What format do you like the best for timelines?

Japhy

Banned
It comes down to the level of skill of the writer. I can't tell you how many pieces of garbage I wrote at Othertimelines.com both literal date by date timelines and stories on the board that were well beyond the skill that I as a 14 year old actually had. I'd really say its whatever helps hone your writing best. At some point one should jump to narrative scenes and novel like formats if one wants to keep going, but before that there's no shame in pseudo-academia, which I gladly go back to semi-regularly just to work on it. And if you're new at either pseudo-academia or narrative, I think its a great thing that the site now has had a flowering of short timelines. One day I'll get to my big-damned-project but there's going to be a number of Vigenettes, TLIADs and other shorter works before I get to it.
 
I don't bother with narrative timelines; I've tried reading through a few and I always abandon them without fail.
 
I really enjoyed An Age of Miracles. It was absolutely awesome. But I also like very narrative TLs, much like As One Star Sets, Another Rises. So I guess it really depends on writer skill.
For example, I cannot make a proper narrative TL. However, a purely textbook approach seems too dry to me, so I try to add flavoring (Rule of cool additions, amusing quotes, etc...). You could say it's "History as seen by a pre-teen".
 
For example, I cannot make a proper narrative TL. However, a purely textbook approach seems too dry to me, so I try to add flavoring (Rule of cool additions, amusing quotes, etc...). You could say it's "History as seen by a pre-teen".

I don't think quotes are really flavoring. They're part of normal academic history. If you wrote an overview of an election, you'd include the campaign slogans, and maybe short excerpts from significant speeches. For a recent example, a history of the 2008 election in the US would touch on slogans like McCain's "country first," lines from Obama's speech on race, and gaffes and scandalous lines like Wright's "not God bless America but God damn America" and McCain's "That One" fume in the debate and (a year earlier) "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."
 
Well, it's true that it heavily depends on the writer skills...

I like the narratives timelines (well written) however sometime I found them quite hard to understand (and follow) as I am not native in English. I found the worse ones being the simple enumeration of facts, without context. The very very detailed and technical ones are enjoyable only you are very fond of the period and/or the subject. If not, it could overwhelm you wit information. Also, the dimension of the chapters need to be optimal, not too long, not to short.

I my TLs, I've tried several styles... sometime mixed (I'm also not so good with narrations... but I'm trying from time to times).
 
I don't think quotes are really flavoring. They're part of normal academic history. If you wrote an overview of an election, you'd include the campaign slogans, and maybe short excerpts from significant speeches. For a recent example, a history of the 2008 election in the US would touch on slogans like McCain's "country first," lines from Obama's speech on race, and gaffes and scandalous lines like Wright's "not God bless America but God damn America" and McCain's "That One" fume in the debate and (a year earlier) "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."
Yes, but quotes don't have to be canon nor absolutely related.
 
Seeing how many good timelines have been done in their scope slowly bloating outwards until cover virtually the entire world I'd love to see some timelines whose format is a single ATL book instead of excerpts of a grab-bag of different books as we often see. That would give a lot of TLs more cohesion and neater endings. And then we could have sequels in the form of different historical books from that TL.

Also much love for the "snarky professor" format that Now Blooms the Tutor Rose seems to use, often helps to understand events if the narrator is mocking all of the participants for being idiots and it's entertaining to read as well.

Also don't do narrative posts unless you're really really good at it, especially dialogue between a ruler and his advisers considering their options. Most of those are just painful to read as it's so much harder to get period dialogue right than it is to get ATL "modern" historical books in the right tone.
 
I prefer narrative however I like having a list as stated earlier to catch up as the pace of narrative is usually far slower:

1601: POD
1602: X kills Y.

However if the English is bad in a narrative post it just puts me right off, if you can't spell or use punctuation or even forum formatting I'm not going to suffer to read it whereas an equivalent list its must harder to mess up.
 
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