Making a Timeline: Worldbuilding from the Beginning

Making a timeline for your fantasy world is the body of worldbuilding. If a map gives you the exercise in visualisation that you need to start writing, then creating a timeline is an exercising in setting the tone and creating precedence. In this article, we will be discussing the benefits of starting with a timeline, the method when you write one, and how to avoid the common pitfalls. We have a range of articles on the topic of worldbuilding, so feel free to check those out. 

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The Benefits of a Timeline

The reasons for writing a timeline seem obvious from a distance. When making a timeline, you can create an easy resource to turn to and avoid contradictions, sloppy dating, and other common muck-ups. But the real reasons are more for your process: writing a timeline helps you to figure out what the genre of your world is, what the precedents are for the events that are happening in the present, and what the perspective of a commoner is in your world. 

What’s the Genre? This seems like a strange question, but there’s a purpose to it, I promise. When you’re creating your fantasy world, the genre will be fantasy - but fantasy is a setting, not a genre. People stick it to a book or game to tell them to expect things that aren’t common occurrences. When you write your history, it will tell you what the expectation is for the people living in the world. Were there great catastrophes in the past? Was there once a paradise, now long gone? Was there a terrible empire, or a beautiful kingdom? When people imagine the future, they will look first to the past. 

What are the Precedents? When making a timeline, you are given the opportunity to make references in your worlds to cyclical events. What is happening now may have happened before, and you have the opportunity to create foreshadowing built into the world itself. The context of what you are writing should exist in the framework of your universe. 

What is the Perspective? We mentioned this above, but it’s worth discussing. Your protagonist will have a view of the world when they begin their journey - they have expectations of what their life should be like, what they’re trying to save, what they want to stop. Their past, and the past of their whole world, will inform them. 

The Method when Writing a Timeline

Before you draw a line on a piece of paper and start chucking dates on it, consider the bigger picture. Working with an established method will help you maintain consistency in your note and help you to remember it better. So, here’s my step-by-step to write a timeline: 

• Step 1: Write the Ages. In as broad a term as possible, divide your history into 5 - 6 Ages from the creation of the universe to the modern day. Generally, these Ages will be things ranging from Creation to Primordial to Primitive to Civilised. They are goalposts for you to give expectations on - and the benefit is that they imply events changing one into the other.
• Step 2: Choose the Time Ranges. Now that you have your Ages, you can figure out how long each of those Ages is. When working with a world that has long-lived creatures or races, I would recommend working with the concept of generations, rather than years. A human generation is roughly 25 years long, for instance. 
• Step 3: Create Events. For each Age, create five or six events - not small scale, low-stakes events, but worldshaking things. They could even be things that the common people would not notice, but have a profound effect: ice ages, extinctions, genesis. 
• Step 4: Move Big to Small. Now you’re ready for dates. When you do, though, remember the rule: move big to small. Start with the bigger, more significant dates and then divide the space between them. 

Avoiding the Common Mistakes

Our understanding of the world is informed by our experience of the past - and our expectation of the future. A timeline creates a perspective, and can be used to incredible effect. But when you are making a timeline, doing a thorough job early will save time and frustration later. 

In this case, it may be tempting for you to rush into creating the dates and locations of the events that directly affect your protagonists. You may know that there is a battle or a famine that impacts them, and care very little for the ice ages of the primordial times. But history is a thread, and no events are disconnected. 

The immediate surroundings of your protagonists were informed by what happened before them, and they were caused by the events even further back. Consistency - and, more importantly, coherence - comes from thinking things through on the large scale. 

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