Hi there,
right now I am testing the software and wonder if it is possible to only sync from scrivener to Aeon and forbid it the other way round?
I am a pantser and want to use Aeon to create an overview that I can look at before writing the next book. So I want to play around with the finished imported manuscript without it changing the manuscript itself.
Is there a way to do this?
Thanks a lot
Andrea
You can either use the narrative folder for that and keep the original order as the actual dates in the timeline (if your specific case allows that), just to have the „original“ state saved as information somewhere.
Or you could simply sync from Scrivener to Aeon once and just not press „sync“ again. Your Scrivener project won’t change until you do. Mess around in Aeon and decide in the end weather you want that state synced back to Scrivener.
You could also duplicate your original project as a backup and come back to it if you decide to.
Hmm, ok, not exactly the way I would and could handle it.
I would love to sync daily to make the timeline grow and than add notes to it that should stay there.
Let’s say I have a scene in which an important clue is mentioned. I would now add this clue to the narrative (I guess? I am only looking at Aeon for about five hours) and label it backstory or forward. So I could see it at a glance. This of course I would not want to add to the manuscript.
So really a oneway-sync would be the safest way for me 
And I am not yet sure - timeline, spreadsheet, narrative order - this are all just different views or do they have different relations or connections to scrivener?
Aeon assumes you have two „orders“: One is the actual chronological order in which events happen, which is fixed by the dates you apply. This creates a timeline you can view in different ways. The second is the narrative order. It is the order in which scenes/events appear in your manuscript. You could e. g. have a scene located in the present in which a narrator talks about the past, then you have a description of these past events.
In the timeline the scene with the narrator would appear after the past event (maybe even a hundred years, if what is told is an old story). In the narrative folder the past event would appear after the present event. So you can shift around the order in which events are presented and still keep the information of the dates they actually happen on a chronological timeline.
Hi Rob,
thanks for trying to help me but I guess I cannot make myself clear (pretty sure I can’t because my English just sucks, sorry for that)
What I am looking for is really just the possibility to decide which of my changes and additions I would love to put back into scrivener as I already noticed how easily it happens (to me) that I involuntarily delete or change something of importance.
So far I like Aeon an its possibilities but this would be my most important feature to be me more in control of what happens. And more videos perhaps that explain the functions
Ah, but after working through the app a bit more I understand your approach better. There are many great possibilities
Perhaps giving the freedom to chose what to sync to Scrivener might be something for the next update :)?
I didn’t work with Collections in Scrivener a lot, but maybe that could also be a way to preserve your order of events in Scrivener as a back up while experimenting with other possibilities.
I bought it now and somehow made a mistake I did not notice - a chapter was removed and many scenes also, others were doubled and put in a strange order.
Could you please tell me in which parts of Aeon I can play around so that it does not affect my Scrivener binder? As far as I understood narrative and outline are the ones that sync and the spreadsheet should not affect the order?
I am normally not easily confused by new software but this time I am.
Ok, I am panicking now. I looked at the spreadsheet and without wanting I changed the order by clickung on of the column titles. And now I have again some summaries that do not belong to the scenes left of them and some are double now. I am now afraid it will sync like this and once again delete chapters and scenes and confuse the rest.
What to do now?
Tried now for quite some time to understand it but actually might this be a bug? Because it is a hot mess. All the times, synopsis, titles - nothing fits together, everything is mixed up and often doubled.
When I look at the narrative view and the outliner all is fine (but I am afraid for how long)
The timeline is also messed up with double entries, wrong data and wrong times. And it only happened after clicking on one column.
I now guess something like this must have happened before - because I did not delete anything and still a whole chapter was gone in Scrivener (and not in the trash)
Don’t panic. As long as you don’t sync back, your original project in Scrivener won’t get messed up. I‘d recommend to read the manual, do the tutorial and start learning the software with an example project (in both Scrivener and Aeon). Once you feel confident, sync it to your actual writing project.
I really feel bad about posting this and keep it going but would you please have a look at my last bit?
Why did the whole spreadsheet got tumbled when I clicked on the tension column (in which were no entries at the time?
