Can I change character relationships throughout the story?

Q & A
#1

Let’s just say I am writing a story. There’s always going to be “static” data, meaning people and relationships that don’t change, like sister and brother. Or like God always being a part of Christianity. Or how George Washington will always be known as the first president of the United States.

But then there are relationships and character groups that could be ever-changing. What if a character betrays another and joins another character group midway through the story? What if part of a country decides to become liberated and form a new, smaller country? What if someone dies and you no longer want them a part of that character group?

How can I keep track of the ever-changing data?

Then my other question is can “God” be a part of multiple “Character Groups” - Christianity, Catholic, Judaism, etc.?

I know there are timelines and events and hierarchy. But I am not sure how I can use them when I need the characters to change groups. I’ve tried reading the Q&As, etc. It just isn’t really that helpful, to be honest.

I can give specific examples in my story if needed.

Thank you for any help in advance!

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#2

Unfortunately what you are after isn’t currently available in Aeon Timeline. While you can have multiple relationships between items, they aren’t something that can be defined by dates or the narrative position of your story.

Items can also only have one “parent” group currently, so it isn’t possible to have the same one in multiple groups, or move them around as the story changes.

It is something that has been requested before and is on our feature request list to possibly look at adding in the future.

#3

@Evie, depending on how important it is for you to be able to track the changing items (doesn’t help with God), you might consider creating a custom item type for it.

For example, I want to:

  1. track pursuit changes (e.g., employment, volunteer, or hobby/passion) for some key characters,
  2. be able to easily see those changes over time, and
  3. capture some details specific to each changeover.

I ended up:

  • creating an item type called Pursuit,
  • set it to track dates,
  • added all desired properties and relationships I wanted to track within that, and
  • set it to allow a parent type (in my case, lifespan or deathspan, which in turn allows for a parent of Character; most people (a.k.a. probably-everyone-but-me :laughing:) can skip that intervening allowed parent step, of course).

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[EditToAdd] I’d suggest NOT ticking the “chronological order (always)” option … it caused me headaches galore :0)

[EditToAdd2] Putting the pursuit under characters (or lifespan or deathspan under character) didn’t work because of my chronological order preference – if that option’s ticked, the character stops syncing to Scrivener. So, if one is not syncing anyhow, the lack thereof is moot.

#4

Thank you. I’m checking this out! I’m learning how things connect to each other and what things are. I’m not understanding fully yet so I will need to play around.

#5

If you try what I suggested, I also suggest NOT ticking the “chronological order (always)” option … it caused me headaches galore. :0)

#6

This is something that might be better treated as events or arcs. Even though it might not be an „event“ like a specific scene, it could be a timeline based information. Like „Tom and Jerry friends jan-feb“, „T&J enemies mar-oct“, „T&J friends again nov-dec“. You could link specific scenes to these „arcs“ or whatever you want to call it to get an overview about which phase of the relationship they’re in at the time of that scene.

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