What is the Timeline Board?
The Timeline Board is a dedicated planning tool in the Novel Workspace that lets you build and manage your story's chronology. You can create events, assign them to characters and chapters, and visualize the narrative across multiple views.
Note
Available in: Novel Workspace only
Views
The Timeline Board has five views, accessible via the tab bar at the top:
| View | Description |
|---|---|
| Timeline | All major events in order — your master chronology |
| Chapters | Events grouped by the manuscript chapter they're linked to |
| Entities | Filter down to a single character or entity's timeline |
| Tracks | Swim-lane view — events laid out in parallel horizontal rows by entity |
| Gantt | Time-based chart for events that have start and end times |
Creating events
Click the + Add Event button (top right) to open the Create Event modal.
Each event can have:
- Title — the name of the event
- Description — a short summary of what happens
- Story date — an in-world date or time label (free text)
- Start / End time — numeric time values for Gantt view
- Linked chapter — attach the event to a manuscript document
- Entities — link one or more Mythos entities (characters, locations, etc.)
- Color — a color accent for quick visual scanning
Editing events
Inline editing: Click any event row to open its detail panel. All fields (title, description, notes, story date, color, linked chapter, entities) are editable inline.
Reordering: Drag and drop events using the grip handle on the left side of each row to reorder them in the master list.
Color coding
Events can be assigned a color accent that appears as a left-side bar on each row. This is separate from entity colors — event colors are for timeline-level categorization (e.g., marking plot points, act breaks, or tension peaks).
Linking to chapters
Each event can be linked to a manuscript document (chapter). Linked events appear in the Chapters view grouped under their respective document.
Linking to entities
Attach Mythos entities to events so they appear in the Entities and Tracks views. This lets you see every event a given character is involved in, or visualize parallel entity timelines side by side.
Learn more about Mythos entities →
Exporting
Click the Export button (top right, appears when events exist) to download your timeline as a Markdown file. The export includes event numbers, titles, story dates, linked characters, linked chapters, descriptions, and notes.
Next steps
- Mythos Characters → - Track characters in your story
- Mythos Relationships → - Map connections between entities
- Color Coding → - Visually identify entities in your text