What's a good way to represent a complex timeline? My wife is a novelist, now working on her fourth book. The books aren't a series in the sense of featuring the same main character, but they all take place in the same town, and some main characters from one book appear as bit parts in other books, and there are references to town history and landmarks. So she's getting to the point where she has to keep track of all of these people and things, so she doesn't contradict something she wrote in an earlier book.
To help with this, I'd like to make an infographic tracking each character through time, but I'm not sure how to begin. 
I'm envisioning something like a graph with time on the X axis, with a colored line for each character stacked up the Y axis. The length of the bar runs from the person's birth to death (or the present), and maybe gets thicker where there's more activity.
Is there a better way to do this? Are there tools designed just for this kind of thing?
 A: Sheesh, this is a good one. I think that you're on the right path using a "infographic" approach however I would suggest looking at data visualization infographics would be better. Something like http://www.dipity.com/ could allow you to track time and also provide content with the subject being reffrenced. Take a look at http://many-eyes.com/#/visualizations and maybe somthing here could allow you to better evaluate your data. I only suggest these sites to help you find a better way of approaching such a fun and exciting project.
A: This may be a little crazy, but hear me out (this was the first thought the pop into my head, a web/timeline infographic).
What if you make a timeline where starting point is at the center of a circle, and branches outward through rings (like universe expanding outward). Then divide circle into equal section per book. Then add line to indicate where characters were at the given time in the book or books. Ex (Not the prettiest thing, but I hope it illustrates the concept).
Dashed line represent transitions between books


Edit: The dashed lines DON'T need to exist, they are there to help guide you through a characters existence.
