Pregnancy Romance! Timeline Doesn’t Matter Until…
Timeline.
Dreaded by some authors and mastered by others. If you have an organized, analytical mind, you may find writing timelines in romance simple. I have a dear author friend who can map out an entire book, scene by scene and then write it by following her list. Incredible.
Over the years, I have tried many plotting tactics, and have even adopted a similarly organized path. It was successful…kind of. My biggest takeaway was that my brain likes to be surprised. If the dots are too close together, I’m bored, so it’s best for me to fly (a little) by the seat of my pants…while keeping the safety net of plot to catch me if I fall.
How to track a novel timeline in a romance is as simple as writing down what day it is in your novel before writing the scene, and then referencing that list each time you sit down to write. But first, you have to remember to write down which day it is. Oh, and be sure to remember to update your timeline if the facts change—like if you skip a few days, or weeks, or change a day from a weekday to a weekend…
And that’s before your editor reads your manuscript and sends it back asking what the heck happened to the entire month of June?!
So, yeah…
It’s not as simple as it sounds. At least, it isn’t for me. I forget to write down what day it is when I start writing because that is the least interesting part of the story. I might mention that it’s Wednesday, or the next Friday, or 3 years ago, but I did not calculate how many days that was from the last time she saw the hero, and I certainly didn’t remember to calculate how many years its been since she’s met him, or that she’s worked for her job for…how long now? Or how old was she when she started dating, or got divorced, or lost her mom, or graduated college… 🙃
Them’s a lot of numbers.
Timeline tips for writers
Timeline matters always, but it really matters when you’re writing:
A book involving a holiday (Christmas always comes after Thanksgiving, no matter what)
A book involving a pregnancy (Mother Nature decided 9 months was the incubatory time for humans)
How do you manage story time jumps when you’re not that great at timelines?
I have a few suggestions.
A Spreadsheet
In Evergreen Cove, the story timeline started in 2014 with Evan’s book, but my most recent book for the series, Bad Boy for Hire, is technically (according to the spreadsheet) in 2023, not the year of release (2025). Why? Because I have a spreadsheet that ages my characters up for each book. That includes the heroes from the Second Chance series, and their (many!) children. I jumped a few years from Asher’s book to Brady’s book, and aged everyone up accordingly.
For me, it doesn’t matter if it’s 2023 or 2025 on the spreadsheet, only that I know how long it’s been since Donovan married Sofie, and how old Lyon is now.
Sixteen, as of the writing of this book. Can you believe it?! They grow up so fast. 😩
Organizing your novel with a spreadsheet can work brilliantly.
Downsides: You have to remember to look at it, update it, and make sure you’re viewing the most recently saved version to ensure that your timeline is accurate.
Upsides: If it’s in the Cloud, it’s with you always, and you can update it on the fly. It’s easy to change and save, and can go on for all eternity—just add more rows and columns.
A Designated Calendar
You can do this on paper, if you prefer. While it doesn’t work as well if you’re spanning a decade, if you’d like to track your current book for the current calendar year, this is super helpful. And a great excuse for us planner enthusiasts to buy (yet another) discount planner.
Have one that is outdated? Use it for your novel! Planning your book with a calendar can help you visualize time at a glance. Jot down the day everything happens and flip through it to figure out your timeline. This is helpful for any novel timeline that spans a year or less, especially if you are writing a heroine who is pregnant. Navigating the amount of time between when your heroine and hero make the baby (👀), to when your heroine misses her period, to when she finds out she is pregnant can be tricky business.
Downsides: A calendar (unless you buy a five-year) will only span 12 months, and if you change a date or day in your book this could mean a lot of erasing or correction tape, which might confuse you down the line.
Upsides: It’s visual! You can literally flip through and count the days of your characters lives. Write down that he ate a ham and rye sandwich last week, or that she stayed with her parents for a long weekend in the Hamptons, and refer to these instances with confidence in your book.
Notebook LM
Google has an AI tool where you can upload your PDF of your book and it can answer any question you throw at it. I asked it things like: Were Lou and Ant engaged at the end of Bad Boy Crush? When did Liam cheat on Lou? How long has May worked at her current job? When I was halfway through Bad Boy for Hire, I uploaded it and then asked it to summarize each chapter using bullet points and to list each character I mentioned in the chapter.
This was an incredibly helpful tool, especially when revisiting a series where you can’t quite remember details that were fresh to you when you originally wrote them. Rather than reread the entire series and rely on memory, instead you can ask AI to summarize or answer questions about eye color, height, timeline, and more.
Story timeline tracking tools like this can save hours of your life.
Downsides: Notebook LM can’t exactly plot with you like ChatGPT. It can only pull information from the documents you provide. Accuracy isn’t 100%, so you’ll want to check Notebook LM’s facts. If you have trust issues with Google or aren’t an AI fan, this might not be the way to go.
Upsides: Time saving AF! Instead of doing a search using the Find feature in your document, you can ask AI to find it for you. Before you blink, you have a full summary. Not being able to lean on it for your plot can also be an upside. After all, we want to aid our creativity, not cripple it.
xo, Jessica 🍋
PS, I’ve written several pregnancy romance novels, but this one has to be my favorite. May and Xavier forever!