If you want to be an efficient writer, using timelines to organize your story details might just save your sanity. Because let’s be honest—by the time we sit down to write a novel, most of us already have a ton of notes. They’re tucked away in digital files, scattered across writing apps, scribbled in notebooks, or buried somewhere in the coffee-stained folds of our brain.
And honestly? This is my jam. I love the brainstorming stage.
Everything’s still possible. I get to piece together the backstory that shaped my characters, map out key locations, and figure out how A leads to B, which leads to C. It’s like solving a story puzzle, and I live for it.
I sketch out character connections, jot down major tasks, and throw in the obstacles I’ll happily hurl at my protagonist. Creating that giant, glorious ball-pit of ideas? Pure joy.
But then comes the actual writing part.
And my brain quietly panics: Oh no.
It’s not that I’m winging it—I gave up pantsing a while ago. Once I saw how much stronger my drafts were when I used solid story structure and tools like the Story Map and Scene Maps [Formal and Informal], I was all in.
My problem? Digging through mountains of notes, trying to find that one key detail I know I wrote down somewhere. Keeping worldbuilding consistent and story logic intact gets a lot harder when the info you need is buried. That’s where timelines come in.
My favorite tool for staying efficient and focused: Timelines at One Stop for Writers.
Ironically, when we built Timelines, I was thinking of how it would help other writers with their story planning, not realizing how much this tool would also help me in so many different ways. Does it ever keep me and my story details organized!
Okay, I have to show you.
Excuse me while I geek out a bit.
Most people think of timelines as a way to create a calendar of events that happen throughout a story…and they’d be right. It’s a handy way to plot time sensitive events, like the order of battles in a war that will put your character on the throne, or the clues your mystery sleuth discovers at crime scenes as he hunts for a serial killer:
But timelines can also be used for so much more, like charting a character’s backstory wounds to better understand why they fear Abandonment:
Or, as a way to crystallize a character’s motivation in your mind, drawing right from the Character Motivation Thesaurus entries:
Timelines are also great for grouping objects or places and the important details associated with them, especially when you’ll need to source this information throughout the story. This was my big problem!
Here it is helping me keep track of the special powers of sacred gemstones in one of my stories:
Maybe you plot using Save The Cat, or you’re a bit of a note card plotter like Michael Crichton and like to write down story events and then play around the order. Timelines work really great for this because all the boxes are “drag-able,” so you can test out different scenarios by moving things around:
Honestly, I could probably come up with a million ways to use this tool, but I think you get the gist. If you want to see more ideas of what can be tracked and organized using a timeline, there’s a list here.
Between this and the Worldbuilding tool, planning story details and keeping it all organized has never been easier.
Want to give the Timeline Tool a whirl?
Build a timeline using One Stop for Writers’ Free Trial.
Do you ever create timelines to help you keep your story organized? What types of things do you track? Let me know in the comments!
Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.
Hey Angela, what an awesome idea. In the stories that I’ve worked on, I’ve always had a feeling of a huge gap between the research and the first draft.
This software sums up the issues and provides a fantastic solution that will help me organize my ideas tremendously.
It makes so much more sense to layout the information as such and build visual around it than box everything and then attempt to fill the draft at the whims of the structure.
I hope you find it helpful. i think with the right tools we can shave off so much of the learning curve because we learn to write fiction faster and stronger right out the gate. Thanks for leaving a comment! 🙂
Great article. The software is similar to storyboards. From my background as an animator, when doing the timeline, I wrote out blurbs of the scenes on about 50 note cards with slight detail. And then tacked them to wall so the whole story was in front of me at once. This way I could get a sense of the pacing flow too. Most important for me was being able to switch scenes around if needed. Being able to do this physically with actual tactile paper made me think through the decisions with more depth, but that’s me.
Thanks again and glad I discovered your site!
Yes very similar. I like the ability to switch scenes around also. The first time I did it was with physical note cards, but this is so much handier. 🙂 But I do know what you mean about the tactile component–I feel that way about resource writing craft books. I am able to digest the teachings more by holding the book and marking a spot if need be, but it isn’t the same with an ecopy.
Timelines is definitely my preference! It helps everything, I think 🙂 Plotting, pacing, character arc, etc. I have software that—when I finally get to writing my novels—has a timeline feature 🙂
That’s perfect Donna! I definitely love the versatility of using them. 🙂
I once created a sequence of action scenes where timing of events had to be accurate, often down to the second, for about 2 hours. I couldn’t have done that without a timeline.
Holy cow–that sounds like a huge challenge–good for you!
Just call me Graphic Organizer Girl! I not only use timelines but I save them. More than once I have been searching for a particular bit of information or data and find it on my lovely timeline. Oh, and I also date every single paper on which I write because you never know…
I’m so glad you shared this article; it’s very informative and helpful. May you have a very lovely day.
Hi Sharon! I am like you–I keep everything. But this is why timelines I think is so vital for me–it will help me organize those details I just can’t lose track of. Happy you found the article helpful. 🙂
This is fabulous, Angela. I can’t wait to use it!!
I hope you find it as helpful as I have! The possibilities are endless. 🙂
I’ve been sold on Plotting! I’m trying my first story on plotting, organization of details, worldbuilding logic, etc. It takes time, but I think in the long run, and in the end, it’s worth it!
I agree, it is so worth it. I am so glad I have evolved my writing to include more up front planning. 🙂
Hi Angela. That does look like a cool tool. I’m all for inviting the left brain to the writing party.
I appreciate your devotion to the teaching of storytelling craft, and you may be interested to know that I’ve again mentioned you and Becca in my latest blog post. I suggest that you may be saving lives–and I mean it.
Thank you.
I just finished the article–some very good food for thought. At least writers now have support and access to what they need–I can’t imagine how dark the dark days would have been for writers of the past. This is why we should celebrate them all, known or not, for following a passion that many around them didn’t understand or support. 😉
As an unapologetic plotter, I use timelines often. My current WIP involves two hi-tech government projects in two timelines. I think I’m going to parallel plot it, in which timelines are a necessity.
Unapologetic–I agree! There are just so many things to plan out when you write, and some novels are more complicated than others. If you mess something up (get the timeline of events wrong, mess in a detail, break the worldbuilding logic, etc.) the reader will be completely pulled out of the story. Hurray for us plotters and planners!