I've been looking for software to manage the history of my story-world for several years, and since I'm again getting to the point where I need to do some more revision of that history no matter how frustratingly inadequate the tools I have are, I thought I'd ask if anyone here knows of any software that can fit my needs.

I have an "outline of history" that's about two and a half centuries long, and includes about two hundred fifty "events" and such. (That is, when I just list them in outline form in a spreadsheet, that's how many rows it comes to.) If I just needed to keep track of that, there would be no problem; this is just the framework on which the problem hangs.

Beyond that general outline, I have a bank of about two hundred "named" characters that I want to keep track of and use at one point or another in my Shine Cycle. Most of them appeared on the scene at the same time, and in fact much of my story is about the lasting effects of their arrival. Because of the large cast, the nature of my story, and my Tolkien-esque insistence on getting the details right, I'm trying to map out an outline of each character's history in addition to the main "Outline of History" I mentioned first. But sometimes characters' stories intersect with each other, and I also want to avoid having too many notable things happening too close together except when they're related.

As I mentioned above, I used to do this in a spreadsheet. Before I started writing "character histories," this worked well. I converted it to a text file when I started writing character histories, since those aren't part of the "Outline of History" as such and so don't fit into the spreadsheet very well, and for the first half-dozen to a dozen characters that went swimmingly. And it works well enough even now for looking things up (where was so-and-so at such-and-such-a-date? When was such-and-such event?). But after a few dozen characters, it absolutely falls apart for the purposes of managing story arcs and pacing, and for "seeing the forest for the trees" well enough to add new characters.

So I need a piece of software that can handle a very large number of events in a large number of threads, whether it calls them "characters" or "tags" or whatever. I need to be able to relate any given event to other events, and define it as involving any number of characters (or, minimally, having any number of "tags.") I need to be able to view these events on a timeline (really, multiple timelines) without confusing overlaps. I need to be able to select and view a subset of events based on the characters involved, which thread of the story they're in, and approximate date, at least.

And, of course, it needs to handle really, really large datasets without complaint, and especially without losing data ... because I'm not likely to notice lost data until I need it.

I also want to be able to define relationships between events such that if I say, "Event B happens after Event A and before Event C" and then change the dates of A and C, it will either move B to keep this true, or draw my attention to the problem. And I would prefer if it let me define dates in my world's calendar.

I very much want a program that stores its data in a "human-readable" format, for obvious reasons ... and so that I can store the data under version control. But I recognize that this is a rare feature nowadays.

I would much prefer a program that ran on Linux (by which I mean "Linux with security features enabled"), and was free/open source software. But if it runs on Windows, and costs a (not too unreasonable) amount, but meets my needs, I can live with that.

Does anyone know of software that even begins to fit this description?

Have you heard of yWriter? I've never used it, so I don't know if it would even begin to fit your needs, but it sounds similar to what you are describing

This is a link to a tutorial video for yWriter that you might find helpful in determining whether it will fit your needs or not.

I have tried yWriter once, I think, years and years ago ... before I started developing character histories, I think. But long enough ago to have forgotten all but the name. After watching the video, it's clearly all but useless for my needs. yWriter is aimed at organizing a novel, thus "chapters" and "scenes"; I'm trying to develop the history of the world in which my novels will be set. I chose the word "historiography" for a reason: the events I'm organizing aren't going to fit neatly into one hierarchy (like "books, chapters, scenes," or "plays, acts, scenes," or "I., 1., a.").

So thank you for the suggestion, and for reminding me of a piece of software that I'd meant to look into again now that I'm using Windows more than "once in a blue moon" .. but it's useless for these purposes.

Ok, Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Glad to have reminded you of it then.

If you're going to find one that you like, I have a feeling you're going to have to 're-purpose' some software that was made for something else, but that has the features you need.

On that tack, I think I may have come across some that could be of use? I have not tried any of them (though there are a couple I would like to try, since I am in a very similar predicament to yourself, at least as far as I can make out what you are wanting ).

WikidPad
"What makes wikidPad different from other notepad applications is the ease with which you can cross-link your information."

VoodooPad
"VoodooPad has a new palette that searches through your document for phrases like "@todo: remember the milk" or "@fixme: need better documentation here". You can then see all those reminders and warnings together on the To-do palette, and never miss anything ever again."

Depending on how that works, you might be able to manipulate that to solve your problem of being unable to keep your information all in its proper place, but still have the capability of taking out one thread of information, a character's history for instance, and looking at it in isolation (I think that was one of the things you wanted).

"Script Plugins are an easy way to extend the functionality of VoodooPad. Download new plugins or write your own."

"Assign meta data to an individual page which can be used for whatever you'd like, and access them in script plugins or triggers."

"Assign and browse tags to pages in your document."

"Inter-document links
Link to a specific page in another VoodooPad document."

I think VoodooPad sounds the closest to having everything you want. It sounds really interesting. And it also seems to have a degree of flexibility that would allow you to customize it to fit some of your specifications. Again, though, I can't say for sure since I haven't tried it.

