This past weekend, I was looking at some of the Scrivener projects I haven’t touched in a while. Some were easy to deal with based on the project name alone. Others not so much.

What did I mean with a project named Disciple? It took a while to bring up on my screen as Scrivener needed to convert from an older version before displaying the contents. That alone, gives you some idea how long it is since those files got looked at. Not surprisingly, the story was about the disciples of Jesus, after the crucifixion and resurrection.

And I wrote it as a screenplay, which isn’t a format I’ve used for several years. There were some good scenes in there, and maybe one day I’ll go back to the idea, more likely as a novel.

The next file was more interesting. It’s a historical novel set in South America during the wars for independence from Spain in the early 1800’s. As I read through the notes and story fragments, it all came back to me. For some reason, I’ve never had a clear vision of the different timelines in my head – the story timeline and the historical sequence of events. That’s not been a problem with my stories set in Ancient Babylon, but there were some pivotal events during those wars for independence that obviously have to be covered in the right order – not least Simon Bolivar’s crossing of the Andes in June and July 1819.

It didn’t take much reading through my notes to realize the story and historical timelines were out of sync. It’s not an immediate problem as I have several stories I want to write before I come back to this one, and reading through gave me ideas for another story in the same historical period.

This makes it all the more important that when I do start the writing, both timelines are in alignment. So, I opened up Aeon Timeline and started dropping events and dates into a new Aeon project. Ten minutes in, I started reorganizing the story events. Those small changes have made the story move faster, and now I’m rethinking my 2025 production plan.