How To Track Characters in a Novel

Aeon Timeline can not only track events in your stories, but allows you to track information about your characters and the storylines associated with them. Below are the steps involved in setting up characters in your timeline, and how you can use them.

Adding Characters to Your Timeline

You can add characters to your timeline in multiple ways:

  1. Click the add icon () in the sidebar on the left and choose “Character”
  2. Open the Item menu, and choose Add->Character
  3. Open the Characters side panel by clicking the character icon, and clicking “Add” in the top right corner

All of these ways will add a new character to your character list.

Editing Information about your Characters

To edit the information associated with each of your characters click on the character name in the character list. The inspector on the right will now show the associated information for the character which you can view and edit. Here is where you can add any notes about your character, add their birth and death dates, and other information.

Adding Relationships 

You can add relationships between characters and events, or other item types, in the Inspector.

To do so:

  1. Open the Inspector for a particular event.
  2. Click on the icon
  3. You will then be able to add characters as "Participants" or "Observers" to that event (other relationships could also exist depending on your template).

Once you have added all the relevant relationships, you can then track information about storylines particular to a certain character in your timeline. 

Track a Character's Timeline

Once you have assigned relationships between characters and events, you can filter your timeline to just show events that a character was involved in, allowing you to track their stories independently. 

When on Timeline View, click on the Character Icon on the side panel to open your list of characters. Click on the Filter icon next to the character name to filter the timeline by events that character is involved in.

If you have given your character a birth date, it will show a bar at the top of the timeline showing their age at certain points. This allows you to track their age through your story.

Create a split screen with a separate filter to compare character's timelines.