Do you make timelines for your books? I played around with the idea for one of my previous books, but for the most part it seemed like overkill. I’m a fan of the vague “x days later” school of timeline.
However, the book I’m working on now is requiring me to make one. Events are happening very quickly, so that “x days later” thing isn’t going to work (“x hours later” is a fast way to 48-hour days). Plus, I’ve got two points of view, and it’d be helpful to know which of them is doing what when.
So I’ve started putting things into Aeon Timeline as I fill in my outline some more. It’s fun software because I get to color code things and tag them–and it integrates with Scrivener, so I’ll be able to dump the outline into that program once it’s done. First thing I had to do was create a calendar, because the book isn’t on Earth, I’m going to need to refer to dates (maybe), and Aeon lets you create custom calendars. So now my events are taking place on Day2xxx, the 3rd of Month9xxxx. I’ll name them later if I really need to.