, and Story.
  • Character timelines are tied to a character and managed within that character's details page. Location timelines are tied to a location and managed within that location's details page. Story timelines are tied to a story and managed within that story's details page.

• About Timelines

  • Timelines are similar, but not the same as plot points. Plot Points are often a generic sequence of scenes that make up a larger turning point in the story such as "Inciting Incident", while timelines are a sequential list of events which occur in the history of a character, location, or story.
  • All timelines, regardless of the type have a label and a description.
  • A label is a free-form heading text that will appear on the data visualization of the timline. Examples of labels include: '1942', 'December 18', 'The month of Rakh'r'.
  • The description is a free-form text that will appear on the data visualization of the timline.
  • A character, location, or story can have more than one timeline. You can create a timeline for a character for each book that character appears in, as well as a timline for that character.
  • Timelines can be merged. Merging timelines is taking two or more timelines and their events and creating a new timeline based off the events that you have recorded.
  • Timelines can only be merged with other timelines of the same type and the same character, location, or story. A timeline for a character cannot be merged with a timeline for a story. But also a timeline for John Doe cannot be merged with a timeline for Jane Doe, even though they are both character timelines. They are for different characters.
    
    For example, you have created a timeline for one of your characters, Jane Doe, which is a list of events in Jane Doe's life before the events in your book. So, the timeline could have the date she was born, when and where she went to school, when she graduated college, when she got her first job. Then, you could create a second timeline to chronicle major milestones for Jane Doe which occur in your story. Such events could be: she gets a new case, or she discovers a magical artifact, etc. Now you have two timelines separate from one another, but both are the same type and for the same character, and you want to see the bigger picture of what these two timelines would like like together. You would then merge the timelines.
  • Changing the underlying data of a merged timeline does not synchronize to the merged timeline. This means that if you merge two timelines together, creating a third new timeline, and subsequently add a new event to one of the source timelines, that new event will not appear in the merged timeline. You would need to do a new merge based off the new data.

• Visualizing Timelines

  • All timelines can be seen in two forms: a data visualization, or a data grid of events.
  • You cannot create a data visualization without first creating events.
  • Each type of timeline visualization has settings. You may manipulate the orientation (horizontal or vertical), line position, color, and point style. Each time you make a change, these changes are automatically saved and applied to all your timelines of the same type.
    
    For example, if you have a character timeline for a character named John Doe, and you change the color of the points to be blue, then create another timeline for a different character, Jane Doe, their point color will also be blue. However, story and location timeline settings will be unaffected by this change.

Tutorial of creating a timeline and visualization

You can create a timeline two ways:

From your master My Timelines page.
From a specific character, location, or story details page.

1. Click on My Timelines on the side-navigation to be redirected to your timelines page.

   From here, you will see three tabs which correspond to the timeline types. To create a timeline for a character, location, or story, you must have first created a character, location, or story.

2. Click on the Add button to launch a popup. If you're adding a character timeline, you will get a dropdown list of characters you've created. If you've clicked on adding a location timeline, you'll get a dropdown of location options. If you've clicked on adding a story timeline, your popup will display a dropdown of stories.
3. Click Save after you've added a name for the timeline and assigned it to a story, character, or location. You will be redirected to the timeline details page. Here, there will be two tabs. One for the data visualization, one to manage the events. Since you have not added any events yet, there is no data to visualize. Click on the Events tab to begin adding events to your new timeline.
4. Click the Add icon with the plus sign in the event grid header to launch the add Event popup.
5. Enter a label and text description then click Save. Add a few events.
6. Click the Timeline tab to see your timeline in visual form.

Reordering Timeline Events

Fixing mistakes and reordering the events in the grid is easy with our drag and drop.

1. Go to a timeline event grid which needs to be re-ordered. In the example below, July 5 should not be above July 4 in a sequence.
2. Select the row you wish to re-order and drag it to the position you want it to be then drop it.
3. Since the data visualization order of events is displayed in the order of the event grid, your data visualization should have changed.

Timeline Visualization Settings

Customizing the timeline visualization is easy with our dropdowns. Experiment with the different combinations to find the settings which appeal to you. Remember that on every change, those settings are automatically saved for you.

Merging Timelines

Let's go through the steps to merge timelines. First, you need to have created a character, story, or location to do this.

1. Using the above tutorial, create a timeline for one of your characters and add at least two events.
2. Using the above tutorial, create a second timeline for the same character, location, or event you did for the first time and add events. At this point, you should have two timelines for one character, location, or story, and both have events in them.
3. Go to that character, location, or story's details page. Depending on which type of timeline you have created, the timelines will either be on the right side of the screen, or in a tab which says Timelines. Below is a screenshot of where you'd find the timelines on the character details page for a specific character.
4. Locate the button that says Merge Timelines and click it. A popup will trigger with three steps. First, you must drag and drop the specific timelines you want to combine from the source list.
5. Once you have selected the timelines you want to merge, click on the tab in the popup which says Confirm Order Events. Here is a data grid of all the events from each timeline you selected. This is your opportunity to re-order these events in the sequence you want before creating the new merged timeline. Use the drag and drop to set the sequence. Once you are happy with the order of events, click the third and final tab Name the New Timeline.
6. All timelines need a name. Come up with a name for your new merged timeline and click Save.
7. The merge timeline popup will close and you now see your new merged timeline in the grid of timelines.
8. Watch the following video to see an example of the full process using character timelines.