One timeline decides what happened first.
StoryVue's Master Timeline is a story timeline for novelists and series writers. Drag every scene into the order events happen, give it an in-world date, and each scene knows how old everyone is and whose point of view it is. Free on every plan, with no AI.
Create your account
Every scene, in the order it happens.
Each row shows the scene's point of view, setting and in-world date, and the days since the previous dated scene. Filter by character, plot or tag. Story order is the timeline itself; Telling order lists the prose scenes as the reader meets them, each with its story number.
How to build a story timeline.
The order you set here is what every later scene inherits from: recorded changes, relationship phases and ages all follow it.
Add your scenes. Scenes from every plot land on one list. Add missing scenes places new ones beside their plot siblings without touching your order.
Put them in order. Drag a row by its handle, or use the arrows. Scenes from different plots interleave freely, and Rebuild can work the order out from your canvases.
Date them. Give a scene an in-world date, or set it a number of days after the previous dated scene.
Add birth dates. Give characters a birth date and every scene knows each one's age. Hover a name at a scene to see it.
Set the point of view. Point of view links to a character, so a rename follows it everywhere.
Pick a scene, see what is true.
The scene ledger beside the timeline answers one question for the selected scene: what is true here? Who is in it, what changed, what is still true from earlier, and every relationship active between them. Print it on every plan.
When the dates have to hold.
Dates, ages and point of view are free. These build on them.
Chronology
On Author: dates that run backwards, undated scenes between dated ones, and characters on stage before they are born or after they die.
Custom calendars
On World Builder: invent months, weekdays and eras, then date scenes in them.
Character timelines
On World Builder: one character's life in timeline order, from appearances and point of view scenes to every change.
The rest of the writer tools.
The timeline is part of the free planning core, with no time limit, and every account includes one free trial of the top plan.
Relationship arcs
Allies, then rivals, then something else: each phase pinned to the scene where it turns. Free.
Story bible
Who knows what, how old everyone is, and what is still open, for one book or a series. Free.
Thirteen analysis tools
Checks that read your draft the way a structural editor would. None of them use AI. Author, $10/mo.
Every writer tool
The whole kit for novelists on one page, from the first canvas to the compiled manuscript.
Start with the sample story, or your own.
The sample story is Alice in Wonderland as a finished project: the full manuscript with point of view, dates and margin notes, wired to 85 entities, 57 connections and a 14-scene Master Timeline. It's on your Dashboard the moment you sign up and stays one click away under Start from…, beside the Ravensmoor campaign for game masters. Or start from an empty canvas. No credit card, no time limit.