Diagrams
A drawing surface for the parts of a story that are easier drawn than written: node graphs you lay out and label yourself.
What a diagram is
A named canvas of nodes and connections, with its own saved viewport — reopen a diagram and you are looking at the part of it you were looking at before, at the zoom you left it at.
Unlike the relations graph, a diagram is not generated from your records. The graph draws what the project already knows; a diagram draws what you think. That makes it the right tool for anything with no record behind it yet.
What people use them for
- A magic system's rules and what depends on what.
- A conspiracy: who knows what, and who believes whom.
- Inheritance, succession, a family tree with contested branches.
- The plumbing of a plot — which reveal has to land before which other one makes sense.
Diagrams, plans and the brainstorm board
Three surfaces that look similar and are not:
| Use | Surface |
|---|---|
| Thinking, unstructured, nothing decided | Brainstorm board |
| Structure of the story you are writing | Plans |
| A labelled drawing of how something works | Diagrams |
The honest test is what happens to it later. A brainstorm board gets cleared, a plan gets superseded by the draft, and a diagram gets kept and consulted — it is reference material about the world rather than about the writing.
Keeping them useful
A diagram nobody opens is a diagram that has drifted out of date and quietly started lying. When the story changes, either update the diagram or delete it; an unmaintained drawing is worse than no drawing, because it looks authoritative.