Timeline and canvas

A timeline shows when things happen in the story. A canvas is a board where you place things wherever you like. Both are notes in the binder, so a project can have as many of each as it needs: one timeline for the war and one for the heist, a canvas per act.

Neither needs a module.

Creating and openingCopy Anchor Link

Create a timeline or a canvas like any other note: New… at the top of the binder, then Timeline or Canvas. "New timeline" and "New canvas" in the command palette do the same. Click the note in the binder to open it.

A timeline or a canvas cannot be changed into another kind of note, and a text note cannot be changed into one.

TimelineCopy Anchor Link

Story time runs left to right. Scenes sit where their Story date says, and last as long as their Duration says. Events that are not scenes, such as a war or a birth, are added straight to the timeline.

What appears on a timelineCopy Anchor Link

Every timeline in a project shows the same dated notes, because the dates are properties of the notes. Events are separate for each timeline.

Scenes with no story date are listed along the bottom as Undated scenes.

Story dates and durationsCopy Anchor Link

A scene has two properties that place it, both in the Properties panel of the inspector:

• Story date is written YYYY-MM-DD, or YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm with a time. The month and day may be left off: 1820 is the first day of that year. A year can be negative, -0450-02-01, and up to six digits.
• Duration is written as a number and a unit: 2h, 3 days, 1h 30m, 2 weeks. The units are minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years, in full or shortened.

With the Gregorian calendar a story date can also be written the way your browser understands, such as "3 May 1820". With a custom calendar it can be written with a month's name and two numbers, such as "4 Frostmonth 312".

A date the calendar cannot read leaves the scene among the undated ones.

To give another kind of note a place on the timeline, add a text property called "Story date" to that kind, and "Duration" if you want a length. See custom fields.

The World bible's Event type has a Story date field already, so those entries appear on the timeline too. They cannot be dragged: change the date in the entry's properties.

Placing scenesCopy Anchor Link

There are four ways to put a scene on the timeline. Each one writes the scene's Story date, so the others follow.

1. Type a Story date in the scene's properties.
2. Drag the scene from the Undated scenes strip onto the timeline.
3. Drag a note from the binder onto the timeline.
4. Click a scene on the timeline and change the date in the panel that opens.

When you drop a note from the binder, a note whose kind has a Story date property is placed at that point. Any other note, or one you cannot edit, becomes a new event with the note's title, linked to the note. Dropping works in Chronological mode only.

Moving and stretchingCopy Anchor Link

• Drag a bar sideways to change when it starts. Its length stays the same.
• Drag the right edge to change how long it lasts. This writes the scene's Duration.
• Click a bar to select it and open its panel.
• Double-click a bar to open the scene, or the note an event is about, in a new tab.

Movement snaps to a round unit for the zoom you are at: a minute when zoomed right in, then 5 and 15 minutes, an hour, 6 hours, a day, a week, 30 days, a year.

You can move a scene if you can edit that scene, and an event if you can edit the timeline.

The panelCopy Anchor Link

Clicking a bar opens a panel at the top right.

For a scene: its title (click to open it), Story date, Duration, and the date written out in full. Clearing the story date takes the scene off the timeline.

For an event:

A date the calendar cannot read is outlined in red and not saved.

EventsCopy Anchor Link

• Click Event in the toolbar to add one in the middle of what you can see.
• Double-click an empty part of the timeline to add one at that moment, in that lane.

A new event is called "New event". Events are for things that happen in the story but are not a scene you write. Deleting the note an event is about keeps the event and drops the link.

LanesCopy Anchor Link

Lanes in the toolbar splits the timeline into rows.

Whatever has no lane goes in the last one: No thread, or Unassigned.

Dragging a scene up or down into another lane:

• In POV character or Location lanes, it changes the scene's POV or Location. Dropping it in Unassigned clears the property.
• In Plot threads lanes, scenes do not change lane by dragging. Put a scene in a thread on the plot grid.

An event can be dragged to any lane. An event remembers one lane, so after you switch from one kind of lanes to another it sits in No thread or Unassigned until you place it again.

Bars that overlap in time are stacked on separate rows inside their lane.

Zoom and panCopy Anchor Link

The zoom runs from single minutes to hundreds of thousands of years on one screen. The axis labels change with it, from times of day to days, months and years.

A timeline with nothing on it opens on the thirty days around today in the Gregorian calendar, or around the first day of year 1 in a custom calendar.

Chronological and narrativeCopy Anchor Link

The two buttons in the toolbar choose what the horizontal axis means.

• Chronological is story time. Everything above applies.
• Narrative lays the dated scenes out in reading order, one slot each, numbered, with each scene's date above it. A scene that happens earlier in story time than the one before it is marked flashback. Events are not shown. Nothing can be dragged, and Event is greyed out.

