A Timeline and Calendar for Historical Fiction Writers
In a historical novel the calendar belongs to history, not to you: the siege began on that day, the king died in that year, and every scene you invent has to fit between those fixed points. In yazar.io you keep real and invented events in one flow with their dates, including BC dates and events known only by their year. Entering dates and using the Event Flow are free on every plan; seeing those dates on a calendar, on a single axis and with each character's age that day is part of Yazar Pro.
Fixed points and the gaps between them
Time works differently in historical fiction than in other genres: some of your events aren't invented, they're found. The day of a battle, the year of a treaty and the date of a coronation are fixed, and your fictional characters live in the gaps. So the first job is to line up your period's fixed points with their dates, then place your own scenes between them.
In yazar.io you do that in the Event Flow. Real events and invented ones go in the same list, each with a calendar date; an event that lasts for months, such as a siege, takes an end date too. To keep fact and fiction apart, note the source in the event's short note, or start the title with a marker of your own. Ways to separate the real from the invented in your characters and research notes are covered on the historical fiction writing software page; this one is about the calendar.
As much of a date as the sources give you
Sources don't always give a day. A chronicler records only the year, a birth is placed 'at the end of that winter', and for an ancient event all you have is an approximate year. In yazar.io you enter as much of a date as you know: a year alone, a year and month, or a full day. Nothing is filled in with a guess. BC dates work too, and the math accounts for the fact that 1 BC is followed by AD 1, with no year zero.
There's one limit you should know about: yazar.io uses the Gregorian calendar extended backward, and it doesn't convert between calendars. Many European sources before 1582 use the Julian calendar; other regions used the Hijri, Hebrew and other calendars. When you compare dates, check which calendar the source uses. yazar.io stores a date as you enter it, so if you type a Julian date as written, the day of the week the calendar shows may not match your source; if the weekday matters to a scene, take it from the source. A date from a different calendar needs converting by hand, and you can keep the original in the event's free-text date note.
How old was everyone, and who was alive?
One of the most common slips in historical fiction is writing a real person older or younger than they were. Give your characters, the real ones included, dates of birth and death, and link the participants to each event. Open an event in the Calendar or Timeline on Yazar Pro and each participant's age that day is shown: Mehmed II, born on March 30, 1432, appears as 21 at an event dated May 29, 1453. If a birth is known only by its year, you see an age range, not a single number.
The Timeline's Parallel view gives each character a lane and draws their lifelines, birth to death, side by side. That's where you see whether two historical figures could really have met, who was on the throne when your fictional hero was born, or that someone you added to an event had already died by then. The details of the age math are on the character age tracker page.
Daily life on the calendar: seasons, feast days, market days
What makes a historical novel convincing is often the rhythm of daily life more than the great events. On Yazar Pro the calendar takes three layers. Seasons start and end on the same days every year, so you can see whether a scene falls at harvest or in deep winter. Weather marks a day or a range of days as rainy, snowy, foggy and so on; record the fog on the morning of a battle once and it's there for every scene of that day. Occasions are days that repeat every year, month or week: a feast day, a fair, the weekly market. Occasions appear in the Calendar and the Timeline, not in the Event Flow.
You move between the Calendar's Day, Week, Month and Year views, jump to any year with Go To Date, and filter by character or place. How events should flow from chapter to chapter, with time jumps and parallel storylines, is the subject of our guide on how to manage time in a novel.
Can I enter dates from the Julian or another calendar?
The calendar date field takes dates as year, month and day on the Gregorian calendar and doesn't convert anything. You can type a Julian date as written, knowing the weekday shown may differ from your source, or convert it first. Keep the original wording in the event's free-text date note, so both sit on the same event.
What can I do on the free plan?
Using the Event Flow, giving events calendar dates, entering dates of birth and death, and linking characters and places to events are free on every plan. The visual Calendar, the Timeline, ages at events, lifelines and the seasons, weather and occasions layers are part of Yazar Pro. You can explore all of them in the Sample Book with a free account.
Can I share my timeline with readers?
Yes. You can publish the Event Flow as a read-only page on your book's Shareable Wiki. On Yazar Pro you can open the Calendar and Timeline pages as well. All three are off by default; nobody sees them unless you turn them on.
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