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Getting Started

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Eric Rhys Taylor edited this page May 16, 2026 · 3 revisions

Radial Timeline transforms your manuscript into a live visual map of your story. It works with any Obsidian vault — fresh or existing — by reading and writing scene metadata as note properties (YAML frontmatter) at the top of each note.

You get two co-equal workspaces: the Radial Timeline View for scenes, structure, and chronology, and the Inquiry View for corpus-level analysis.

Radial Timeline welcome screen with quick-start guide
Welcome screen — quick-start guide for new vaults

Coming from Scrivener, Ulysses, or another tool? Use Obsidian's Importer plugin or export your work to Markdown and drop it into your vault. Scene order is controlled by the leading number in each scene's filename plus its Act field — not by File Explorer sort order. See Scene Properties (Core + Advanced) for the full schema.

Setup

Choose a vault layout and stick with it: a single-book vault, a single vault with a dedicated Manuscript folder, or a multi-book vault with one folder per book.

1. Install and add a book profile. Install Radial Timeline from Community Plugins, open Settings → Core → Books, add a profile, and link its Source folder to your manuscript folder.

2. Bring in scenes.

  • Fresh vault: run Radial Timeline: Book designer to generate a scaffold (acts, subplots, optional beats), or run Radial Timeline: Create note… → Scene → Basic scene to start with a single scene.
  • Existing vault: your scene notes should use Class: Scene. The main scene properties are Act, Synopsis, and Subplot. Chronologue uses When and Duration; Progress uses Status and Publish Stage. If your vault uses different property names, enable Remap frontmatter field keys under Settings → Advanced → Configuration.

3. Choose a beat system (optional). Select Save the Cat, Hero's Journey, or Custom in Settings → Core → Story beats system. Use Create to generate beat notes; Merge to realign existing files after changes.

Daily Workflow

The four modes in the Radial Timeline View — switch with 1/2/3/4 or the navigation cluster:

  • Progress (1) — writing status and revision-stage tracking
  • Narrative (2) — manuscript order; drag scenes on the outer ring to reorder
  • Chronologue (3) — story-world time, duration, and gaps
  • Gossamer (4) — beat-level scoring across Momentum, Tension, Activity, Interiority

Day to day: write scenes, keep Synopsis current, update Status from Todo → Working → Complete. Use Search timeline to find scenes across metadata. See How to for task recipes (reordering, subplots, rotation, search).

When you're ready to share: run Radial Timeline: Manuscript export to compile to Markdown, outline, or PDF. PDF requires Pandoc and a LaTeX distribution; configure under Settings → Publish. See Publishing for templates and Signature setup.

Optional next steps: AI Pulse Triplet Analysis for scene-level editorial feedback, Inquiry for corpus-level analysis, Author Progress Report for shareable spoiler-safe progress graphics.

Protect your work. Back up your vault regularly. Sync helps but won't guard against all forms of data loss. See Obsidian's backup guide, Obsidian Sync, or the Obsidian Git plugin.

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