In Chronological, the Show reading order button draws a line from each scene to the next in reading order. It is on to begin with. A step backwards in time is drawn as a dashed orange line: a flashback. Point at a line to see which two scenes it joins.

CalendarsCopy Anchor Link

A timeline uses the Gregorian calendar until you choose another. The Calendar list in the toolbar has every calendar in the project and Manage calendars….

To make a calendar for an invented world:

1. Choose Calendar, then Manage calendars….
2. Click New calendar. In a project with no calendars yet, the dialog opens straight on a new one.
3. Fill in the fields below. A line at the bottom shows how the date 312-02-05 reads in your calendar.
4. Click Save calendar. A new calendar is put on this timeline at once.

A month with no name, or an era with no name, is dropped when you save.

Things to know about calendars:

• Calendars belong to the project. Every timeline can use any of them, and each timeline remembers its own choice.
• A custom calendar has no leap years. Every year is the same length.
• Dates are still written as numbers: 312-04-17 is day 17 of the fourth month of year 312.
• In the Gregorian calendar, years before 1 are shown as BC.
• Edit and Delete in the dialog change or remove a calendar. Deleting is immediate. A timeline whose calendar was deleted goes back to Gregorian.
• Scene dates are text, so they are read again in whatever calendar the timeline uses. Events keep their place as a count of minutes, so their dates read differently after you switch calendar.
• Saving a project as a template copies its calendars.
• The continuity checks read story dates too.

Creating, editing and deleting calendars needs edit access to the project. Choosing a timeline's calendar needs edit access to that timeline.

What is saved, and for whomCopy Anchor Link

The calendar, the lanes, chronological or narrative, and the reading-order line are saved on the timeline, so everyone sees it the same way. If you cannot edit the timeline you can still change lanes and mode for yourself; that is not saved. The zoom and position are not saved.

Under a spoiler horizonCopy Anchor Link

When a spoiler horizon is on, the timeline shows only the scenes the audience knows by then.

CanvasCopy Anchor Link

An endless board for arranging things by hand: a storyboard, a mind map, a wall of index cards with string between them. Everyone who has the canvas open works on it together, and you see their pointers with their names.

The toolbarCopy Anchor Link

The buttons at the top left:

A new card appears in the middle of what you can see. You can also drag any note from the binder onto the canvas to make a note card where you drop it.

Kinds of cardCopy Anchor Link

Note card. A live window onto a note in the binder: its kind, status dot, title and the first lines of its synopsis. Change the note and the card changes. Double-click to open the note in a new tab. If the note is in the trash the card reads "In the trash". If it was deleted, or you are not allowed to see it, the card reads "Restricted or deleted note" and does not show its title.

Text card. Double-click to write, click away to save. Up to 5,000 characters. A colour tints the whole card.

Image / shot panel. Select it and fill in the panel at the top right:

The shot, camera move and duration show as small badges on the picture.

Group. A dashed frame with a label, for an act or a sequence. Select it to change the label (up to 120 characters) and the colour. Drag a card onto a group to put it inside; it then moves with the group. Drag it out to take it out. Removing a group leaves its cards where they were.

Working with cardsCopy Anchor Link

Removing a note card takes it off the canvas only. The note itself is untouched.

ConnectionsCopy Anchor Link

Drag from one of the four dots on a card's edges to another card to draw an arrow between them. Groups have no dots and cannot be connected.

Click an arrow to select it. The panel at the top right then has a Label field (up to 80 characters), for a word such as "causes", "then" or "meanwhile", and Remove. ⌫ also removes a selected arrow. Removing a card removes its arrows.

Getting aroundCopy Anchor Link

Drag the background to pan and scroll to zoom. The buttons at the bottom left zoom in, zoom out and fit. The small map at the bottom right shows the whole canvas; drag in it to move.

What a canvas feedsCopy Anchor Link

• A note card counts as a link from the canvas to that note. The canvas shows up in the note's backlinks and in the graph.
• The text of text cards and captions is searchable, and a #tag written there is a tag on the canvas.
• That text gives the canvas a word count in the binder. It is not counted in your writing stats.
• A canvas has version history like a text note. A version shows how many cards and connections it had; restore it to see it.

Who can editCopy Anchor Link

If you cannot edit the canvas, the toolbar reads Read only. You can still pan, zoom and open notes from their cards.

A canvas is saved the same way as a text note, including while you are offline. See Saving and working offline. If two people change the same card at the same moment, the later change wins for that card; changes to different cards are both kept.

The Canvas view shows everything, whatever the spoiler horizon is.