
- #AEON TIMELINE SOFTWARE HOW TO#
- #AEON TIMELINE SOFTWARE SOFTWARE#
- #AEON TIMELINE SOFTWARE PROFESSIONAL#
Was I wasting my time? Couldn’t I just hand-write the details on sheets of paper, the way I’d always done? Four or five days into this, I had to ask myself if this was all worth it. I pulled the details from a mountain of documents the client shared with me.
#AEON TIMELINE SOFTWARE HOW TO#
Luckily, there is a knowledge base, forum, and developer support on the software’s website, not to mention countless YouTube videos to help you piece together how to use it.Įarly on in this project, I found myself spending a tedious week trying to input all our nonfiction milestones into the software.
#AEON TIMELINE SOFTWARE SOFTWARE#
This is one of those software programs that rewards a long learning curve. I guess you could say the software is remarkably flexible. If you need to keep track of murder weapons, locations, character traits, etc., you can easily create a new entry and start tracking that plot point or detail. Poirot nimbly tucks away all the details in his little gray cells, but I’m pretty sure Dama Agatha plotted her story using a handwritten version of what Aeon shows us in these screenshots. That novel is a good example because everything hinges on the events occurring over one night aboard that infamous train. (I have reproduced some of the Orient Express screenshots here, but you will find them infinitely more readable on this page of Aeon ’s website.) On its website, Aeon actually uses Murder on the Orient Express as one of their case studies. For the project I’m working on now, I can insert real-life historic events-the election of presidents, dates of wars, what-have-you-and everything will populate on my screen, showing me how people, places, events all intersect.Īs you can imagine, this can be pretty useful for mystery writers working with tricky timelines. From that moment forward, whenever Character A meets Character B in the timeline, the software automatically calculates each person’s age down to the years, months, and days. What do I like about the program? I can list every single character in the book I’m planning, inserting their birth and death dates.
#AEON TIMELINE SOFTWARE PROFESSIONAL#
All completely tax deductible for a professional writer. If you want annual updates, that will run you a little extra. This is not the world’s most expensive software. Screenwriters presumably can do the same. Writers of all stripes use it to map out fiction and nonfiction. Lawyers use it to plot litigation strategies and timelines. Scholars and historians use it to map out their areas of study, both Before Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE). Product developers use it to plot the trajectory of their real-life projects. But in this case, the tipoff sprung not from my brain but from a piece of software that I’ve been using to plot the book. Normally, I can use these moments to brag that I’m the greatest reporter ever. “It was so long ago, we forgot that little detail. Not that I needed it!) By the time Dad returned home again, a beautiful three-month-old baby was waiting to greet her father for the first time. (She had photos of a romantic dinner and getaway weekend to prove it. Yes, she recalled, he did come home once during that period of time. They both had a good laugh over my question. I stopped shy of asking him who the father really was…Ī few days later I got a flurry of humorous texts from his wife.

“Because your first daughter had to have been conceived during that year. “Did you return home at any point during your first deployment?” Recently, I asked the client a question that puzzled even him. (Our contract precludes me from spilling many of the details, but I’ll try to work around it.) I’ve spent the last year working on a nonfiction ghostwriting project for a client who got a deal to deliver a memoir about, shall we say, his military career.
