Choosing what the board shows

The Plot Board's toolbar decides which layer of the book you're looking at, whether it's banded by subplot, and how far back you're standing.

The toolbar in the top left of the Plot Board controls what’s drawn. None of it changes your book: the same parts, the same cards, looked at differently.

Pick Columns or Grid

The switch at the left of the toolbar picks the view. Columns draws a column for each part, with your chapters and beats in it. Grid draws the same book as a spreadsheet: a row for each chapter, a column for each subplot, and a short note where they meet. The board opens in the view you used last on this device.

Show, Subplot rows and Collapse all belong to Columns. On Grid, the toolbar has + Chapter, + Subplot, + Column and Hide columns in their place.

Show: which layer of the book

Show is a dropdown with three answers:

  • All: chapters, their scenes, and every beat in its place.
  • Chapters only: the manuscript, with the planning put away.
  • Beats only: the plan, with the manuscript put away.

Under Beats only, every beat in a part appears, whether it’s loose there or attached to a chapter or a scene, and each card names what it’s attached to. A beat that’s attached can’t be dragged in this view, because the chapter it would be dropped on isn’t on screen; the card says so, and so does the toolbar. Use the beat’s Attach button to move it instead.

Chapters only keeps every drag working, since nothing it hides is a place a card could land. The buttons in each column header follow the same rule: no Beat button under Chapters only, no Chapter button under Beats only.

Subplot rows

Turn on Subplot rows and the board bands horizontally, one row per subplot, with the parts still running across. A thread that goes quiet for a whole part shows up as an empty cell, which is the thing this view exists to say.

A chapter whose scenes are all in one subplot appears once, in that subplot’s row. A chapter with scenes in different subplots is split across the rows they’re in, each copy holding only its own scenes.

Subplot rows and Show work together, so you can put the manuscript away and read just the beats, banded by subplot.

Collapse and expand chapters

Collapse all shuts every chapter down to a bar; when everything is already shut it reads Expand all instead. A shut chapter still shows the beats attached to it and to its scenes, so collapsing to find your structure doesn’t hide the structure.

Collapsing is a way of reading the board right now, not a setting: chapters are open again next time you come back.

Move around and zoom

Scroll to move around the board, sideways as well as down. While you’re dragging a card, hold it near an edge of the board and the board scrolls for you. To zoom, hold ⌘ (Ctrl on Windows) while you scroll, pinch on a trackpad, or use the controls in the bottom-left corner, which also carry a Fit the board across button.

Pull back far enough and the cards drop their summaries and keep their titles and their scenes, so a forty-chapter book stays legible instead of shrinking to nothing.

Grid has the same controls, with Fit every column across in place of Fit the board across. It goes no further out than 50%, where its text is still readable, so a book with many subplots still scrolls sideways.

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