#AEON TIMELINE ERAS MANUAL#
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Remember, characters who are not ‘on the page’ can be heavily influential. (Or, you can make them up as you go along and add them at any time.) If you know your cast, you can add them all at once by going in to Manage Entities. Each time you add an event you’ll be attaching characters to the event. If you know who your characters are going to be from the outset, go ahead, add them all to your timeline from the get-go, because this is the most efficient way to plan a story.

In the dropdown you’ll find three default entities: Character, Arc, Place. These are the only two buttons you really need to touch as a story creator: A pop up will tell you the length of time between the two events. Alt+Shift + Drag While holding down these two keys, draw a line between two events. Generally, shortcuts in Aeon Timeline will work how you expect them to based on your operating system (Command M to minimise on a Mac etc.) Control N Create new event Control R Add filter (when you’re looking for something) Alt + Drag Hold Alt while dragging events left or right to alter their end date instead of their start date. This zoom works well for most stories but may not for yours. It’s set from Days to Hundred Years by default. To avoid the faff, I recommend limiting your zoom if necessary. You’ll know whether it takes place over a day, a few months, or over several millennia. Do This Firstīefore you begin writing your story you probably already have an idea about the scale of the timeline.

#AEON TIMELINE ERAS PC#

Aeon Timeline works on both Mac and PC - I happen to be using a Mac. I’ll be talking about the Novel template, which I’ve modified as a template. The less chronological your plot, the more useful you’ll find Aeon Timeline 2.

#AEON TIMELINE ERAS FULL#

Utilising Aeon’s ‘arc’ entity is helpful when creating a story with a plot full of time leaps and backtracking. This reads beautifully when done well, but is complicated to pull off. Storytellers tend to jump back and forth in a timeline telling their audience each chunk as and when they think of it (actually, as best serves the story).

#AEON TIMELINE ERAS SOFTWARE#

This software is really, really useful if you are utilising a homodiegetic character as narrator. (Scrivener is also famous for that.) Below I list some ways I’ve been using Aeon Timeline 2. Every person using Aeon probably uses it differently.

#AEON TIMELINE ERAS MANUAL#

What Aeon’s website and user manual won’t tell you: How exactly we might make use of this software to generate content for a story. There’s less to it, and works according to similar principles. If you understand Scrivener, Aeon Timeline will be easy to work out. The main thing to remember here is that Scrivener will make you close the file in Scrivener before working on it in Aeon.Īs the Aeon Timeline people say themselves, you really only need to know the basics of this software in order to get started. If you love Scrivener, you’re probably the sort of person who’ll love Aeon, too. I’m talking about panoramic novels of the kind pioneered by Dickens: White Teeth by Zadie Smith, The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer or Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. If you’re writing a ‘sprawling’ kind of novel, Aeon Timeline would be indispensable. This, in my view, is the main beauty of Aeon Timeline.

As you populate the timeline, the story will become more and more concretised inside your head. You’ll very quickly start populating the screen. If you have trouble starting, there’s no ‘blank page’ staring back at you in this piece of software. Basically, whatever you put into Aeon Timeline as a storyteller will exist for your eyes only.

As a content creation tool to help get a story onto the page.

As a project management tool to help get a story completed by a certain date.

Writers might use it in two distinct ways: Aeon Timeline 2 is a well-oiled piece of software with various uses.

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