Looking for timeline tool for time travel

[Montero]

Been asking questions about Scrivener on a different thread.

This question could be for Scrivener, or for any writing or time line tool.

Ultimate challenge for a time line tool - a story with time travel in it.

Anyone ever tried to keep a time travel story straight with a time line tool?
Especially one with multiple threads to it.

Any comments on the good, the bad and the ugly?

 

[Vertigo]

I use flowcharts to do this sort of thing. Obviously not as flowcharts but only as a visual representation of the timeline(s) and scenes happening at various points in time along them.

Bottom line whatever you do it's going to be tough. I have had an idea for a time travel story and to be honest that aspect of it terrifies me!

 

[Montero]

Any particular flow chart software you'd recommend?

 

[RJM Corbet]

any particular flow chart software you'd recommend?

e=mc2 ...

 

[Montero]

You just couldn't resist, could you?

 

[RJM Corbet]

You just couldn't resist, could you?

Nah ... you walked right into it, mate

Sorry, completely missed the point of your query ...

 

[Vertigo]

well I tend to just use MS Visio 'cos I've got it. But there are quite a few freebie ones available if you search around and they're probably pretty much as good!

 

[Montero]

Nah ... you walked right into it, mate
..

You could have said "resistance is futile"



@ Vertigo. Might have used Visio occasionally in dim and distant past but don't have it now. Have tried to use MS Project once for timelines (not involving time travel) but that drove me nuts. (Mind you time travel would help a lot of projects arrive on time..)

Will go hunting.

 

[Vertigo]

Yeah I had a play with MS Project for organising timelines and gave up in despair. Went back to flowcharts and dreaming about maybe one day finding the time to write something myself that would do it.

 

[Montero]

It sort of needs to be more graphic than numerical I think - or to have the options to flick between the two.

I've done timelines with post-its stuck to the wall and string linking them.

Any tool really needs a bit of the MS Project functionality - as in the bits that track how long things take and the one that re-configures a timeline when you move things - but it should be possible to turn it on and off and tell it to reconfigure only when you've done playing. Also how long it takes should be optional and you might only want it for bits of your timeline, so it should be intermittent so you can use it only for when something is time critical. So over all a relative positions of events tool, with optional time function.

So what I'd like is "something" where I can effectively write a post-it to say for example "Bloggs falls downstairs" ten hours elapse "Smith finds Bloggs and calls ambulance" and be able to drag and drop these around the screen, to pick up and move arrows and the whole thing knows that Bloggs has to fall before Smith finds him. But Bloggs and Smith are on separate timelines that only meet at that point.

 

[Vertigo]

Yeah - exactly what I wanted!

Although I'm not thinking about a time travel story I was looking at one with some significant relativistic time difference from close to lightspeed travel and that's nearly as bad!

Unfortunately I've never found anything. As I said, I did think about writing something myself but frankly the aspect that most put me off was working out the logic to keep all the connections between 'boxes' from getting totally tangled as things get moved around. I'm always impressed by how well some applications manage to do that

 

[Montero]

Just downloading Storybook to try out for plotting, will see how that goes for this...

 

[Vertigo]

I'll be interested to see how you get on!