thewitt Posted July 11, 2014 Report Share Posted July 11, 2014 So I am an aspiring writer, and as many do, I have taken on too complex a project. OK, it's been fun. One of my pet peaves when reading other works with multiple story lines is when the timelines don't line up. This can be easy to get caught up in as one character may dominate a storyline for a good portion of the writing, and then you need to "catch up" the other characters. Many techniques exist for this, but for me the mechanics were an important starting point. The other related item I really hate is when authors use the moon as an element in their story, and they have two full moons in less than a month... or one full moon and then six weeks later another full moon, or in one of my favorite author's recent works, a full moon followed by a new moon (no moon) two days later... Now the lunar cycle on Earth is very predictable. So much so that you can see the lunar calendar for any month and any year from now until the end of time. If your novel takes place on Earth, there is no excuse for your moon to be out of sync with reality - unless of course that is part of your actual story When I undertook the first major rewrite of my current project, I decided I finally needed to start using some timeline software. I chose Aeon Timeline, though I'm sure there are plenty of other options out there. Though I wish it were integrated into Storyist so that I could simply mark places in my story and have them show in my timeline, it's OK. I refer to the timeline regularly, and I have added a lunar timeline to my "year" in time. I started the book at a specific date and time in history (If the book is ever famous, I'll let someone else guess when this was) and I've kept the days of the week, duration between events, lunar calendar, seaons, etc, the mechanics of when things happen, in sync with this actual calendar. I highly encourage you to take this into account with your work. The timeline can be used to your advantage, or you can have a full moon three days after no moon... your choice -t Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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