Attaching a beat to a chapter or scene

Attaching a beat moves it inside the chapter or scene where it happens, so that card shows what it's carrying and the gaps in your plan show too.

A beat is the story as you planned it; a scene is the story as you wrote it. Attaching a beat says which chapter or scene it happens in.

What attaching does

An attached beat moves inside the chapter or scene you attach it to. It stops being a card of its own and becomes a row on that chapter’s card, listed among the scenes in the order the chapter holds them. A beat attached to a scene sits indented under that scene’s row.

There’s no link and no second copy. The beat is in that chapter now, the same way a scene is, which is why the board and your manuscript can never disagree about where it went.

Attach a beat

Two ways, and they do the same thing:

  • Drag it. Drop the beat on the middle of a chapter card to attach it to that chapter, or on a scene’s row to attach it to that scene. Dropping on the top or bottom edge of a card leaves it beside that chapter instead.
  • Use the picker. Every beat carries an Attach button that lists every part, chapter, and scene in the book. Its own view has the same list, under Attached to. This is the way that works from the keyboard, and the only way to move a beat while the board is showing Beats only.

A beat is attached to one thing at a time. Attaching it somewhere else moves it.

Detach a beat

Choose Not in a chapter in the Attach list, and the beat goes back to being a card of its own in that part of the book. Dragging it out of the chapter and onto the column does the same thing.

From the chapter or scene

You don’t have to be on the board. Open a chapter or scene in the manuscript and pick the Beats tab in the info bar. It lists the beats attached to that scene, and to the chapter around it. In a chapter with several scenes, a beat attached to the chapter itself is marked whole chapter. The scene card shows the same list in its Beats block.

  • Link beat attaches a beat here. The list shows where each beat is now, because choosing one moves it.
  • The × beside a beat detaches it, the same as choosing Not in a chapter on the board.
  • A beat’s name opens its own page, where you edit its title and description.

On a board, connecting a beat card to a scene card and choosing Link beat to scene attaches it the same way.

See what a chapter is carrying

A chapter card lists the beats attached to it and to its scenes, so the chapters carrying your structure are obvious, and so are the ones carrying none. Shut the chapter and those beats move up onto its bar rather than disappearing, naming the scene each one came from.

To read the plan on its own, set Show to Beats only. Every beat in the book appears in reading order with the chapter or scene it’s attached to printed on the card. See Choosing what the board shows.

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