Now, at the get go, I fully acknowledge that I have gone way over the top as far a story plotting goes, but I'm trying for something on the extreme end of epic and I have a legit obsessive compulsive personality problem so at this point it cannot be helped.
I'm potentially dealing with an ASOIAF-style number of characters and POVS, some with synchronous timelines. Plot overlaps, plot loops, plot loopholes and blackholes even. I started it out as a screenwriting project and it has sprawled into and epic fantasy type thing that might take maybe 8-10 books to finish.
I started plot outlining chapter by chapter in ms word, then I went over to OneNote to get that kinda whiteboard effect, then it just sorta ballooned out of control.
What I'm looking for:
A program that essentially operates functionally like a SmartDraw type flowchart, but acts like a fluid Mindmap (iMindMap) in the way that I can pull pieces around, having them stay connected by an arrow wherever I drag (a variety of connectors would be nice). The ability to drag around and freely visually organise it while maintaining the connection would be nice. It would be beyond excellent to be able to converge several different POV plots and diverge them again.
A way to synchronize multiple timelines for several characters. Some of these characters have timelines that run for a thousand years, and some of these immortal characters can slide through time and change things so this is where there is the Terminator-style time pretzel effect. And interspersed with all this, are some characters who have very meaningful but very short timelines. I need someway for them all to fall together kinda like a gantt chart.
An index card/corkboard display option like in Scrivenir would be nice.
A way to organise all of this into chapters and books.
Does this software exist?