Plotting... I'm struggling oddly

Q & A
#1

So… I want to utilise (because i think it’s the best place to do it) the narrative view to do some plotting… I tried Plottr (its nice but it’s no were near as polished or as feature rich as Aeon v3)… but I’m just struggling to make it work in my head, and in the app, and I think it’s probably my foggy brain… but… I can do it in Scrivener, but I’m sure it’s better to do in Aeon

I work on a four act 40 beat process

Act 1 Act 2 … Act 4

Beat 1 Beat 2 … Beat 10… Beat 11… Beat 30… Beat 31… etc

I think i’ve worked out managing the content of each beat, the summary if you like… but weird things are going on with laying it out in Aeon

The act’s seem to be Narrative folders, each beat ends up as an event…

but it’s not -quite- there… I’m just wondering if anyone else uses Aeon specifically in the narrative view for plotting (with the additional of the time based stuff as well)

or am i barking up the wrong tree, or trying to abuse what narrative is for (quite possibly!!)

#2

Can’t you simply set it up to do what you want?
It already comes with auto options for Book, Part, Chapter, Scene, Passage folders.
If you think Act and Beat, you could simply add those as folder options.

#3

almost yes… its not so much about the names of the ‘parts’ I’ll try and have a think and explain in a better way what I’m struggling with, as I think it could just be ‘user error’… I’m a bit cloudy at the moment and it could just be snowblindness of looking at it too much!!!

#4

this is what I have in Scrivener

aeon_timeline_3_test_project

which shows as this in aeon

scrivener_40_beat_test_aeon
scrivener_40_beat_test_aeon697×564 56.8 KB

I’m just trying to get my head round how to set the settings for narrative to reflect what I need… I am probably being dense here…!

#5

I assume, the Acts are correct. But you want each Act to have ten Beats, with a number of Scenes potentially in each Beat.
In which case, is this really a numbering issue? A question of how Timeline allocates the Scrivener sections. You might be better with Outline Style rather than Book Style for that; available in the settings. I haven’t tested it though.

#6

Does beat mean scene in your structure?

Do you know that you can change narrative settings?

2021-10-02_23-22-56
2021-10-02_23-22-56610×670 21.4 KB

#7

I assume, the Acts are correct. But you want each Act to have ten Beats, with a number of Scenes potentially in each Beat.
In which case, is this really a numbering issue? A question of how Timeline allocates the Scrivener sections. You might be better with Outline Style rather than Book Style for that; available in the settings. I haven’t tested it though.

I think it is, because I cant seem to easily have the narrative folder and then the ‘beats’ as events… whatever I set in the narrative settings seem to just ‘rename’ what is currently showing a ‘beat x’

I’ll have a look at the outline style vs book style tomorrow and see if that makes a difference… thanks

#8

Do you want beats as events or as narrative folders? A folder would give more flexibility. In which case all you’d want to tick in the settings would be Acts, Beats and Chapters/Scenes or whatever you want in a Beat.
The outline style ought to give you separate numbering of components within each Act and Beat.

#9

Hi @naquada

I use Narrative view extensively for plotting out my structure. I was also one of the original Alpha and Beta testers and I remember well the initial designs and evolution of the narrative system. Although I don’t use the same system as you, what you want to achieve is certainly possible.

My first observation, based on the screenshot of Scrivener is that you want four acts, each then with ten scenes which you effectively call Beats. And you therefore do not have chapters at all. Your only narrative folders are the four acts or Parts.

If this is what you want, then the simplest way to achieve this is to go into Settings, Narrative settings and change where it says Part, Chapter, Scene. Instead of Part you can rename this Act. Instead of Scene you can rename this Beat. In theory, if you don’t want Chapters at all, as a second layer of narrative folders, you can delete that from the narrative settings screen entirely.

The above should give you what you have in Scrivener. When you allocate Events into the narrative structure in Narrative view they will show up as Beats within Narrative Folders called Acts.

I would also stick with Book/ Continuous numbering, rather than Outline. Outline gives you more of what I call an Academic numbering system: 1.1.2, instead of Part1, Chapter 1, Scene 2.

I would save your file so you don’t lose what you have and then implement the above and see if that helps.

Let me know if you need any further help or if I’m wrong about what you are trying to achieve. The narrative system is very flexible and you can build pretty much what you want with it.

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#10

Brilliant thank you @ahansonauthor i think that may be it suits… I’ll give it a try later on today, but it’s good to know you also use narrative extensively for plotting… as I was also betaing I’ve been using text files for going back and forth so it’s no biggie if they get broken en-route

Many thanks I’ll let you know how it goes :slight_smile:

#11

No problem. I hope it achieves what you want. And yes, please, let me know how it went and if I can be of any further help.

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#12

I notice that the timelines that come with the program (Orient Express and Wuthering Heights) both use the Outline numbering rather than Book.

#13

Honestly, there is nothing to read into there.

We introduced the option after the demos were initially developed, and never gave any thought to changing it in the demo files.

Matt

#14

Okay. I was simply pointing it out. I don’t see the Outline style as an academic style (more often legal), nor the Book style as a book style.
Most books are a hybrid; chapters run sequentially through the book, but scenes/sections, if numbered, run sequentially within a chapter. Parts, when they exist, split chapters into groups but don’t usually restart the chapter numbering.
Maybe a finer level of control of this would be possible in future. For those who use numbers a perfect fit is quite important.

#15

@ahansonauthor gave a great description on how to change your settings to match what you’re trying to achieve. But I wanted to point out you have the option to not have the scenes/beats stack vertically as in your screen shot. When the focus is on the Narrative view, look at the bottom left. There’s a setting there that might give you a better view. Depends on how many levels of folders you have, but it gives you a bit of flexibility.

image
image892×928 46.4 KB

I have Parts, Chapters, and Scenes, so Parts and Chapters lay out horizontally. So with this setting at Level 2, only the third level (Scenes) stack vertically. Since I only have one to two scenes per chapter, this keeps everything pretty much visible for me while in split view with my Timeline.

Just in case you wanted to do something like that!

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