I am working on a novel project that spans 40 years, has upwards of 100 primary/secondary characters, has fictional narrative intertwined with actual historic events (Iran Contra, 9/11, tech bubble, presidential terms, etc.) and will span 5 or more books. Synchronizing character ages, locations, life events and historical events has become problematic due to the numbers of characters, locations and events.
I am considering the use of quasi Gantt chart for organizing this information over a 40 year span with monthly or 2 week granularity. I don’t have 6K events to differentiate but would occasionally need to note 1st or 2nd half of a month for events. The ability to change granularity between months, 1/2 months or even weeks would be be great. I envision in place of task lines, lines for each location and character. Location entries would show timing and duration of events. Character entries would show birth, death, marriage, children’s birth etc dates along with blocks denoting periods such as college years and employment history. I need the ability to hide irrelevant characters, locations and timeline ranges to focus on the storyline of individual novels.
Before I jump head first into Gantt Project, is this a viable use of the program without considering bells & whistles such as denoting by color etc? I considered using Excel for this task but the chart setup would be extensive and focusing on particular date ranges could get unwieldy!
Thank you for your time and consideration of my somewhat long inquiry!
George
