I Didn’t Need a New Outline. I Needed Sticky Notes.

I’m a panster by heart.

Pantser is a writer who creates stories organically, without a detailed outline or roadmap. Relying on intuition and character-driven, spontaneous writing, pantsers discover the plot as they go.

Which means I need, at some point, to get my story into a coherent structure. Violently at times.

One of these structures is the timeline.

For example, In Humans Don’t Have Horns, I researched the appearance of the moon throughout the month so I could describe it in a way that aligned with the story’s timeline.

Book 2: The Timeline Gets a Countdown

In the second book of the Crown of Blood and Magic trilogy, I’m leveling up the game.

There is a countdown to the coronation of the monarch of Aldon, which puts most of the book in a timeline of about eight days.

From the coronation onward, the timeline widens. It stays consistent, but it stops being the engine of the plot in the same tight way.

You can see in the picture that I added that it’s challenging to maintain the timeline and not let the plot carry you away.

Honestly, even without multiple POVs, it’s hard. Time slips. Scenes expand. Suddenly, you realize you’ve stacked too much into one day, or you’ve created a gap you didn’t mean to create.

The Method That’s Saving My Sanity: Sticky Notes

Right now, I’m in the draft before the final draft, before professional editing.

As I edit each chapter, I put up a sticky note. On it I write:

• Chapter number

• POV

• Chapter name

Then I physically place it under the correct day.

It’s low-tech. It’s weirdly satisfying.

This method has already made me change things. It tightened the plot’s consistency. It caught places where the pacing was inconsistent, or where an event needed to happen earlier, or where I accidentally made a character do two impossible things in one afternoon.

Tell me how you’re tracking time

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My Next Step: The Final Draft Read-Through

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