Time lines

Not really art but this is more for my writing.  I've developed my own way (which probably isn't unique) on getting down timelines and plots.  Sharing it because I can and because I haven't uploaded anything in a while.  So there, you get two ways to layout your plot/timeline.

1st picture (to the left) - This is the timeline/plot for a novel that I’m working on.  I’m using the bullet list style from this post (that is a link to my tumblr blog, fair warning).  Anyone who doesn't want to click on the link, basically the bullet list is Year>Month>Day>Event>Additional notes.  It is nine pages so far and nowhere near done especially considering this story spans six years.  That green circle at the top are notes, mostly birth dates/ages of the main characters because I suck at remembering them.  Also there’s a short snippet that’s a prophecy in the story for me to look back and keep the story on track.  That prophecy must be fulfilled, or my story falls apart.  This is all my own stuff and really a rough draft more than anything so I’m making notes on EVERYTHING, I’m even fleshing out areas that I already have a better idea while other points are like three words.  Also, I skip around if you notice the ending it there, it’s already plotted I know how things end.  It’s that middle bit that keeps changing around and frustrating me.  By the time this is done I’ll probably also have things highlighted and the note section will be much longer. 

2nd picture (to the right) - This is just the timeline for the comic that I’m working on with my IRL best friend and it also follows a bullet list.  This one is Year>Month>Chapter/background action>Additional notes.  That whole first page and part of the second one is notes and how the order of how things happen.  This one is super skeletal because this is the rough timeline only, the plot to this is much, much, much, longer and in-depth. The actual plot to this is set up in a similar fashion as the timeline, but there is a mini-plot for each of those orange highlights. Here, because I have the seeds for two other comics going on (and honestly I need to update this because I’ve added at least another page or two to this one) I’ve gone through and highlighted things for the different archs.  Me and my friend are both very visual people and the color helps keep the separate archs from getting mixed up.  Oh and the green bits are actually birth years, we had a lot of characters we needed to keep track of.

On both of these I actually start the timelines before the story starts and that helps be see what can I do history wise for the story so that things build naturally (and so I can consistently reference things later on) so that events will lead to the main characters and their plots.

The first one is better for novels where the action is continuous because it merges the plot and the timeline.  You're not breaking it down chapter by chapter here because with books there's generally one large plot with a few smaller archs.  This is good if you're just getting the main idea of where your story is going, working in the small archs, fleshing out the plot, and generally seeing the overall picture.  This is a big step before doing your first rough draft because you'll get the main points planned out and you can tweak it while you write so you can see if you change one thing how it will effect the rest of your story.

The second one is better if you already have an idea and the plot is broken up in lots of little archs, like in a series.  You still are getting the main gist of your overarching plot, but you don't flesh it out here.  This is a quick, skeletal, reference timeline.  The chapters are put down in the timeline and you flesh those out in different documents.  Around those chapters you can add in things that are stand alone for your own reference but may effect other things in the story.

There is one more that I didn't show here and it's a straight plot line, what you would make in tandem with the second timeline.  Like the other two, it is also a bullet list but instead of being Year>Month>Day>Event>Notes it is Chapter>Action>Additional notes and the whole thing is planning out every little thing in that chapter before you write it.  This is what I use for the comic because it makes it easier to plan out what is going to happen before we put pen to paper and draw things out.

Again, this has probably been done a bajillion times but I'm going to post it because when I first started writing I never plotted anything and never finished anything.  So I'm going to put this out there because someone may find it useful.