Make a Story Timeline for Your Novel

A story timeline lays out everything that happens in your story in the order it happens: the plot, each character's life, and the history of the world they live in. Writers use one to keep track of who was where and when, how old everyone is in each scene, and what happened before chapter one.

It catches mistakes a manuscript hides. A character who is in two cities on the same day, a child who ages too fast between chapters, or a war that ends before the battle your hero fought in all stand out once the events sit on a date axis.

Preceden is a general timeline tool, not a writing app, so it holds the timeline while your manuscript stays wherever you write it. Our page for writers and authors shows a few examples.

What to include

Plot events. The scenes and turning points of the story itself. Give anything that takes time, such as a journey or a siege, a start and an end date, and give a single moment, such as a death or a letter arriving, just a start date. Events with an end date show as a bar; events without one show as a single icon.
Character lifespans. One event per character from birth to death, so you can see at a glance who was alive at the same time and how old each was. For a character still alive when the story ends, end the bar at the date of your final scene.
Backstory. What happened before the story begins: a parent's death, an old feud, how two characters met.
World history. For fantasy and historical fiction, the reigns, wars and discoveries that shape the setting.

Give each character or plotline a layer

Put each character, family or plotline on its own layer. Every layer shares the same date axis, so you can see where two characters' stories overlap and what one was doing while the other was off stage.

Click the Add Layer button above the timeline to create each one, then choose an event's layer from the Layer menu when you add the event. A layer for world events or backstory keeps that history in view beside the plot without mixing it into a character's line.

When the timeline gets crowded, collapse the layers you are not working on and expand them again when you need them.

Story order and chronological order

Preceden places every event by its date, so the timeline always shows events in the order they happen in your world. That is often not the order your reader meets them: flashbacks, a prologue set years earlier, or two narrators telling the same week.

To keep track of both, write the chapter into the event name, such as "The fire (Ch. 3)", or into its notes. The timeline then shows what really happened when, and the labels show where each event lands in the book.

Find every scene with a character

Type a name into the Search box above the timeline and Preceden shows only the events whose name or notes contain it, along with every event on a layer whose name or notes contain it. It is a quick way to check one character's movements, or to find every scene set in one place, without scrolling the whole timeline. Clear the box to bring everything back.

Mark the turning points

For the moments the whole story turns on, open More Options in the event dialog and check Make this event a milestone. Preceden draws a milestone as a vertical line across the full height of the timeline, so you can see where every character was at that moment. Make a Milestone Timeline has more on choosing them.

Dates you have not decided yet

You do not need exact dates to start. Preceden accepts a year on its own, such as 1888, or a month and year, such as March 1888, and Supported Date Formats covers the rest. When a date is a rough placement, check Approx. next to it in the event dialog so you remember to settle it later.

Use the Notes field on each event for the details you need while writing: who is in the scene, what they know, and what changes. Notes accept Markdown, including links to your own research.

Invented worlds and calendars

If your story is set in a world with its own calendar, Preceden's date fields still need real dates. Use real years as stand-ins in the order and spacing your calendar puts the events in, then hide the dates and write your story's own labels into the event names. Timelines Without Dates walks through the settings, including a section on fictional calendars.

For a world whose history runs back thousands of years, Preceden accepts BC dates, so ancient history and your present-day plot can sit on the same timeline. Make a BC and AD Timeline shows how to enter them.

New timelines are private until you change that. When you want feedback, you can share a link with an editor or writing partner, or save it as a PDF to keep beside your draft. Adjust Timeline Visibility explains each option.

The free plan allows unlimited timelines with up to 10 events each, which is enough to try the approach on one character or one act. A full novel usually needs more, and our paid plans lift the event limit.