Readers often build a private timeline as they read. If the timeline breaks, later stakes, deadlines, and reveals can feel unreliable.
Glossary term
Timeline contradiction
A timeline contradiction is a conflict in event order, dates, ages, elapsed time, travel time, or recovery time.
Definition
What timeline contradiction means
A timeline contradiction appears when the story's calendar or implied sequence stops agreeing with itself. It may involve a date, an age, a flashback, travel duration, injury recovery, or scene order.
The manuscript says the ferry takes six hours in one chapter, then has the same crossing completed between breakfast and noon later in the book.
Wise Wombat checks timeline sequence and duration separately so authors can inspect the exact passages that disagree.
Related
Related continuity terms
These terms often appear together during manuscript revision.