StoryHelm vs Aeon Timeline: Building a Timeline vs Checking the Books
Aeon Timeline is software for building and seeing a story’s timeline: you enter the events, and it shows them by chronology, narrative order or character arc. StoryHelm reads your books and, in a Full read, puts each book’s events in story order and flags where its clock breaks. One builds the timeline; the other checks the book against itself.
What Aeon Timeline is for
From aeontimeline.com and its pricing page, checked October 13, 2026. Aeon Timeline is an app for Mac, Windows and iOS for building a timeline from the events you enter and viewing it three ways: chronologically, by narrative order, or by character arc. It syncs with Scrivener and Ulysses, runs on up to five devices, and costs $65 once (“Own it forever”), with a year of updates included, further years at $35, and a 14-day trial. We have not tested its other features and do not describe them here.
What StoryHelm does with time, in full
- In a Full read (the Author, Series and Studio plans, and the free trial at public launch), the Timeline pass puts each book’s events in story order and flags where the clock breaks inside that book: a character in two places at once, a “three years ago” that cannot be, a season that arrives twice. Flags often quote the line that raised them.
- It does not calculate or track ages, and it keeps no master timeline across your series. The Series Bible export (PDF, DOCX or Markdown) lists events from the books you select together, in order, as a document.
- A cross-book check you start flags the same event given a different year, month or season, or a different length, in two fully read books, and names both books with what each records. It does not compare anything else about time between books.
- Nothing in StoryHelm is a canvas you build on. If you want to build and see a master timeline of your series, Aeon is built for that.
Side by side
| What you need | StoryHelm | Aeon Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Build and view a timeline | No No canvas; events are ordered by a read | Yes Chronology, narrative and character-arc views (aeontimeline.com) |
| A timeline across the whole series | No One book at a time; the export lists selected books’ events together | You build it From the events you enter |
| Reads the manuscript for clock breaks | Yes In a Full read, inside each book | Not on its pages Works from the events you enter |
| Same event dated two ways in two books | Yes A cross-book check you start, two fully read books | Not on its pages |
| Ages | No | Not checked here Not on the pages we read |
| Price | Writer plan from $14/mo billed annually; Full reads from the Author plan at $35/mo billed annually; a 14-day free trial, no card, at public launch | $65 one-time, a year of updates included, then $35/yr (aeontimeline.com, October 13, 2026) |
The honest take
These are complements. Build the series timeline in Aeon if seeing it matters to you; many authors keep one in a spreadsheet instead, which how to keep track of the timeline in a novel walks through. Then let StoryHelm read the books and tell you where a book disagrees with its own clock, and, between two fully read books, where the same event is dated two ways. The wedding held twice is an illustrative case of the second kind; the timeline gap is the commonest form of the first.
Questions authors ask
No. Aeon builds and shows a timeline you enter; StoryHelm reads your books and flags where each one breaks its own clock. If you only want one, choose by the job: a timeline to see, or a book to check.
No. StoryHelm does not track ages. Of dates, a cross-book check compares only the same event given a different year, month, season or length in two fully read books.
No. You write every word yourself, in StoryHelm’s built-in editor or in files you import. Two disclosed features produce text that isn’t your manuscript: Ship Dock drafts pitch material about the book for you to review and edit, and Translation Studio produces machine-generated translated editions of a finished book.
StoryHelm is an AI manuscript-intelligence platform for indie series authors. It reads and analyzes an entire fiction series, catches continuity errors before readers do, and never writes or rewrites the author’s prose. You write every word of your book yourself, in StoryHelm’s built-in editor or in files you import. Two disclosed features produce text that isn’t your manuscript: Ship Dock drafts pitch material about the book (a query letter, synopsis, logline or back-cover blurb) for you to review and edit, and Translation Studio produces machine-generated translated editions of a finished book.
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Plottr helps you plan a series and hand-build its bible. StoryHelm reads the books you wrote and flags where they contradict themselves. Compared.
ReadBuild the timeline wherever you like. Let the books be read against their own clock.
In a Full read, StoryHelm puts each book's events in story order and flags where the clock breaks; a cross-book check you start flags the same event dated two ways in two books. It never writes your prose.
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