The narrative is a separate structure from your timeline, where you can organize your story’s events as they appear in your book or project.

• The timeline shows the full sequence of events.
  
• The narrative is where you choose how to tell the story to your audience.
  

You can approach working with the narrative in various ways. There is no right or wrong way to use it, and you can move back and forth between the narrative and the timeline easily as needed.

When to Use the Narrative

Whether you’re starting with a rough idea or bringing in an existing story, the narrative helps you shape and organize your story. Here’s when to use it in your process:

• You want to develop or improve an existing story
  Bring in your existing story outline to further develop it, or use it as a starting point for building a timeline of your story's details.
  
• You want to focus on storytelling
  Map out how your story unfolds for the reader, without worrying about dates or logical consistency.
  
• You want to focus on pacing
  If you're writing to story beats or following a specific structure, the narrative helps you place key moments at the right points in your story. By seeing your story laid out, it’s easier to position those beats exactly where they need to fall.
  

When to Use the Timeline

Building out a timeline gives you a strong foundation for writing your story. Here's when the timeline can help your process:

• You want to develop backstory
  Map out a character’s past or your world’s history—even if those details don’t appear in the story. The timeline lets you see the events surrounding your narrative.
  
• You want to map the true sequence of events
  Laying out events in order helps keep your story logically sound, and helps you plan realistic dates, ages, and the flow of events.
  
• You're writing a story based on true events
  Use the timeline to organize the facts, so you can anchor your story in real events.
  

There are two ways to view your narrative in Aeon Timeline:

• Narrative view: A board with draggable cards
  
• Outline view: A table view of the narrative
  

If the Narrative and Outline views aren't available in the toolbar, you can enable them by:

1. Open

   Settings.
   
2. Select the Narrative tab.
   
3. Check the box for "Track independent narrative".
   
4. Click OK to confirm your settings changes.
   
5. The toolbar will now show the Narrative and Outline buttons.
   

Build your story's structure using chapters, scenes, and acts, and organize your story in a way that makes sense for you.

You can create both events and folders in the narrative.

• Events represent your story's key moments.
  
• Folders help you create structure for your story, by letting you group events into acts, books, chapters, or other sections.
  

Create a New Event or Folder

1. In the Narrative view, click the
   Add button
   .
2. Select an option to create either an event or a narrative folder.
   
3. Type a name to give it a title.
   

Add an Event to a Folder

Once added, events can be dragged and dropped to adjust their placement or nested within folders or other events.

You can also use the Add buttons to create new events within existing folders or events.

Bring Over an Existing Scrivener or Ulysses Project

You can bring your Scrivener or Ulysses project into Aeon Timeline by syncing your Manuscript folder with the narrative. Syncing creates a mirror image of your document structure, and you can optionally sync document titles, synopses, colors, keywords, and more.

Once syncing is set up, your edits in Aeon Timeline will flow back to your writing project. Whether you’ve adjusted the order of scenes or tweaked the titles, everything will be in place and ready to go when you switch back to Scrivener or Ulysses to continue writing.

For a complete rundown of everything you need to know about syncing, check out our syncing articles in the knowledge base >

Once you’ve used the narrative to create a rough outline of chapters and scenes, you can then use the timeline to view how your story unfolds chronologically.

How to Add Narrative Events to Your Timeline

There are multiple ways events from your narrative can be added to the timeline:

By Adding Dates in the Inspector

Giving an event in your narrative a date will make it show on your timeline.

1. In the Narrative view, select an event to bring up the inspector.
   
2. In the Dates panel, enter a start date.
   
3. The event will now be visible on the timeline when you switch to the Timeline view.
   

By Dragging from the Events Panel

The events panel lists all events you have created. It includes the events on your timeline, plus any not shown on the timeline because they don't have dates.

1. Switch to the Timeline view.
   
2. Click the

   event icon in the sidebar to open the event panel.
3. Drag and drop an event to place it on the timeline.
   

An event’s date and narrative position are independent of each other. If you change an event’s date or drag it around your timeline, it won’t change where it is positioned in your narrative. Likewise, if you move an event’s position in your story in the narrative, it won’t change its date or position on the timeline. 

All other event details, however, are shared, such as the event’s title or assigned characters. If you change its title in the narrative, you’ll also see the updated title on the timeline.

How to Further Build Out Your Timeline

Events on the timeline can add backstory or context to your narrative, helping you track what’s happening beyond the main plot. They will only appear in the narrative if you choose to add them to it.

See Create Your First Event to learn how to create and edit events on your timeline.

If you want to add an event to the narrative later, follow the steps in How to Add Timeline Events to Your Narrative.

Once you've laid your story's groundwork with a timeline, you can use those events to build the narrative your readers will experience.

You have complete control over which timeline events appear in the narrative. This helps you separate the moments shown to readers from those that unfold in the background.

There are multiple ways events can be added to the narrative:

By Using the Narrative View Add Buttons

1. Switch to the Narrative view.
   
2. Click the

   Add button where you want the event to be placed in your narrative.
3. Select an event from the Add Existing list.

By Dragging from the Events Panel

The events panel lists all events you have created. It includes both the events in your narrative as well as those that aren’t, such as events used for backstory or context that appear only on the timeline.

1. Switch to the Narrative view.
   
2. Click the

   event icon in the sidebar to open the event panel.
3. Drag and drop an event to place it in the narrative.
   

The narrative view gives you the freedom to shape your story without affecting your timeline. You can experiment with different story orders, cut or combine scenes, and move key moments around to explore what works for your story.

Rearrange Events in the Narrative

Events in the narrative can be arranged in any way without affecting their position on the timeline, leaving you free to experiment with story sequencing and chapter structure without impacting the true chronology of events.

Remove an Event from the Narrative

You can remove an event from your narrative in a couple of ways, depending on whether you want to delete it from the project entirely or let it stay on the timeline if you’ve given it dates:

• Deleting an event removes it from your project entirely. It will no longer exist in your narrative OR your timeline.
  
• Remove from Narrative removes the event from the Narrative view, but doesn’t affect any placement on the timeline.
  

To remove an event only from the narrative:

1. Select the event to bring up the inspector.
   
2. Click Remove from Narrative.
   
3. Alternatively, right-click the event and choose Remove from Narrative.