I haven’t ever used timelines in my writing, besides what I had in my head. I completely relied on my memory to make sure that I put everything in its proper place, without even bothering to remember what year some of my books were set in! Not smart.
Several of my books are interconnected. Though not a series, the characters from several books live in the same area of the United States. Occasionally too, a main character from one book, will have a small part in another tale, as long as I can justify why they are there. I have been working on these books since I was about 16, maybe 17, (I did plenty of writing before that time, most of it isn’t worth reading though!) but only recently did I begin to do any written timeline work. That’s when I began to see some problems…
Grandmother’s Letters is my current most active project. I have set a deadline to complete a draft of it by the end of this month. During all of my re-reading and partial reworking of the first half of the book, I started noticing a few mistakes… The first was in a scene where Louise, one of my main characters, finds an old wedding dress. In that scene I marked the wedding dress to be at least 175 years old. There’s nothing wrong with that… until I double checked my math and figured out the year that the dress would have been made. Somehow I managed to be more than 25 years off track! The dress wasn’t quite 150 years old!
That was only the beginning. I have a scene where a character from one of my other books, Christine, makes a short, but needed appearance. When the young man comes on the scene, he is between the ages of 21-22 years old. The problem? When I compared dates with his book, I realized that I was 3 years off! However, if I simply changed the age of the young man, it completely ruined the scene, since certain events in his life had to be passed, before he could do what he did in Grandmother’s Letters. Now, Christine does need a major amount of editing and possibly a re-write in several areas, so I considered simply pushing back the date, but I couldn’t push back the date, unless I did the same thing to yet another book, because then, I would have a death in the wrong place. After looking at the books though, rearranging a few things and changing a birthday of one of my characters, I think I have it figured out. A Year with the Potters and Christine have been pushed back by about three years, and though it will take some re-writing, especially on the part of Christine, it will be much easier than altering Grandmother’s Letters and everything should flow in harmony again.
What’s more, I learned my lesson that timelines are important, at least for me. I have a written timeline for Grandmother’s Letters in good and working order now. I’m also working on one for my books as a whole, that way I can keep from mixing up the dates of my character’s major life events.
So, my question for my readers: do you use timelines? Do you write them down, or do you just go off your memory?
To the KING be all the glory!
Mmmm, I’ve not run into that problem… yet. I easily could since several of my books share the same characters. It’s really a good idea to timeline, especially for me since I can mess things up easily!
I wonder if it’s as complicated to write a series, timeline wise? Since my books are sometimes simultaneous, or before the last one, etc… I can really mess this up if I’m not careful! :p
Rebekah, have you ever heard of/used yWriter 5? It’s a free software for authors. I’m just starting to use it, and it looks massively helpful. Google it and also watch the YouTube videos by K.M. Weiland if you’re interested!!
Perry
I haven’t heard of it. I’ll have to look it up. Thanks for the recommendation, Perry! :)
Did you take that picture of the butterfly???
I like it!!
Yes, Rosy, I think I did! :)