Multiple Narratives?

Q & A
#17

Ah okay, when you called the title of this post ‘Multiple Narratives’ I thought you meant something else. My mistake.

If you want to preserve a set of discrete events and move them around into different narrative structures, there are two ways to achieve this:

  1. Save down different versions of the same file with those events in each and then try the different narrative structures in each. Unfortunately, a multiple file system would be impossible to maintain easily if you wanted to add new events to your narrative in the future.

  2. The much simpler way is to just try different structures in the one timeline. Narrative view is very malleable. You can easily adjust the position of items by dragging and dropping them. This is the same approach Scrivener uses of course.

There has been talk of allowing multiple narratives in Aeon Timeline, but not in the way you want. That feature request is more to do with the planning of multiple books or TV episodes in one timeline file, and it wouldn’t solve your particular problem.

The system I built worked like a dream for that request but not for yours I’m afraid.

I hope you find a way of achieving what you want.

#18

If it is really important for you and if you are willing to put some time in it, then you could duplicate every item on your timeline, tag one A and the other B. Then you create two folders in your narrative – one called A and the other B. Put events A in A in one order and the identical events called B in the other folder. Now you can filter by A or B in your timeline and still see only one of the identical events at a time.

You can have two folders in your narrative, representing different structures. Once you’re done and decided which one it should be, you can delete one of those folders and you can go into your timeline, filter for either A or B and delete all the duplicate events in one action. If you do it with tags and not the title of the event you can even remove the tag afterwards without having to change the title again.

#19

Hi Rob,

That is exactly the system I built. Only using custom types and relationships rather than tags. I can upload the template file I created but I’m not convinced it answers @Lucho ’s specific needs in this instance as events can only be allocated to one narrative folder at a time. Although in my system if you allocate a relationship to an event and use multiple relationships then an event does show the prospective placement when filtered.

#20

That’s why I propose to duplicate the events. You could have two instances of the same event, called A and B (or whatever) and assign one to one version of the narrative and the other to another.

#21

True, that might work.

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#22

In project management there is baseline, the first calculated original project plan, then as your project progress, you can save some versions of it and alter it to fit new obstacles… i.e. replanning…
It would be nice if that was possible both in the timeline and in the narrative view… and then just use a split view to compare them…

But I think it will be a lot of programming to be able to store different version for each object and create and view the different timelines at ones… in most project management software the baseline is just showed as a shadow or a faded block with another color in the same timeline view… but none of them have a narrative view.

#23

@ahansonauthor & @Rob Thank you both for the time and effort in shining light onto this objective. I think that that creating duplicates of events is the way to go. Yes, there is some housekeeping involved, but not too arduous. Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction. Lucho

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#24

Hi!
Can you upload the template file? Interesting to see it

#25

Hi @Serabale,

I will happily upload the file, but I will need to pull together some instructions to go with it. I won’t be able to get around to that for a few days though as I have other deadlines to meet in the meantime.

Thanks for your interest.

#26

It’s dangerous to respond to a thread having read only half, but I’ll risk it here. I have exactly this request, and @ahansonauthor asks just the right questions.

My situation: My timeline includes the events of a multi-book saga (plus a number of short stories). I’m less concerned about syncing that designing, though sync ability would be a nice plus.

Is there any way that some sections of the timeline could be designated Book 1 (with title), and other’s Book 2, etc.? The idea is that these are discreet MSs.

Reusing scenes — in the sense of events — would also be a plus. But it’s not critical to the concept.

Thanks. Now back to reading this thread.

Thomas

#27

Andrew, did you ever upload the template you discussed?

Thanks,

Thomas

#28

Hi Thomas,

I did not upload the template at the time, because it was not possible to save template files with existing narrative structures at the time of writing. And the template very much depended upon this ability. Now, in the latest 3.2 versions, templates allow existing narrative structures to be saved. However, not everyone will be able to use the template or even a file saved from the template, as only users with current licenses, and who are using the recent beta versions can access them. I may very well upload an article discussing multiple narratives in AT3 on my Medium, and include a link. But that is more likely to happen when 3.2 is out of beta, as it may not be of interest to a wider audience, until that point.

#29

If you like, I’d be happy to test it out. I’m on the beta track and have a current use for it.

I have a multi-book series project with multiple characters and storylines, some characters and threads spanning all storylines, some just a few, and some just one (i.e., appertaining to just one book). Tough to manage all this without working some Aeon magic.

Thomas

#30

Hi Thomas,

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for your interest in my template/ file. I’m happy for you to test it. I was hoping to write a medium post re multiple narratives in AT3 but have been writing articles on other topics and working on my novel. So perhaps you could PM me your email address and I can send something across? In lieu of a blog post I’ll include some instructions in a Note item type.

I’ll have to work on that tomorrow afternoon, after my day’s writing is finished. So it might take a day to get something to you.