StorySpace
"Where other systems often emphasize visual presentation, Storyspace emphasizes writing, linking, and organizing."
"Most importantly, Storyspace gives you live, informative and powerful graphic views of hypertext structures."

Tinderbox
I think this might be more of a notes, mind mapping creature, so I don't think it would work for you.

StoryBook
Seems interesting, though the current page to download it from that the review linked to is all in German and I don't know what it says, and I don't think it has much to do with downloading StoryBook. However, I did a search for it myself, and came up with this, but the url isn't even to sourceforge, so I came across this, which is in French, but seems more legitimate, to my untrained eyes.

I like the looks of StoryBook, I want to try it myself. If I can figure out what's going on.... * grimace *

Anyway, maybe some of this'll be helpful. I hope so.

If you happen to try any of them, I'd like to hear about what they are like.

Indeed. I figured out how to make a spreadsheet work ... I think. (It's hard to say until I've tried it at scale, rather than for the more trivial problems, and getting the dates set up as relative to each other rather than just numbers is time-consuming.)

(Snip descriptions of the two wiki-type programs.)




Yes.


I'd rather write my own program than try to make a mere hypertext system work. The reason I started with a spreadsheet in the first place, and the reason I want to use one if I can make it fit my other needs, is that with a spreadsheet relative dates are simple---and I'm very dubious about them being possible without extensive work in a hypertext system.


StorySpace would be interesting (did it not cost more than I'd be willing to spend even if it looked ideal for all my unwritten-program needs) for organizing background material or even outlining the books. But not for this.


Actually, I thought about using a mind-mapping app, and this looks better than most. But again, relative dates are one of two hard requirements (the other being some sort of filter).


I think "ostorybook" and "storybook" are two different things. I'd had Storybook on my list of "projects to look into one of these days" for a while, and I had the source code "checked out" on my hard drive, and then when I went to update that code with the latest changes I found the project had vanished (and thus probably been deleted) from Sourceforge.

The spreadsheet method I'm now using (when I get back to it ...) uses a feature of LibreOffice (or OpenOffice, presumably) called "filtering," which is (on my system) found under the Data menu. I've made a column listing the characters involved in any given event, and can filter based on that column.

And I'm still planning on writing my own program ... just when I get some of my other projects wrapped up or some of the piles demanding my attention cleared, rather than now as a matter of urgency.

Relative dates... what do you mean by that?

Bother, then. * grimace *

Mmk. I'm going to have to experiment with this. (I use LibreOffice spreadsheet too.)

I'll look forward to it.

These are some great suggestions. I had fun fiddling around with some of them.

Jon, if you ever get around to writing that program, I would love to try a copy of it. I'm not very Linux savvy and I am forced to work on a Mac because I do a lot of video editing. I did notice that a program will sort of work if it is a .jar file. I don't know if that even makes any sense. Basically, if you write a program, it would be really cool if you shared it, and I can figure out the bugs of making it work on Mac from there. Otherwise, this was a very helpful thread. Thank you both very much for all of the suggestions.

For example, at the current state of the timeline, the Second Interuniversal War runs from 231 to 251, including the Battle of Lightning in 233. But if I discover in revision that earlier periods don't need to last as long, I want to only have to, at most, shift the starting date of the war back to (say) 205 and have the end date and the dates of all the battles adjust, rather than having to move them all by hand or have any I forgot suddenly not where I had them before. In fact, I want the date(s) of every event except the first one on the timeline to be defined as a certain interval (possibly zero) after some previous date.


Java is my most usual programming language nowadays, so everything I write is cross-platform to that minimal extent. (I've gone to some trouble to try to make a suite of apps I'm developing for my strategy game look and act like a native app, but Apple and Oracle keep making it harder and harder to do that without having a Mac to compile on.)

Riight, I thought it was that. That's the most frustrating problem I have as well right now with just using the spreadsheet.

Cool! I'm glad it was helpful to you.

Once I get it set up, it's actually fairly trivial with a spreadsheet, since my "dates" are just numbers (no months yet): I have a "event start" column" and an "event end" column. In my "outline of history" spreadsheet, they're F and G, respectively. Using my example ....



The "Second Interuniversal War" main entry is in row 654, and "the Battle of Lightning" is row 670. So in F654 I'll have "=G653" (because the previous row, at the moment, holds the event that caused the war), G654 holds "=F654+20" (because the war lasts 20 years), F670 could have "=F654+2" (though it's more likely to refer to the previous battle rather than the beginning of the war), and G670 will have "=F670".

The problem is getting it all set up, which just takes time and attention.

Yep. Which is why it's frustrating.

Well. This conversation lost me once it delved into programming, but if that program would be made, it would be worth it's weight in gold to some writers-or at least the insane ones whose mind tortures them by inventing millenias of facts and history for them to keep straight, and then changes it all.