When and how making a story timeline helps

As I’ve been working on my novel, I’ve been writing my scenes non-linearly, working on what I find interesting rather than going in a straight line from past into the future.   With a first novel, I figure that any measures I take to keep me writing rather than quitting are allowed. 

Of course, the result of this was that I wrote a lot of scenes with one side of the love triangle, which left the other side of the love triangle rather undeveloped.  I was then left with the problem of trying to figure out where I could insert scenes with the second love-interest.

This is when it became important to me to make a timeline of events in my story.  Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc.  

In my timeline, first I put in what I’d already written according to the time cues that I’d already written.  (Time cues are like “two hours later” or “two days later.”) 

When I looked at that list of days and events, I realized I could compact my story and make it happen faster, so I adjusted my timeline and started adjusting my story. 

(Adjusting the time cues in my story took less time using the program Scrivener than it would have taken if I’d written in Word because in Scrivener you can easily jump to any point in your story without having to search for it.  Fabulous time-saver!)

With a timeline, I could tell where interactions between the overwritten love interest happened, and therefore see where interactions between the underwritten love interest needed to be.

I don’t know if I could have planned my novel on a timeline at the beginning because I was still fuzzy on my plot.  It was only when I had written a pretty decent amount—like 70,000 words-- that it became necessary to be so clear about when things were happening.