Plotlines

Plotlines help you plan and track subplots: each one follows a single thread through a book — usually one character's — as an ordered list of beats, and shows which beats the manuscript has already told and which one comes next.

Creating a plotline #

Open Plotlines and press Create plotline. Give it:

a Plotline name;
the Book it belongs to — a plotline stays in the book it was created in, and the plotlines list shows one book at a time;
a Character, if the thread is somebody's;
what to Start from — a blank plotline or one of the structures below;
a Synopsis, if you want one now.

Use one plotline per thread you want to follow: the heroine's arc, the romance, the investigation, the subplot that has to land by the midpoint. Five plotlines in one book is ordinary; so is one.

Starting from a structure #

A structure fills the plotline with sections and beats named for the moments it expects. You can pick one when you create the plotline, or later from an empty plotline, which offers them right where the beats will go:

Three-act structure
Hero's journey
Save the Cat
Kishōtenketsu
Character arc — positive change
Mystery and investigation

Beside them, a box takes the beats you already have: paste a list and every line becomes a beat. Structures are scaffolding, not rules. The beats are ordinary beats — rename them, delete the ones your story does not need, move the rest. Nothing checks afterwards whether you kept to the shape.

Finding your way around a plotline #

The plotline's page is one workbench. The beats fill it as a grid — state, number, what happens, the chapter that tells it and where it happens, each a link to that chapter or location — with progress in the header. Beside the grid, an inspector has three tabs:

Beat — the beat you picked, open for editing;
Route — the thread on the map;
Plotline — its book, character, colour, synopsis and related entries.

On a phone the three tabs become a switch above the list, and a beat opens under its row.

Adding and arranging beats #

A beat is one line — What happens — and, when you want them, the details: the chapters that tell it, a location, the characters involved, a date in the project's timeline calendar, and a longer description.

Pick a beat by clicking its row, or move through the grid with the up and down arrows. It opens in the Beat tab, and every change saves as you make it.
New beat and Add section insert right after the item you picked and open it with the name ready to type.
The line under the list adds a beat with its name alone: type it and press Enter. Paste a list and it becomes one beat per line.
Delete a beat from the ⋯ at the end of its row.
Reorder beats by dragging them by their handle, or focus the handle and use the arrow keys.

The order of the list is the order of the story; the date is when it happens in the world. The two may disagree, and for a flashback they should.

When a beat has a location and a date, Also here now under the date lists the characters at that location on the same day in chapters, other beats and character histories, the same list a chapter shows, with its Maybe here list. The add button beside a name adds that character to the beat.

Sections #

Sections are headings inside the list — Act one, The road north, Part two — that group the beats below them. Drag a beat past a heading to move it into that section. Sections are not beats: they carry no details, they are never counted, and deleting one leaves its beats where they were. Rename a section in place; pick it to delete it from the Beat tab.

Linking a beat to a chapter #

To mark where a beat is told, pick its chapters under Written in chapters in the Beat tab. Only the book's own chapters are offered, in order. A beat told across two chapters can be linked to both.

A chapter, location or character that has since been deleted stays linked and reads Deleted in the beat's fields. Restore it and it comes back, or remove it to unlink it.

You can also link a beat by dragging it onto a chapter in the weave, described below.

How do I know what to write next? #

The plotline tells you: the first unwritten beat, in list order, is its next beat. It is marked in the list and shown beside the plotline in the plotlines list and on the dashboard, so "where was I with her?" always has an answer.

Progress comes from the manuscript, not from ticking boxes. A beat is written when it is linked to a chapter that still exists. Link a beat to the chapters that tell it and it counts. Send that chapter to the archive and the beat is unwritten again; restore the chapter and it counts once more. Sections are left out of the count and are never next.

Two beats are linked to chapters, so two of four are written. The crossing is next because it is the first beat with no chapter; the sections are not counted.

How do I turn a beat into a chapter? #

Pick the next beat and press Start writing at the foot of the Beat tab. Any other unwritten beat has Write this beat in the same place. A short form opens first:

Chapter title — taken from the beat's name;
Beats it tells — this one, and the unwritten beats that follow it in the same plotline, for a chapter that covers several at once;
Other threads — the next beat of every other plotline in the book, to weave into the same chapter;
Where it goes — at the end of the book, at the start, or after any chapter. The suggestion is the chapter where this thread was last told, and the chapters after the new one move down a place.

The chapter carries over what its beats already know: their descriptions become its synopsis, and their characters, the first location and the first date come along. Every chosen beat is linked to it, and it opens in the chapter editor unless you untick Open the chapter when it's created. A chapter that arrives empty shows the beats it tells above the text, under This chapter tells, with their notes, until you hide it.

Because this creates a chapter, you need permission to write chapters as well as plotlines — see roles and permissions.

Can I build a plotline from chapters I have already written? #

Yes. Import from chapters builds the beats from the manuscript instead of from memory. You find it in the plotline's header, in the page's ⋯ menu, and in an empty plotline.

