Though I write fantasy, I have several stories that take place in the contemporary world. My characters have jobs, enjoy their weekends off, and observe U.S. holidays. But it can be hard to keep track of the date and the day of the week when my characters are running from one crisis to the next.
One of the features I liked best about Liquid Story Binder XE was the Journal, which allowed me to enter a brief summary of a character’s activities on each day of a calendar. This kept me from having characters take days off from work with no explanation or merrily skipping Thanksgiving with no comment.
Since I’ve now moved on to SuperNotecard, which has a less useful timeline function, I started using Google Calendar to keep track of my characters’ lives. While I prefer to use as few separate programs as possible, one of the advantages of Google Calendar is that it’s available anytime I have wifi and a browser open. Calendars can be printed, if you’re the type who needs to look at a hard copy. And by using a separate calendar from my personal one, I can keep it from cluttering things up. I can even use multiple color-coded calendars for characters with different timelines. Also, for stories that require a more detailed level of knowledge, the agenda view makes it easy to look at the character’s actions hour by hour.
I’m all about using free, easily available tools when they get the job done. I’m using Google Calendar because I already had a Google account, but I’m sure there are several other online calendars that would work the same way.
What free tools do you use to make your writing easier?
