Put your story in order.

Enter your events in any order — the tool sorts them into one chronology. Anchor a birth year and every age is derived, so an event before someone’s born can’t slip through.

Set this and every event below shows the character’s age — so an event before they’re born can’t hide.

Chronology conflicts

  • No conflicts found in what you've entered. In Creader, timeline events live beside your characters and locations — and every chapter is checked against this chronology automatically.
saved in your browser

The three ways a timeline breaks

Age drift
A child who is eight in book one is "around twelve" two in-story years later. Ages drift because they're stated by feel instead of anchored to a birth year. Anchor the birth year and let every age be derived.
Elastic travel
The journey that took three weeks in book one takes four days in book four, because the plot needed the news to arrive. Decide travel times once, write them down, and let every book inherit the number.
Overlap confusion
Parallel or flashback-heavy structures where a character is provably in two places in the same month. The more points of view you run, the faster this compounds — and the more a single master timeline matters.

A timeline on paper orders your events — but it can’t read your draft back. In Creader the timeline is alive: every chapter is checked against it, so a scene in the wrong year surfaces as you write. Build the wider world in the story bible builder.

More free writer's tools

FAQ

Frequently asked

How do I keep a story or series timeline consistent?
Put every event on one master timeline with a number for when it happens, then derive everything from it instead of restating it. Anchor each character to a birth year so ages are computed, not remembered. This tool does both: it orders your events and shows each character's age at every one.
What's the best way to track time across a multi-book series?
A single master timeline shared by every book — not one per book. The conflicts that bite a series are cross-book: a character who is the wrong age in book four, a journey that took three weeks in book one and four days later. One ordered chronology, with derived ages, makes those collisions visible.
Is this timeline tool free?
Yes — free, no login. Your events are saved in your browser (local storage) and never uploaded. Copy the ordered timeline as Markdown or download a .md file whenever you like.
Can it check my manuscript against this timeline?
This tool orders the events you enter and flags arithmetic conflicts — events before a birth, impossible ages, date collisions. Checking your actual chapters against the timeline — catching the scene where a character is in two places in one month — is what Creader's Guardian does as you write.