So, You Want to Build a Timeline?

For the most up-to-date version

Timelines are useful item to add to one's repertoire of tricks inside World Anvil. They can highlight important bits of a characters story, track the rise and falls of nations, even hide valuable information about your world. How, then, does one competently use this amazing tool?

How to Visualize Time

There tend to be 3 definitive ways of viewing time in most works of fiction. There are others, but these three are the most common and simplistic to start from, and form the basis of all the others.

Ray

Time and events progress in a linear fashion from a set event point which starts the story. Many movies and stand alone novels have this type of timeline. This works well for any work where events prior to the beginning of the story are unimportant to the story being told.

Line

Time appears to progress in opposite directions from a set point or event, known as a Demarcation. Both ends go out to infinite time in either direction. This is the case for our real worlds Gregorian Calendar, which used the Birth of Christ as the Demarcation between two Eras. Is also useful with stories in which the events of the past effect the events of the future and should be knowable or at least re-searchable.

Segments

Time is broken into defined parts with important starts and ends. A good example of this is T.V. or book series where the events between the start and end of a book or season do affect the outcome of later additions, but are fairly contained within their covers.

Parts of the Timeline Feature

There are several tools within the World Anvils Timeline feature that are useful to have an understanding of before tackling your worlds Time Continuum.

Universal Time Date(UTD)

UTD is the basis for understanding time within your world, setting a zero point that all your important events continue after. This zero point can be the creation of your world, the birth of a major character, or the end of a Galactic War.

Master Timeline

The Master Timeline is the log of all events within your world. It provides the whole of time for yourself and your readers to view.All events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Parallel Timeline

A parallel timeline exists as a subsidary to your Master, providing either a smaller snippet, such as the recorded history of a people, or as a true to the sense Parallel Timeline, allowing for events to run alongside each other. Great for stories with two Major Characters whose paths may only temporarily or rarely cross.Orry Main and George Hazard of North and South or Harry Potter's Point of View of events

Article Timeline

A smaller snippet of time, focusing only on the events connected to the Articles subject, such as a city, nation, character, or mystical artifact.Anakin Skywalker's Lightsaber

Eras

A Segment of a Timeline. Most Timelines can be split into at least two Eras, what came before a major event, and what came after. From there, further segments can be made, such as the reigns of kings, cultural movements, or technological eras.The Reign of King Henry, the Civil Rights Era, the Medieval Ages, or the Cold War

[IMG] ERAS

Calanders

As of this writing, calenders serve the function of allowing the creation and use of Named Months in place of numbers. Your setting can have as many or as few months as you would like, and can be named in whichever manner pleases you.

[IMG] CALANDERS

Historical Entries

Here, we get into the true meat of the Timeline Feature, the ability to create an event, and place it on a timeline to see its relation to other events. The very basic information needed is the Title and UTD Start Date. Filling in the short description will create a small excerpt when the event is seen on a timeline, while the longer description will show when the whole event is viewed.

[img]Historical Entries

Building a Timeline

Due to writer idiocy, please ignore this section as he makes changes

— PB

The first important step in design of your world's Timeline is deciding how many Eras you will need. For a Master Timeline, a before 0 UTD and after 0 UTD can be the easiest to start with. Further Eras can be put in other Parallel Timelines. These two give your world a basis, a simple idea of how to talk about time. Simply going to your World Configuration Dashboard and setting your two Eras will get you started.

What if you want 3 or more Eras, like a combination of Segmented and Ray Timelines? Also easy! Without touching you Worlds Configuration at all, simply go to Timelines, and begin creating your Eras.

As an example set of timelines, lets take the Real World. For this, we will be focusing on a single Master Timeline, and 3 Parallel Timelines.

Master Timeline

Here, we will set up our timeline to match the Modern Solar Calendar, in which the current year is 2018 CE. The Common Era (CE) will begin on 1 UTD, with our counting beginning at 1 and with the Era being the Current Era. Before the Common Era (BCE) will end at -1 UTD and will be the First Era, with Inverted Dates, also Counting from 1. This sets up our dates easily, and will put things in the proper order as they would be seen in any listing of world events.

Hebrew Calendar

This Timeline will be our first Parallel. This timeline is a ray type, as we will not be concerned with anything prior to Hebrew year 0. The Timeline Begins with what we will for now call the Genesis Era (GE) which begins in -3761 UTD. This will cause any event placed in 2018 on our Master to show as 5778 in the Hebrew Calendar.

Hijri Calendar

Unlike the Hebrew Calendar the Hijri or Muslim Calendar is line type, having two important Eras. The latter, calculated as After Hijri^†, the birth of Mohammed, is predominantly believed to equate to 570 UTD. This causes the current year to be shown as 1439 in our Master Timeline. It will still have a Count from 0, as will the prior Era ending in 569 UTD.

Long Count Calendar

Used by the Mayans, this calendar is also a ray type, like the Hebrew calendar. It's beginning date would be marked as -3114 UTD and would cause the current year to show as 5132 UTD.

^{†This Era Name is implied due to a lack of straightforward answers being found by the author}

Time keeps on slipping, slipping...