This is the narrative and everything is in fine order. The story is written chronologically and there ar no backflashes or entries that won’t be in the finished novel. Please have a look at the synopsis(es?) and the titles and how they belong together:
In the spreadsheet and the timeline I have four more items I did not put in there and were not in there before toggling the column.
How do I tidy this up? How can I avoid this happening again? Has it something to do with events belonging to two story arcs perhaps? Is it a bug? Or is there a button somewhere to click and make narrative and timeline sync?
Thanks for helping me out.
Are the wrong summaries also there when you look at the events in the inspector or another view? If not, it probably really is a bug in the display of the data. Have you tried reordering the spreadsheet once more?
By the way, as I see your german like me: I have a series of tutorial videos in german on YouTube. Maybe they can help you as well: Tutorials
Ah, du bist das mit den Videos - hatte schon mal reingeschaut, kam aber noch nicht weiter mit Schauen.
The wrong summaries are in the timeline, the spreadsheet, the relationship and the subway. Also in the inspector when I choose of one of those wrong ones in the spreadsheet. After working with the other views and syncing a lot during the day I found that those mentioned views (timeline etc. dont renew themselves but keep what they got in the first place and just add whatever is changed. So by now I have 36 items in the spreadsheet and 32 (correct ones) in the narrative folder.
Changing the order in the spreadsheet toggles seems to make the chaos even bigger.
So for me it seems that there is really no connection between scrivener/narrative folder/outline and the other views.
I’m sorry you are having so much trouble syncing with Scrivener.
In regards to your original question, no there isn’t a way to only sync information one-way with Scrivener, or to choose which changes to sync.
You can overall choose which settings to sync (eg. whether to sync certain properties/relationships), however it will sync these for all events.
Rob is correct in that Aeon Timeline considers two “orders”, chronological and narrative.
Timeline, Subway and Relationship view follow the chronological order and Narrative and Outline follow the narrative order.
You can sort the rows of Spreadsheet by certain columns (eg. you mentioned tension), but the “chronological order” of the events does not change, and this is reflected in the “Order” column.
In regards to your information become doubled and mixed up, this could have happened during the syncing process. Sometimes doubles of events can occur if they are not synced correctly to begin with (eg. if you already have events in your timeline that should match a document in Scrivener, but are not chosen to do so. Then the document will create a new event instead, causing a double. This can appear like there is one event in both the Spreadsheet and Narrative, when in fact they are two different events (which is why their summaries may differ if you make changes in one)).
Is it possible for you to send through your timeline file to support@timeline.app ? This will help us work out why the summaries are showing different information. If you could also send through your Scrivener project (or just the .scrivx file which contains the syncing information), then we may be able to get the syncing set up correctly if this is what was causing the issue.
Dear Jess,
I would send it to you but I got braver yesterday and carefully (and a least a dozens backups ready :D) deleted those doubles. Which worked fine.
I might give it another go with sorting and see what happens. If the mistake should occur again I will send the files your way.
Right now I am still puzzled and unsure: Events I added to the timeline or spreadsheet do not sync over to Scrivener - is this correct? I should be able to play in those views without damaging my work?
Edit: Thought it was all fine now. Toggled the start date field. Deleted two more of the doubles. Looked ok. Until I looked through it and found once more a double I deleted yesterday.
Took a look at the titles and summaries - again many of them don’t belong together.
You initiate the sync manually in Aeon. So you could play around safely without messing up your original Scrivener file as long as you don’t trigger the synchronization.
If you did sync again meanwhile it could of course have happened what Jess described. Maybe there is something not quite right in your syncing setup so that files keep being created that shouldn’t be there.
But where do I set up the creating of files? But on the other hand - the messed up spreadsheet had nothing to do with syncing.
And the question is still open: Do the spreadsheet sync with Scrivener? Or is it just the narrative that does it? I think I read something along those lines somewhere.
There might be the misunderstanding! It’s the same events in the spreadsheet and the narrative folder! The narrative folder is just a way to display them in an order that’s different from the actual chronology.
Doppeltes Missverständnis vermute ich jetzt mal Was ist der Unterschied zwischen beiden?
