Quill&Steel OS

Fantasy Timeline Maker for Writers & Worldbuilders

Keeping centuries of your world's history straight is no easy feat.

Quill&Steel OS gives you a visual timeline for tracking your world's eras, historical events, and story events, all connected to your custom fantasy calendar.

Build Your Timeline

Try Quill&Steel OS free for 14 days

Watch the demo

See the fantasy timeline maker in action

Add events, organize them into eras, switch between different views, and see those same events appear on your fantasy calendar.

Everything you need

Build your world's timeline

Create as much history as your world needs without trying to piece it together from scattered notes.

Custom eras

Divide your history into ages, dynasties, reigns, or whatever periods make sense for your world.

Detailed events

Add a year, month and day, event type, era, location, story impact, description, and notes. Events can be single dates or span a longer period of time.

Your own date system

Write dates the way people in your world actually would, whether that's Year 42 of the Shattered Era or something entirely your own.

Connected events

Link events together to keep track of cause and effect and see how one part of your world's history led to another.

Multiple views

Switch between Chart, List, and Table views. You can also search, filter, sort, zoom, and drag events into the order you want.

Connected fantasy calendar

Your timeline and custom fantasy calendar work together. Add an event to your timeline and it appears on the corresponding date in your calendar, too.

All in one place

Your timeline is part of the rest of your world

The fantasy timeline creator is built directly into Quill&Steel OS, alongside your characters, locations, maps, magic systems, cultures, family trees, relationship web, custom calendar, story planning, and manuscript.

So when you're figuring out what happened 300 years before your novel starts, the rest of your worldbuilding is right there with it.

See everything Quill&Steel OS can do

Made for fantasy writers

Keep your story and history in sync

Use your timeline for ancient wars and fallen kingdoms, character histories, political changes, or the events happening during your novel.

And if you're planning a series, you can carry your timeline into each new book as your world grows.

  • World history

    Wars, rulers, disasters, discoveries, migrations, and more.

  • Story events

    See where your novel fits in the bigger picture.

  • Character histories

    Record the births, deaths and turning points that shaped your characters.

  • Fantasy series

    Keep dates and events straight across multiple books.

Start today

Start building your fantasy timeline

Try the timeline maker and the rest of Quill&Steel OS free for 14 days.

Build Your Timeline

14-day free trial. No card required.

FAQ

What is a fantasy timeline maker?

A fantasy timeline maker is a tool for putting your world's history in order: the wars, reigns, births, disasters and discoveries that happened before and during your story. Instead of a spreadsheet or scattered notes, you get a visual timeline you can read at a glance, in your world's own eras and dates.

How do I create a fantasy timeline?

Start your free trial, open Timeline and add your first event. Give it a title and a date, then add an era, location or description if you have them. As you add more events, the chart lays them out in order, and you can keep adding detail as your history grows.

Can I create my own eras?

Yes. Name your eras whatever fits your world, whether that's the First Age, the Reign of the Ash Kings or something else entirely. Each era gets its own color on the chart, so you can see where one period ends and the next begins.

Can events span several years?

Yes. An event can be a single moment, like a coronation, or run from a start date to an end date, like a war or a reign. If something is still going on when your story takes place, you can mark it as ongoing.

Can I connect events to each other?

Yes. Link any two events and choose how they relate: one can cause, fulfill, precede, foreshadow, echo or contradict the other. It's an easy way to follow cause and effect through your world's history.

Can I use my own fantasy dates?

Yes. Write dates the way your world does, like Year 42 of the Shattered Era. If you set up a custom fantasy calendar, your events can use its months and days too.

Does the timeline connect to my fantasy calendar?

Yes. When an event has a date on your fantasy calendar, it shows up on that date in the calendar view, so your timeline and calendar always tell the same history.

Can I use the timeline for story events too?

Yes. Each event has a story impact field, so you can mark whether it's backstory, triggers the main conflict, gets revealed mid-story or is a direct plot point. Your world's history and the events of your novel sit on one timeline.

Is the Quill&Steel OS fantasy timeline maker free?

You can try it free for 14 days, with no card required. After that, the timeline maker is included on every Quill&Steel OS plan. See pricing.