Say chapter one and two occur three days apart. Maybe in chapter four it's another four days. At first it's easy to keep track of this stuff, but after some time you find comments in your dialogue like... "It's been a week now," but as you're reading it's actually been more or less time. You want to purge all of these inconsistencies without removing the "time has passed" signals. (Maybe I'm doing it a complicated way and should just be blatant in the narration?) I just recently began to keep a bullet list at the very end of my document using the following format: (My draft is not divided into chapters yet. It's organized into "paired" scenes smaller than a chapter.) * Complete Scene Name | Time or times of day, Date Now, if you do, how do you personally keep track of your story's timeline? Is it a simple list format or something more complex? Do you have tips to better hold consistency the first time around or is it just a common thing writers have to look out for and fix?
I generally keep a brief spreadsheet of milestone events and how many weeks/months they happen from the beginning of the story.
I added a custom field in Scrivener for "Day", meaning "days since story start." I've fallen down on keeping it up, but I'll fix it at some point. I just realized that I got WAY off at one point and had sleet in one scene and flowers in another scene very close by. Oops. Some places I am blatant. In one scene, I mentioned that it had been nine weeks, and briefly discussed the season change. In a few places, I throw in things like "Two hours later" or "The next morning". Edited to add: And one of my characters is very aware of light, so the presence or absence of sunlight or moonlight or torches or lanterns or lit fireplaces is quite often mentioned, thus communicating at least day or night.
I use, surprise!, a software called Timeline to keep internally track of my timelines. This is only for me, though. I've noticed that as a reader, I couldn't care less about exact dates and timespans, and in my stories I've started to be pretty vague when it comes to information how much time has passed between one event/scene and the next. Usually it's absolutely enough if I indicate the passing of time in terms of seasons or something similar and only occasionally give concrete dates, like holidays.
I use calendars. I have two pages divided into months where I jot down the major events that happen during each month, (if any) and then I have a calendar booklet where each page is split into days (I print them from freeprintablecalendarsdotcom - others are available). Then I can have a record of birthdays and other special days in my characters years, whether they get mentioned or not, and it gives me the chance to decide what sort of weather they are having for the time of year, although that doesn't mean that the weather always gets a mention. In the story itself, I use a range of different things to show time passing. I'm not a great fan of "the next day" etc, but I will put things like, summer turned into autumn, or winter arrived too soon, within a matter of hours, with the light of a new day, etc etc.
As much as it goes against everything I stand for, I sometimes use ... math [dun dun dunnn]. I designate the first day X, and past that each day is X+[whatever]. I actually use this system more often for keeping track of years in longer plots and backstories, but it's applicable to days too -- and helpful for timeskips. I'll keep a notepad somewhere with the notation written down.
I use the date and place as my chapter headings. Rarely happens, but if there's a mid-chapter time skip, I make a note of where we are and when in bright red text in the WIP itself. (I keep all kinds of chapter reminders to myself in red text.) I also make a sticky note in the folder of scribbled notes I refer to often that has things like a copy of a 1980 calendar, currency conversion notes, character notes, etc.
1. I just don't! I tell myself I can figure it out later. 2. Suddenly it's later, I realize there are three characters in different locations who are traveling to and away from each other using different routes that take different amounts of time, and the plot now demands I figure out how many days Character A needs to spend in Location in order to miss Character B before they leave for Location and 3.
I printed out 1986 and 1987 calendars, the years of my story. I even went as far as to get into the weather history for certain days and weeks. I was still a little vague about exact days and dates, instead using the seasons, weather, holidays and events like school starting to give the reader an idea of where in the year we were. I just didn't feel like it was important to be specific about periods of time passing.
My story involves a bunch of mail, so I get postal stamps and dated letters. The weather and seasons are central to the whole cake, so that helps as well. As far as project management goes, I have two universal solutions: lists and spreadsheets... which are just 2-dimensional lists. The day they come up with the cubic screen, I'll be writing my lists in 3D. IN THE MEANTIME... Lists, lots of them.
I usually map it out in editing/re-write. Cause sometimes my plan for the story changes, I edit from printouts and I'll put the day of the week and time (E.G-Tuesday/9:30AM) in the top corner and follow as I read. It works for me cause I can reschedule my days with the writing. if I feel that it's not flowing enough or too much is happening in one day.
I'm with @cutecat22 and @graveleye , in that I use actual calendars (for day to day and month to month stuff.) It's sometimes important, when you're writing in the real world (either past, present or near future) to not only know how much time has gone by, but also what day of the week it might be. And as cutecat pointed out, it also helps to keep track of birthdays and other dates which may not be mentioned in the MS at that time, but, in real life, would have an impact on the characters. Just one strikes me in particular. People regularly get pregnant and have children in stories. So it helps to keep track of when and how. And how far along the pregnancy is, when certain other things happen. A woman who is 8 months pregnant is not going to be leaping about like a gazelle, climbing trees, and/or wearing the same clothing she wore 7 or 8 months ago. These are the kinds of details a calendar helps you keep straight. Another one that can REALLY trip you up ...how long it takes to do something. How long it takes to make a journey. How long it takes for paint to dry, or beer to ferment or to make a dress for a wedding. Without some kind of record, you're going to struggle. I remember beta reading an otherwise plausible novel (written by a friend) who had a person rushing back to a remote part of Scotland from the middle of Iran on a Vespa scooter, in order to attend a meeting. She made it in 5 days. Okay, she was in a hurry, but ...erm.... no. For year-related events, I keep a timeline. What happened when. That's not a pre-writing outline. It's a record of when things happened as you write them. So you don't write yourself into a corner. Think of it like a diary. You want to be able to go back and see when certain things actually happened. Maybe track when things started to change. When you're writing a complicated novel, whether it's the real world or some kind of fantasy-future-alternate history sort of thing, you'll need to keep track of the internal timeframe.
I write out a timeline based off of the genre I'm writing in it. Such as X Days: Such-and-such happens. Then I reference that in my writing to make sure I keep on track.
Here's a fun little timeline story. My novel starts approximately 3 weeks before the main character's family dies. I spend the next four months of time labelling the chapters 'x weeks/months since the attack', although that's as much for my benefit during the WIP stage as it is for my beta readers. Once I've got it the novel closer to done and I can get it all down on a timeline program/spreadsheet, I'll probably switch to using Star Trek-esque 'stardates' using the Imperial Year timekeeping system that the characters would be familiar with. At approximately three and a half months in, Malchoir goes to a funeral. There, he meets a friend, who introduces him to one of her friends. During the deceased's life, they all managed to become good friends with the guy entirely by coincidence. Well, the three of them (Mal, his friend Miranda, and her friend Zandakar) are reminiscing over those they've loved and lost. Malchoir makes a comment about having lost his family three months ago or so. Miranda is asked a question she refuses to answer, and in the melancholy silence, Zandakar speaks. "147 days," he says. "It's been 147 days since my wife died." Yes, this is a Buffy reference, but it's an almost entirely coincidental one. I mean, sure, I wanted him to say 147 days, but it just so happened that the timeline actually came within about a week of accuracy without me actually counting out the time (or even considering how long it had been since Mal's family died). His wife dies 30 days, give or take a few, before Malchoir's. 97 days later, the pair of them meet at a funeral.
My timeline was based on actual events and was a real struggle to make my characters adhere to the real thing. Also I couldn't use minutes as I'm sure no one had a watch in the early 1800s I did finally have to make a chart in two columns to line up the actual event with my character's major events.
