Events and Timeline

The timeline is the visual history layer of Storyteller Suite. It can show your story as a traditional event timeline or as a Gantt-style schedule, depending on what you are trying to understand.

Creating an event

Create events from:

Command palette: Storyteller Suite: Create new event
Dashboard: Events tab -> Create event

Core event fields

Name - the event title
Date / Time - the main story date used for placement
End date - optional duration for range-style events and Gantt bars
Status - planned, active, complete, historical, or custom
Location - main location reference
Characters involved - linked characters
Items involved - linked items
Groups involved - linked groups
Description - freeform markdown summary
Tags - filtering and grouping labels
Milestone - highlights the event as a major beat
Flashback / flashforward markers - marks timeline relationship to the main narrative

Timeline view vs Gantt view

Timeline view

Use this when you want to answer:

What happened when?
Which events overlap?
Where are the major beats?
How dense is the story in a given period?

Gantt view

Use this when you want to answer:

Which events have duration?
What depends on what?
How crowded is one arc compared to another?
What stretches across multiple chapters or acts?

The same event data drives both views.

The current timeline UI supports:

search with jump-to-event results
timeline / Gantt toggle
milestone-only filtering
grouping by character, location, or group
date range and zoom controls
track and era management

If you work with a large story, the search box is the fastest way to jump to a specific event instead of scrolling for it.

Tracks

Tracks are filtered timeline lanes.

A track can focus on:

one character
one location
one group
a custom filter set
the whole story

Good uses for tracks:

one protagonist plus a global track
one city vs another city
one faction's activity over time
only milestone events

You can manage tracks manually or use Auto-generate timeline tracks to build starter tracks from your current entities.

Eras and periods

Eras are named date ranges shown behind the events.

Use them for:

acts
wars
reigns
ages
campaign arcs

They are useful when the story is long enough that isolated event dots stop being readable on their own.

Milestones and alternate chronology

Milestones are just normal events with extra importance. Use them for:

inciting incidents
reveals
deaths
act breaks
quest completions

Flashback and flashforward markers let you keep an event in the world timeline while still marking that it is told out of sequence.

Putting normal notes on the timeline

The timeline is no longer limited to formal event notes.

You can also surface regular vault notes in two ways:

Option 1: timeline watch property

Add a frontmatter property such as:

timeline-date: 2025-01-15

Any note with the configured watch property appears on the timeline.

Option 2: timeline watch tag

Tag a note with the configured timeline tag and add a normal date field:

tags:
  - timeline
date: 2025-01-15

This is useful when you want journals, research notes, or lore notes to appear on the same timeline without converting them into formal event entities.

Conflict detection

Use Detect timeline conflicts to scan for issues such as:

impossible overlaps
contradictory dates
entities referenced in incompatible states
circular chains of dependency

This is a review tool, not just a validator. It is best used after a big round of edits.

Good defaults

If you are not sure how to structure events yet:

use milestones sparingly
keep tags short and consistent
use groups when the story is faction-heavy
switch to Gantt when duration matters more than single dates
use tracks only after the main timeline starts feeling crowded