Relations

Relations turn a set of records into a world you can navigate. Use them to map character relationships, link places to the people and events tied to them, and see the whole network at once.

What is a relation? #

A link between two records. Between two characters it has a type for each side: Ana is Bram's mentor, and Bram is Ana's student. You name the types yourself, and each reads correctly from its own end. Any record can also be linked to any other, a guild to the city it is based in, a character to the siege they survived.

The same five records, as the graph view draws them. Every edge was made once, from one end, and reads correctly from both.

Recorded relations answer the harder questions. "Who is Ana?" is answered by her biography. "Who else was at the siege, and which of them knew each other beforehand?" is answered only if the connections are recorded.

How do I map character relationships? #

Add a relation between two characters:

On a character's Relations tab, choose Add relation.
Pick the Character to relate to.
Name what each is to the other. Pick a type you have used before, or type a new one.

The relation appears on both characters at once; there is no second half to remember to create. Relation types you define can also build the family tree.

Linking other records #

On any record's page, Related entries lists what it is linked to. Edit related entries adds or removes links to any record in the project: a location, an event, an entry. Organization membership is a relation too, with a role for each member and, with the timeline on, dates for each role; see organizations.

How do I record who took part in an event? #

Open the event and add them to its Participants card. The card lists everyone and everything linked to the event, grouped as characters, creatures, organizations, locations and places, and everything else.

Add a participant finds any record in the project. Create a participant makes a new character, creature, organization or entry from just a name and adds it in the same move.
The chip beside a name is their role: what they were in the event, such as Leader, Witness or Victim. Pick a role you have used before or type a new one. In a project with no roles yet, the list suggests Participant, Leader, Witness, Victim and Mentioned.
Add a note says what their part was, in a sentence or two: held the north gate until dawn. Select a note to read all of it or change it.
Remove from the event unlinks a participant after you confirm. Both records stay.

The event's description says what happened; each role and note says what one participant did. Both show up on the participant's side as well: the event appears in their Storyline or History with the role and the note, and the graph shows the note when you select the link. A name you mention in the event's description is added as a participant too.

Event roles are listed with the other custom values under Settings → Custom values. Deleting a role there clears it from every participant who had it.

What happens to relations when I delete a record? #

They go with it. Deleting a record removes its relations, so nothing is left pointing at a record that no longer exists.

The relations graph #

Graph draws the whole project as a network: records as nodes and relations as the lines between them. Each record type has its own colour and its own shape, so a character (circle) and a city (diamond) called Haven never look alike. When two records share a name, the label adds the type: Haven · Character, Haven · Location.

Filter types beside the search box opens the type chips: how many records of each type the graph holds. Click a chip to hide or show that type; the button counts the types you have hidden.
Busy records are drawn larger and named first; quieter ones get their names as you zoom in.
Hover over a record to light up its connections and fade the rest.
Turn on Show unconnected records in the settings to add records nobody has linked yet. They gather in a ring around the graph.
On a phone the tools fold into the ⋮ menu, and a record's panel and the settings open from the bottom of the screen. A project's dashboard can also show a smaller graph.

Presets and advanced settings #

Graph settings (the sliders icon) start on Presets, each a ready-made way of looking at the world: Overview, Clusters, Cast (characters, creatures and organizations), Places and events, Dense for very large projects, and Presentation. Switch to Advanced to change sizes, labels, roles on links, the minimum number of links a record needs to appear, and the forces that lay the graph out. Once you change something, the preset shows as Custom. The project graph, the all-characters graph, a character's graph and the dashboard graph each remember their own settings.

How do I find a record on a big graph? #

Type its name into Find a record at the top of the graph. Results show the name and the type, and picking one centres the graph on it, zooms in and selects it. Find works in 3D too.

Selecting a record opens its panel: its connections grouped by type, busiest first, with each connection's role. Choose 1, 2 or 3 steps to see who is connected to its connections. Click a name to move to that record; the open icon goes to its page, and Quick look previews it without leaving the graph.

Isolate its neighbourhood hides everything more than the chosen number of steps away. Press + and − to widen or narrow it, and Esc to show everything again.
Find a path answers "how are these two connected?". Pick two records and the graph highlights the shortest chain between them and spells it out: Ana — mentor of → Bram — member of → the Silver Order. The search covers the whole project, not only what is drawn.

Modes: path, focus and editing #

Finding a path, focusing on a neighbourhood and editing connections are modes. While one is on, a bar across the top of the graph names it and says what to do next ("Pick the first record"), the graph gets a coloured frame, and the toolbar button stays lit. Done or Esc leaves the mode. Path and editing never run together: starting one ends the other. The keyboard shortcuts are listed under the info icon in the settings.

How do I connect records on the graph? #

Turn on Edit connections (or press E), then drag from one record to another. A small window asks for the role each plays — for two characters, the same relation types as on the character's page — and Connect adds the relation. You can also click, or on a phone tap, one record and then the other.

Drag from a record into empty space to create a new record, already linked to the first.
Click a line to see the connection: both records, their roles, and Remove connection.
Edit connections appears only for people with the Manage Relations permission.

A large project loads in pages. The graph opens with the first 1,500 relations and fetches the rest in the background, a few hundred at a time; while that goes on, a progress bar in the toolbar counts the relations loaded, and the graph fills in without moving what is already drawn. If a page cannot be loaded, the warning icon in the toolbar says so and Try again beside it resumes where it stopped. Past 6,000 relations the graph stops loading, in alphabetical order of each relation's first record id (which follows the record's name), and the warning icon says how many of how many are shown. Whatever is drawn, selecting a record loads all of its relations, and Find a path searches the whole project. If a search reaches its limit it says so, instead of reporting that nothing connects. Find looks among the records drawn, so wait for the progress bar to finish when a record you expect is missing.

Tips #

Put what happened in the event and what each person did in their role and note. One event with five participants reads better than five copies of the same story.
Keep relation types short and reusable, such as mentor, rival or sibling, so they read well in the graph and can drive the family tree.
An isolated record is one of the things suggestions look for. A character with no relations is usually either unfinished or not needed.
Open the graph after a big writing session to see who has drifted to the edge of the story, or switch on Show unconnected records to see who was never linked at all.
Plan with the graph open: drag a new character out of the city they live in, and the relation is made in the same move.
Creating and removing relations is its own permission, Manage Relations, so someone can edit characters without rewiring the world. See permissions.

Characters — relations, family trees and organizations on a character's page.
Locations, events and more — the other records you can link.
Timeline — events in order, and what came before and after each one.
Suggestions — find records with no connections.
Dashboard — add a relation graph to the project's home.