How to do TLs

As I'm sure you've all noticed by timelines tend to get...convluted.
I just can't help it!
I'm a firm believer in the butterfly effect and the inter connectedness of everything.
I mean look at it this way.

Assume, theoretically the Spanish armada suceeds, a puppet ruler is placed in England and the Dutch rebellion is crushed.
Now. Even though Spain becoming all powerful is the main point of this TL would the rest of the world just sit around and wait to be conquered? No! Other things would happen.
Say for instance if England had large trade with Sweden which the Spanish ruined (they didn't, but pretend they did for here). Having England cut off would ruin a big source of income for Sweden and their monarch was in the middle of building a nice new palace. He needs money!
So what does he do? Something he wouldn't have done IOTL and attacks Poland.
Now he beats Poland and gets a lot of money off them and weakens them in the process. IOTL there was no big Ottoman attack on Poland here but with Poland totally weakened? Of course they're going to attack!
But then...nations don't line up and wait for their turn to act do they?
A real world timeline wouldn't read:

2009-2011; Venezuala-Brazil war
2011-2014; China-India war
2014-2015; USA-China war.

Would it?
No, it'd be more like.
2009-2011; Venezuala-Brazil war
2010-2015; China-India war
2014-2015; USA-China war.

But of course in writing this all gets so complicated so fast.We are dealing with a planet here afterall!
So...what do you think is the best way to properly keep track of everything going on without it being a overly complicated mess?
 
I'm glad you brought this up Leej; I've wondered about this too. Let's say I have ships from the US Navy involved in the Napoleonic Wars (far fetched I know), of course I'd want to detail their involvement. At the same time Lewis & Clark are (as per OTL) exploring the NW. At the same time, I've got some important, Republic shaping events occuring and issues being debated/discussed here in the US. How do I write about these things without it becoming a jumbled mess of a time line or narrative?
 
I'm glad you brought this up Leej; I've wondered about this too. Let's say I have ships from the US Navy involved in the Napoleonic Wars (far fetched I know), of course I'd want to detail their involvement. At the same time Lewis & Clark are (as per OTL) exploring the NW. At the same time, I've got some important, Republic shaping events occuring here in the US. How do I write about these things without it becoming a jumbled time line or narrative?

How about doing three sections - War Stuff, Political Stuff and Miscellaneous Stuff?
 
I'm glad you brought this up Leej; I've wondered about this too. Let's say I have ships from the US Navy involved in the Napoleonic Wars (far fetched I know), of course I'd want to detail their involvement. At the same time Lewis & Clark are (as per OTL) exploring the NW. At the same time, I've got some important, Republic shaping events occuring and issues being debated/discussed here in the US. How do I write about these things without it becoming a jumbled mess of a time line or narrative?

Is that sarcasm? 'Cause you had ships in the Napoleonic wars. You were on the bad-guy's side, IIRC. :D The Achéron in Master and Commander the movie was the USS Acheron in the book.

...But yes, keeping the various sections separated would be useful for reading (most real histories do it that way). But you still need to kep them linked while writing.
 
It sounds like you should draw a tree where the influence of the POD just spread out over the world.
 
I've been trying to split up things by region when I post. When I write up the TL in Word, I usually color each entry according to the region/event: Orange for the Netherlands, Green for the Mediterranean/Italy, Purple for Iberia, etc. I then copy only the entries of one color for a post, and then continue on. It's much easier that way.
 
Now, if my timelines had gotten past the development/early years stage... I'd probably just order them by year and bold them out. If it's early, I'd sort them by region.
 

Blackwood

Banned
This is an interesting post. I don't have a whole lot of experience with writing TLs, but I still have the same issue. Most of my TLs end up being a disorganized mess within a few years or decades from the POD.

I think one of the simplest ways to solve this problem would be separating effects by region, as mentioned above. However, the best way might be to simply give out information pertaining to the country/region being explored, the countries playing a part in that nation, and nothing else.

E.g., Future OTL monarch in Country A dies in childhood. Brother is proclaimed monarch.

In OTL the dead sibling got Country A into a war with Country B. Without that sibling, Country A and Country B are great friends. Without the war, Country A never goes on to dominate region, and are instead eventually absorbed by Country B. Go on to detail how this event affects the immediate neighboring countries. Don't even mention the larger powers who may have been powerfully affected by this event. Stick to the major player.

However, this approach pretty much goes down the toilet if you're going for a more epic TL. You just can't stick to one country/small region for something like that.
 
I'm writing my timeline seperated by region (West Europe, Balkans + Byzantine, Rus', China, India, etc) which really helps get it organized and keep it semi-coherent.
 

Thande

Donor
I've gone for the 'put absolutely everything in all at once and who cares if it gets confused' strategy myself ;) Prefacing each paragraph with In Russia, or In the sciences, or whatever to show which narrative thread it belongs to. I basically took this strategy from Tony Jones.

Anyway, my TL's actual TL is just an auxilliary to the prose version, which tells a story and (in theory) is easy to keep track of because of that. The TL version is simply so everything is noted down in order for reference. After all, that's what OTL is like: a massive series of confused jumbling events happening all over the world, from which we may pluck a single narrative thread to tell as a history.
 
I've gone for the 'put absolutely everything in all at once and who cares if it gets confused' strategy myself ;) Prefacing each paragraph with In Russia, or In the sciences, or whatever to show which narrative thread it belongs to. I basically took this strategy from Tony Jones.

Anyway, my TL's actual TL is just an auxilliary to the prose version, which tells a story and (in theory) is easy to keep track of because of that. The TL version is simply so everything is noted down in order for reference. After all, that's what OTL is like: a massive series of confused jumbling events happening all over the world, from which we may pluck a single narrative thread to tell as a history.

So history is a woollen jumper - it seems firm enough, but once you try and change one thread, the whole thing unravels within a few minutes.
 
I tend to do my TLs by threads. I.e. look at different geographical regions or sciences and technologies, or politcal developments and get a TL for them, taking into account the PoD and so on, then put them all into one timeline and read through it in detail and see what there are interactions between the different threads that should be there and taken into account. Outside of the timeline I go into more detail on nations, science, politics, differences to OTL and so on which are written up separately...
 

Hendryk

Banned
I tend to do my TLs by threads. I.e. look at different geographical regions or sciences and technologies, or politcal developments and get a TL for them, taking into account the PoD and so on,
I've decided to use this kind of theme-based methodology with Version 3.0 of my "Superpower" TL, though everything will still be in the same thread. It was mostly out of necessity: trying to rewrite things with the classic chronological approach led to my getting bogged down in endless digressions. Of course, it remains to be seen whether I can manage to develop each theme without getting sidetracked...
 
Top