Linking multiple scrivener projects to a single timeline document

Hi there, has anyone worked out a way to link/sync multiple scrivener projects to a single Aeon timeline document?

Is the development team working on this feature?

Thanks

Unfortunately no, there isn’t a way to do this at the moment.

It isn’t something that is currently being worked on, but is on our feature request to consider adding in the future (it would have to involve adding the ability to have multiple Narratives).

1 Like

Why complicate things? A single Narrative and a single Scrivener project provide the ability to (in my case) plot and write a multi-novel series. In fact, even if this feature were to be added, I wouldn’t use it. (I respect others who would use it, though.)

1 Like

I know people that write large series of novels all in one Scrivener project. It has many advantages to keep the stuff together in one project.

3 Likes

I know this is an older topic, but I’d just like to add my two cents to what OP suggested and express that there are users who continue to hope for this feature.

My entire use case of Aeon in v2 revolved around syncing multiple projects to the same timeline. It was invaluable for tracking dates and events across multiple interconnected series and books.

Transferring my existing timelines to v3 was quite difficult because it required choosing only one project to sync with. Regretfully I gave up on syncing my timeline to any Scrivener projects at all.

I still desperately miss the multiple syncing in v3. I would be very grateful to the devs if they would one day reintroduce this feature to Aeon!

1 Like

Vela, out of curiosity (and not to be argumentative), since a single Scrivener project can contain a series (including a books series), why not just do that? There must be at least one reason I’m just not thinking of.

That’s a great question, and I’m sure that would work really well for a lot of authors! It’s definitely worth considering, but I didn’t find it a good fit for me for a few reasons.

I write epic fantasy, so my series are long (10 or so books), and each book is roughly 200,000 words. It gets pretty unwieldy to store that many manuscripts in one big Scrivener project. I admittedly haven’t tested it on Scrivener 3, which would surely handle things faster, but I had performance issues on Scrivener 2 loading just 2 books in one project.

I think it would pose some challenges with compiling because it’s less convenient to enable/disable which documents you need to export for each book, plus juggling multiple front and back matters.

And unfortunately, storing each series in the same Scrivener project still wouldn’t help with time-lining events across interconnected series.

But this is just my experience, and I can see storing an entire series in one Scrivener project being very convenient for other authors. :slight_smile:

Thank you for the suggestion though!

1 Like

Makes perfect sense, Vela.

I’m on my first novel of a four-novel fantasy series. I’m only on my first novel in terms of writing (about a fourth of the way through the first draft), though I’ve outlined the series in AT3. So far, my approach of having a single Scrivener project seems to be working, but time will tell! Thanks for your perspective on this – you definitely have way more experience than I do.

I kn ow this is an old topic, but I’m now really starting to work with AT and I’d love to sync it with Scrivener.
I too am writing a fantasy series (possibly 5 books as the main series + several standalones that might also turn into series in the same world, but that’s for the far future).
In my one Scrivener project I planned to have all the books, including all the (developmental and line-editing) drafts of each book.

What are your experiences so far a year later?

Is it even possible to work with multiple drafts of the same book for which the timeline might change from draft to draft?

Thank you for sharing your experiences! @SCN @velarothauthor

1 Like

Only curious: Why don’t you just stick with your established workflow and keep Aeon Timeline 2?