How and Why to Create a Narrative From Your Timeline

Once you have added all your events to your timeline, you may want to start adding them to your narrative.

A narrative is a structured order of your events that is independent of your dates. It differs from the chronological order in Timeline and Spreadsheet View and can be useful in many situations:

• If you are an author whose story is non-linear (eg. Earlier events in time happen later in the novel), then plan the order of your story in narrative view, while planning the chronological order in timeline view
• If you are an author who likes to timeline not only your story but also backstory and contextual world events, you can use the narrative view to just include the events in your story while still having the other events mapped out on the timeline view

To setup your narrative once you have already created your timeline:

1. Split your screen into two parts, one with Timeline View, the other with Narrative View. You can read more about Split Views in the User Interface Overview.
2. Drag an event from your timeline that you want in your narrative to Narrative View. Alternatively, select the event from the “Add a scene” dropdown. Continue with the events that make up the narrative of your story.
3. Click and drag events to reorder them in your narrative. 
4. Add Narrative folders if you wish to sort your narrative into a hierarchical structure. Click on the add icon () in the Sidebar and choose Narrative folder. Click and drag events into the newly created card to add them to the folder.