# Resource Roundup As a throwback to [V1I4: History](https://www.worldbuildingmagazine.com/2017/07/issue-four-history/) let's talk about timelines. In the article "How to Make In-World Histories Believable," uNoahGuy touches on the idea of how important it is to have unreliable narrators. Recording bias, missing information, and conflicting perspectives of the event itself all lead to a tangled—but rich—conception of history. History is not, cannot be, objective, but it can be difficult for worldbuilders to "set aside" the truth and allow ambiguity to exist. There's a reason the [Word of God](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordOfGod) page exists on TV Tropes, after all. However, since it can be [pretty frustrating when an author seems to contradict themselves](https://dearauthor.com/features/letters-of-opinion/leah-and-bran/), it's still a good idea to have an understanding of what really did happen in a world's past. A great tool to for organizing your world's history is [TimelineJS]. Timeline JS is free, open source, and created from a simple, straightforward Google spreadsheet. Of course, if you want something specially designed for world-builders, you're probably going to have to use [aeon timeline](https://www.aeontimeline.com/), [Campfire's Timeline view](https://campfiretechnology.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360046066631-Timeline-View), or [World Anvil](https://www.worldanvil.com/w/WorldAnvilCodex/a/timelines). Most timeline options available are designed primarily for educators, like [Sutori](https://www.sutori.com/) or [Tiki-Toki](https://www.tiki-toki.com/). Check out this [video about creating a realistic history for a fictional world](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbnzAJXW0Sw). Tim does a really great job showing the different ways one can develop a history for a world. For example starting with the history and building "out" from there, or starting with the story and extrapolating what historical events would have led to that situation. He offers a really nice step-by-step guide that's very flexible—and takes into account the dangers of being too linear or one-dimensional in the history. ## Followup Reading - To get a good sense of how *big* history can be and how inventions, societies, discoveries, geography and economics can interrelate, I recommend [The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800](https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/2705) by [Christopher Ehret](https://history.ucla.edu/faculty/christopher-ehret). Yes, it's literally a history textbook, but it's comprehensive, engaging, aimed at the sort of early-college level that most readers of this blog will find very accessible, and filled with insights that are applicable to worldbuilding, thanks to its breadth and depth. - [Atlas Obscura](https://www.atlasobscura.com/) is a great source for, well, obscure history. Articles like [How the Black Death Gave Rise to British Pub Culture](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-the-oldest-pub) show how pervasive social impacts of major events can be, and [The Ancient Walled Gardens Designed to Nurture a Single Citrus Tree](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pantelleria-gardens-giardino-pantesco) are just the sorts of obscure challenges faced by small groups of people can impact centuries of travelers—the whole site is a ripe source of inspiration for fleshing out the history of a world. - A few years ago I wrote an article about how to use [fictional history as an exercise in elevator pitches](https://eleanorkonik.com/fictional-history-excerise-loglines/). The idea is that a world's history will be more compelling if the events are designed to be compelling mini-stories in their own right.