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Getting Started

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Eric Rhys Taylor edited this page Jun 28, 2026 · 4 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.

Work through the eight steps below in order. The first four get you set up; the last four are your day-to-day workflow.

1. Install and open Radial Timeline

Install the plugin and pick a vault layout to build on.

  1. Install Radial Timeline from Community Plugins and enable it.
  2. Open Settings → Community Plugins → Radial Timeline.
  3. 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.

Learn more → Fresh Vault Onboarding · Existing Vault Onboarding

2. Add a book profile

Tell Radial Timeline which folder holds this book's scenes.

  1. Open Settings → Core → Books.
  2. Add a book profile and set its title.
  3. Link its Source folder to your manuscript folder.

Learn more → Settings → Core → Books

3. Bring in scenes

Generate a scaffold, create scenes one at a time, or connect scenes you already have.

  • 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.

Existing vaults must use Class: Scene. Radial Timeline only reads notes whose Class property is Scene. Add it to your existing scene notes so they appear on the timeline.

Using different property names? If your vault already uses different frontmatter keys (e.g. summary instead of Synopsis), enable Remap frontmatter field keys under Settings → Advanced → Configuration and map your fields to Radial Timeline's.

Learn more → Book Designer · Create Note · Existing Vault Onboarding · Scene Properties (Core + Advanced)

4. Choose a beat system

Add a story structure so beats appear alongside your scenes (optional).

  1. Open Settings → Core → Story beats system.
  2. Select Save the Cat, Hero's Journey, or Custom. For Custom: name your system, add beats, assign to acts, and drag to reorder.
  3. Use Create to generate beat notes; use Merge to realign existing files after reordering or renaming.

Learn more → Settings → Story beats system · Beat Systems

5. Use the timeline modes

Switch perspectives on your story 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

Learn more → Timeline Modes · Radial Timeline View

6. Search, reorder, and organize scenes

Keep the manuscript tidy as it grows.

  • Search: run Radial Timeline: Search timeline to find scenes across title, synopsis, characters, subplot, location, POV, and more (minimum 3 characters).
  • Reorder: change the leading number in a scene's filename, or drag scenes on the outer ring in Narrative mode.
  • Organize: use Manage subplots to rename or delete a subplot across every scene at once.

Scene order is the filename number plus Act — not File Explorer order. Ordering uses the leading number in each scene's title and is scoped to its Act. To move a scene across acts, update both the leading number and the Act field.

Learn more → Search Timeline · Reorder Scenes · Manage Subplots

7. Export your manuscript

Compile to Markdown, an outline, or PDF when you're ready to share.

  1. Run Radial Timeline: Manuscript export.
  2. Set ordering, selection range, and output preset.
  3. For PDF, pick a novel PDF layout and run the export checks.

PDF export requires Pandoc and LaTeX. Install Pandoc and a LaTeX distribution, then configure them under Settings → Publish. Export checks report any missing tools before you generate the PDF.

Learn more → Manuscript Export · Publishing

8. Back up your vault

Protect your work — Sync helps but won't guard against every form of data loss.

Back up your vault regularly using one of:

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

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