Lens

Lens is where you look at a story rather than write it. It lists the reports the project can produce, each one reading the chapters of a single book and showing them a different way.

Opening Lens shows a card for every report available, with a small picture of what it produces. Pick one to open it; the back link in its header returns you to the list. When the Books module is on, a book selector sits above the cards — every report reads the book chosen there, and the choice is remembered for your next visit.

Lens requires the Chapters module, because every report reads chapters.

The reports

Story map. Where the story happens. It follows each character through the locations their chapters are set in, drawing one path per character across the map, and lets you filter which characters and location types are drawn. It needs the Maps module, and it reads a chapter's location and its cast — a chapter with neither contributes nothing to it.

Story timeline. When the story happens. Chapters are laid out as cards along the project's calendar by their timeline date, with connections between the chapters that share characters. A card can be dragged to a new date, which rewrites the chapter's timeline date, so the report is also a way of re-ordering events rather than only inspecting them. It needs the Timeline module.

Manuscript. The whole book as continuous prose, chapter after chapter in order, with a word count and an estimated reading time. Use the scope selector to read a single chapter instead of the whole book. This is the closest thing to seeing what a reader will see, and it is the view to check before publishing.

A report whose module is switched off is not offered: if Maps is off, there is no story map card, and a link straight to it returns you to the list rather than opening an empty screen.

Why these are not in Chapters

They were, and it made the chapter list carry four different jobs. A report is not part of writing a chapter — it is something you do to a finished stretch of them — and with more than one book in a project each report has to be told which book it is looking at. Lens is the one place that asks.

See also: chapters, books, maps, timeline, manuscript.