It needs the plotline's character, set in the Plotline tab, because it looks for the chapters that character appears in, in the plotline's own book and in chapter order. Chapters in other books that feature the character are counted in the dialog, to import from that book's plotline.

Choose what to Copy from each chapter: Story date, Location and Characters. Untick any of the three to leave it out.
Choose where new beats go under Add new beats in: Chapter order or Story date order. Either way, they go after the beats you already have.
Check the list. It shows every chapter and what will happen to it; untick the ones to leave alone.
Press Import.

Each chapter becomes a beat named after it and already linked to it, so imported beats count as written straight away. A chapter that already has a beat in this plotline never gets a second one. If that beat has no date or location yet, the import can fill in the blank from the chapter; it never overwrites a value you set. Running it again later picks up only the chapters written since.

The message afterwards has Undo, which removes the new beats you have not touched since and clears what it filled in. Beats you have edited in the meantime are kept.

How do I track subplots across my chapters? #

Switch the plotlines list from List to Weave. The weave lays every plotline in the book against the book's chapters, with each beat in the chapter that tells it. Read along a plotline to follow a thread; read down a chapter to see which threads it carries. A long run of chapters where a plotline has nothing is marked as quiet — a thread that has gone silent, sometimes on purpose, often not.

In the weave you can:

Link a beat by dragging an unwritten beat onto a chapter. It is the same link you would make from the beat, and it counts towards progress the same way.
Write a beat by dragging it onto the new chapter target that appears while you drag. The same form as Start writing opens.
Move a chapter by dragging its column, or focus the handle in its header and use the left and right arrows. The chapter moves in the book, not only in the view.
Add a beat where it happens with the + in a cell. The beat is told in that chapter and takes its place in the plotline's order.
Switch to Compact to show every beat as a dot in a narrow column, so a long book fits on one screen.
Focus a thread with the dot beside its name. The others fade until you press it again or Escape.

Every beat in the weave opens its plotline with that beat already picked. The weave needs room, so on a phone it asks first whether to open it anyway.

Following the route on the map #

When beats have locations pinned on a map, the Route tab draws the thread's route: the stops in beat order, joined in the plotline's colour. Picking a beat that has a location moves the map to that stop.

Under the map, every place the thread visits is listed with the beats set there — pick one to jump to its beat — followed by the beats that have no place yet. A thread that crosses more than one map is shown one map at a time, with a choice of which. The tab is there when the Locations module is on; until a beat has a location, the map says how to fill it.

How do I mark a plotline as completed? #

When a thread is resolved, select the check mark in the plotline's toolbar (Mark as completed). A check mark then shows beside the plotline's name, the plotline moves below the open ones in the plotlines list (under a Completed heading) and the weave, the dashboard's plotlines card stops listing it, and its dated beats on the timeline's Gantt view are marked as completed (a beat on a single date is drawn as a ring). Select it again (Reopen plotline) to undo it.

Completing a plotline changes nothing else: its beats, their dates and their chapters stay as they were, and you can keep editing it.

Plotlines on other pages #

Plotlines also appear where their beats point, so you can see how a record takes part without opening the plotline:

a chapter lists the plotlines it tells, and you can unlink it from one there; while the chapter is still empty it also shows the beats it tells above the text;
a character shows the plotlines they lead or appear in, with New plotline for that character;
a location shows the beats set there;
the timeline's Gantt view can show beats that have a date.

A beat shown on any of these opens its plotline with that beat already picked.

The dashboard has a Plotlines card listing the open plotlines you worked on most recently, each with its progress and the beat to write next. Work suggestions nudge you to carry a plotline on with its next beat, and point out a plotline that has been absent for a stretch of chapters; a completed plotline is never suggested.

Exporting an outline and sending to a board #

The page's ⋯ menu has two more ways to take a plotline elsewhere:

Export outline downloads the plotline as a Markdown outline with its sections, beats and the chapters that tell them.
Send to brainstorm puts the plotline on a brainstorm board, for when you want to think about it next to loose notes again.

Tips #

Write a beat as something that happens. "She burns the letter" is a beat; "the part where things get complicated" is a section.
Link honestly. Progress is only as true as the links. Link a chapter when it tells the beat, not when it is meant to.
Plan a few beats ahead, not the whole book. A plotline is easy to extend and reorder; an outline written to the last page tends to be abandoned by chapter six.
Give each plotline its own colour. It keeps the weave, the map and the dashboard readable at a glance.
Think on a board, then line it up here. Sort loose ideas on a brainstorm board; once they have an order, select the notes there and make them into a plotline.
Turn the module on when you need it. Plotlines is a module like any other, and a project that never plans ahead loses nothing by leaving it off.

Chapters — write the chapters your beats point to.
Brainstorm — work out a thread before it has an order.
Timeline — give beats a date in your world's calendar.
Maps — pin the locations a thread's route passes through.
Work suggestions — see which thread to continue next.