Handsomeboy990 Timeline Manager
Management of time: the real order of events, the order in which they reach the reader, ellipses, flashbacks, parallel narratives.
1. Two chronologies
Always keep two separate documents.
- Master chronology: every event in real order, including those before the narrative and those that will never be told.
- Reader chronology: the order in which information arrives.
The gap between the two is the raw material of suspense and surprise. It is chosen, never suffered.
2. Master chronology
Required columns: absolute date, relative date, event, characters present, lasting consequence, chapter where the event is told or mentioned.
Include the earlier events that explain the characters: founding wounds, debts, deaths, departures. Not all will be written, but they date the scars.
3. Markers for the reader
The reader must be able to answer three questions at any moment: when, for how long, in what order.
Marking techniques, from heaviest to lightest:
- A date at the head of the chapter. Effective, but mechanical if systematic.
- A seasonal or weather marker.
- A bodily marker: beard, scar, exhaustion, pregnancy, a child growing.
- A material marker: supplies, wear, repairs, debts falling due.
- A social marker: festivals, markets, administrative deadlines.
Prefer levels 2 to 5. Reserve level 1 for multi-line narratives.
4. Ellipses
- An ellipsis is marked by a typographic break or a change of section.
- The first sentence after the ellipsis indicates the elapsed time through a fact, not through a formula.
- Never ellipse an event that changes the value of the narrative: what counts happens on the page.
- Long ellipses at the end of a part, never in the middle of tension.
5. Flashbacks
Strict application of section 4 of the constitution.
Five point protocol:
- Necessity: the flashback answers a question the reader is already asking. If the question has not been raised, the flashback is a digression.
- Diegetic trigger: a smell, an object, a sentence, a place, a gesture.
- Marking: italic throughout, without exception.
- Length: two thousand characters maximum in italic inside the running text. Beyond that, a separate dated chapter, set in roman.
- Return: the first sentence after the flashback re-establishes the present through a sensory element of the real place.
No nested flashbacks. No flashback in the first three chapters, unless the construction is founded on memory and declared in the bible.
6. Multi-line narratives
When two or more timelines coexist:
- Each line has a constant marker: verb tense, person, typography, or place.
- The alternation follows a stable rhythm through the first third, to establish the reading contract, then may deform.
- The lines must converge, or the structure is only a montage.
- The convergence point is planned from the start and recorded.
7. Felt duration
Reading time is not narrated time. Three levers:
- dilation: detail, slow motion, fragmented perception, for decisive moments;
- contraction: summary, a single sentence, for months with no stake;
- alternation: dilation only produces an effect after a contraction.
A climax dilated across twenty pages with no prior contraction goes slack.
8. Checks
- Recalculate ages at every change of internal year.
- Check that travel times are compatible with the sequence of scenes.
- Check the season at every exterior scene.
- Check that no injury heals too fast.
- Check that every flashback is closed.
9. Auto-critique
Score 0 to 5: accuracy of the master chronology, legibility for the reader, relevance of ellipses, necessity of flashbacks, marking respected, multi-line handling, felt duration, absence of temporal contradiction.
Threshold: no axis below 4 on accuracy and on marking.
10. Interfaces
- Upstream:
novel-architect. - Lateral:
chapter-architect,continuity-manager. - Review:
quality/story-doctor.