Regards

Andrew

#31

A pretty old request, but I would also like to see this. I have one timeline doc for the whole world i am writing and there’s multiple series in it. Making multiple docs with the same world events seems like more work than just making multiple folders in narrative view - but the narrative view becomes very crowded, very fast. The numbering is also a mess sometimes. It would be great to be able to separate them (or at least close the folders so they take less space…)

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#32

I have three novels in my writing project. Here’s how I have it set up:

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I am able to fold up these elements. For example, I can fold up the novels:

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I can also fold up the chapters, scenes, and passages:

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When you mention “narrative view,” I’m not sure if you mean AT3’s Narrative view or the Outline view, as both show the story narrative. If you mean the actual card-based Narrative view, you might be able to use the filters function, in combination with some kind of tag or item-type scheme, to simplify things.

With the upcoming version 3.5, we’ll be able to create multiple instances of a view (called tabbed views) and customize each the way we want. So we could make two views, for example, one with the Outline view collapsed and another with everything open.

In my case, I’d like to assign each view to a button in Stream Deck, so I’m hoping for a hotkey assignment for each custom view I create.

UPDATE: I’ve just posted this as a feature request.

#33

Just noting here alongside my post in the linked feature request above.

The old keyboard shortcuts to switch views will need to be updated for 3.5 to factor in the ability to create multiple customized tabs for each view, but the exact solution hasn’t been locked in yet.

Will update once I know more.

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#34

Here is what I did to make two copies of the my manuscript to manipulate different ways in the same Aeon Timeline.
First I made a copy of the actual Scrivener Project using File > Save as (This severs the copy from the original allowing you to experiment.
Next I duplicated my Manuscript. I relabeled the Acts of the copy as Act I, II, III Version 2
Now I imported into a new Aeon Timeline using the Timeline Template I used for the actual orginal Scrivener Project.
Now I have two copies of each narrative event (scene) in my story but the copy acts are now sequenced after the original and have my title of Act I Version 2, etc so know which is which.
In the Narrative view I select each scene, chapter and select a different color for the Event (green was the color of the original and I choose purple for the copy)
The Final trick was to attach a relationship to the original and copy. I created a relationship category and checked it to show up in the Sidebar called EG (use your own title) for Earth Guardian EG 1, EG 2. I assigned the relationship EG1 to every event in the original and EG2 to every event in the copy.
So the copy has a different color to visually separate and a relationship in the sidebar to filter by so you can isolate the versions to experiment with alternate arrangements. Below are images of what this looked like.

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Here is timeline view with both original (green) and copy events (purple) in Subway view
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Now using a filter I can isolate the copy to view and manipulate
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And again using the narrative view only look at the copy of events and could rearrange in the one timeline.
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This is a way and I am sure others will come up with better ones, but if it looks interesting give it a go.

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#35

Hey thank you for your answer, i have the same setup already but when i say narrative view i do mean the narrative tab in the menu, so your screenshots are all from outline view… so yeah, nothing new and i still think we should be able to close narrative folders, just as we can close things in the outline view…

EDIT: my problem really is just the visualization. I have one world, one timeline but a series with multiple books and spin offs. Since i only work on one project at a time i’d like to close or hide the others in narrative view sometimes to have easy access on what i am actually working on… but i do like that i have the option to see everything.
Also another problem is that in the structure you have suggested (and which i already use) i cannot distinguish book series. Its just Book 1, book 2, book 3 …not book series A book 1, series B Book 1 and 2. Maybe i could just duplicate the “book” category but idk, its a bit of a mess

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#36

It can sometimes be challenging to discuss aspects of AT in relation to its timeline versus its narrative tabs.

The current version of AT (3.4) has a group of timeline tabs and a group of narrative tabs, like this:

Timeline Tabs

  • Timeline
  • Spreadsheet
  • Relationship
  • Subway

Narrative Tabs

  • Narrative
  • Outline

So when you were talking about the narrative view, I made the mistake of thinking that you meant either of the narrative views, the Narrative or the Outline view. Were you specifically referring to the Narrative view as opposed to the Outline view? I see that you were–sorry about that.

Sure, being able to collapse views into folders in the Narrative tab would be handy. I’ll make the suggestion in the Beta discussion.

To change a tab’s view to show, say, just one book out of many books sharing a single AT project, use filters.

Here’s an approach:

In Settings, create an Item Type “Book.” Select the “Book” Item Type in the left panel, and add the names of each book in your project. (Something like Book 1, Book 2, etc.) Consider nesting the books of a series, so “Book 1 > Book 1a,” “Book 1 > Book 1b,” etc., up to “Book 5.”

Navigate to each event in Book 5 and click it to open its inspector on the right. Scroll to the “Books” Item Type and add “Book 5.” (Tip: You can select all of the events in that book to add “Book 5” to the events in bulk, to save time.)

You can then filter the Narrative view according to the “Book 5” Item Type. That will enable you to view just the events that relate to your Book 5 project.

One thing to look forward to in the upcoming version 3.5 is that you’ll be able to create as many Narrative (or other) tabs as you want, then save them as separate tabs. So you could have, say, a tab for Book 1, another for Book 5, and so on.