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Creating A Timeline Worksheet - Angeline Trevena

The document provides guidance on creating a timeline for the history of a fictional world. It advises focusing on major events that significantly impacted the world physically or ideologically, rather than every minor event. Examples include natural disasters, wars, changes in government or society. The timeline can be added to over time as the world is further developed. It should reflect how past events still influence characters and affect their goals or abilities.

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Ereth M. Selif
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251 views6 pages

Creating A Timeline Worksheet - Angeline Trevena

The document provides guidance on creating a timeline for the history of a fictional world. It advises focusing on major events that significantly impacted the world physically or ideologically, rather than every minor event. Examples include natural disasters, wars, changes in government or society. The timeline can be added to over time as the world is further developed. It should reflect how past events still influence characters and affect their goals or abilities.

Uploaded by

Ereth M. Selif
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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~ CREATING A TIMELINE ~

Creating a timeline for the history of your world seems like a daunting task, right? Of course it does.
You’re imagining the historical timelines you studied at school: the industrial revolution, the dark ages,
the pyramids, ancient Rome, cavemen. All the way back to tyrannosaurus rex. Of course that’s a scary
thought.

But, don’t panic, worldbuilder, because I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Check over your
shoulder quickly, make sure no one’s in earshot. Are we alone? Good. Here’s the thing: you do not need
to map out millions of years worth of history. Let me say that again: you don’t need millions of years of
history. You really don’t. Heck, I can’t even remember what I did last Tuesday.

On the following pages, I want you to create a timeline of all the important moments in your world’s
history. Important moments, not every moment. Things that changed it, either physically, or
ideologically.

This might be a natural disaster that caused a splitting of an entire country, or raised mountains out of
the sea. Maybe it reduced landmass, threw the world into an ice age, or sent the planet floating off into
space. Things that really had an impact. Things that would have been noticed, right? Don’t write down
the year that average rainfall increased by 2mm. Don’t write down the year 5 people died in a minor
landslip. Unless, of course, those people were the monarch and family which caused a 10-year civil
war.

Think about the big changes in society, too. The year that the first election was held, or the last. The
year a king came to succession and promptly outlawed chocolate. That would definitely change a
society. Or the years in which the birthrate halved, and then stopped altogether. The five-year war, and
the following five-year famine, and the following eradication of inequality (we can hope, right?) The
election of a dystopian government, the introduction of ID implants, the day that 10 million of them
simultaneously exploded inside their hosts.

Big changes. The big ripples. The ones that lasted for years and years. Maybe they’re still going.

BUT, you don’t need to complete it in one go. If you already have an event in mind; an apocalyptic
event, a coronation, a special birth, something that changed the course of history, you can absolutely
put that in. Sometimes, that moment is the thing that sparked off a story idea in the first place. If you
have an event rattling around in your brain, write it down. Don’t lose it.

As for the rest of the timeline, you are free to leave it blank for now. Use this timeline as a living
document. Keep it next to you while you do more worldbuilding, while you plot your book, while you
write your first draft. You don’t need to know everything up front. You can cross things out, move
them, change them, dump them. Histories aren’t made in a day.

How to Complete Your Timeline

Your world’s history does not, and cannot, exist separately from your world, just as your world cannot
simply shrug off its own history as if it never happened. Everything that has happened, leaves a mark.
It might be a bruise that fades after a few years or generations, and is soon forgotten. It may be more of
a graze, stinging for a century or so, leaving a hint of a scar. Or it might be a deep laceration, or even an
amputation: something that fundamentally, and irrevocably changes your world forever.

©Angeline Trevena 2021 angelinetrevena.co.uk


And, of course, you have to remember the most important person in all of this: your character. How
are they affected by the scars of your world? How have their lives been upturned by them? Perhaps
they’re carrying their own part of the scars from their backstory, and it casts a shadow over their
present. Or maybe those scars only start to hurt them now, by interrupting or opposing their pursuit of
their ultimate goal. By slowing them down, or derailing them. By causing conflict.

Maybe legislation brought in after a world-changing event prevents your character from travelling
freely, or practising magic. Perhaps their very existence is illegal.

Maybe they enjoy freedoms brought about by revolution, or maybe their community is repaying a
social debt for persecution they carried out generations ago.

What is it about their world, culture, or society that prevents them from getting where they want to
go? From achieving what they want to achieve? And how has that construct, that stands in their way,
come to be? How is history stopping them from getting what they want from life?

When you’re completing your timeline, you’ll see that the worksheet gives you a space for:
 the name of your event
 a little bit of the history
 a lasting memorial, which could be in the form of a physical monument, another physical
reminder (whether man-made or of the landscape itself), or an ideological reminder, such as a
change in the law, a prejudice held by society, a norm or value, or a cultural practice
 and a space for how it affects your character; their backstory, their life, or the pursuit of their
goals

Most of all, have fun. Have fun adding some deep history to your world. Have fun adding some cultural
colour and flair. And have fun getting in the way of your character. It’s your world, and anything can
happen.

©Angeline Trevena 2021 angelinetrevena.co.uk


©Angeline Trevena 2021 angelinetrevena.co.uk
©Angeline Trevena 2021 angelinetrevena.co.uk
©Angeline Trevena 2021 angelinetrevena.co.uk

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