Moving cards, and marking them up

Drag a card to change where it happens in the book. Subplots and tags carry everything the running order can't say.

Dragging a card on the Plot Board is how you re-plan: a drag says this happens here instead. The board writes straight to your manuscript, so the book changes with it.

Move a chapter or a scene

Drag a chapter up or down its column to reorder it, or across to another column to move it into that part. Drag a scene onto a chapter card to move it into that chapter, or up and down among the rows to change where it sits in the chapter it’s in already.

Let go in the gap between two cards and it lands between them. Let go where you picked it up and nothing moves. To reach a part of the book that’s off screen, hold the card near the edge of the board and the board scrolls under it.

Move a beat

A beat drops almost anywhere, and where you let go says what it means:

On the top or bottom edge of a chapter card, it lands beside that chapter and stays a card of its own.
On the middle of a chapter card, it moves inside that chapter.
On a scene row, it moves inside that scene. With subplot rows on, scene rows don’t take a beat; use Attach instead.

An attached beat is a row on the card it’s attached to, so you can see at a glance which chapters are carrying structure and which aren’t. Drag the row back out to the column and it becomes its own card again.

Move a beat without dragging

No drag on the board works by keyboard, so every beat carries an Attach button that does the same job. It lists every part, chapter, and scene in the book, and picking one files the beat there. Not in a chapter takes it back out. The same list is in the beat’s own view, under Attached to.

Put something in a subplot

A subplot is a thread through the book: the romance, the investigation, the thing the villain is doing offstage. Everything belongs to the first subplot until you say otherwise, so nothing is ever unassigned.

A beat carries its own subplot. Choose it from the pill on the card, or from Subplot in the beat’s own view.
A scene carries its own too, set from the dot at the end of its row.
A chapter has none of its own. Choosing a subplot for a chapter files every scene in it, and a chapter whose scenes are in different subplots reads Mixed.

Add a subplot with the + Subplot button, which sits above the row names when subplot rows are on. You’re asked for its name, its color, and who it follows, all at once. On the Grid view, + Subplot is in the toolbar, and the new subplot arrives as a column.

Remove a subplot from its row menu, or from its column’s ⋯ menu on the Grid view. You’re asked first, and if it has notes on the Grid view, you’re told how many go with it.

A book whose subplots have all been removed shows a single row called The whole story.

Colour a subplot

Colour belongs to the subplot rather than the individual card. Pick one when you add the subplot, or from its row menu afterwards, and everything in that thread wears it.

With subplot rows on, a card is washed in its subplot’s color. With them off, chapters go back to blue and beats to green, which is what tells the two apart at a glance. Either way the subplot still shows on the card: on a beat’s pill, on the dot beside each of a chapter’s scenes, and in the thin bar naming which subplots a chapter’s scenes are in.

A subplot can also say who it follows. Point it at a character or a location from its row menu, and the row says whose thread it is.

Tag a card

Tags carry what structure can’t. A beat sits in one part and one subplot, but it can hold any number of tags, so “needs work” or “check the dates here” can sit on it without competing with where it belongs in the story. Tag a card from the tag button on the card itself, or from Tags in its own view. See Tagging system.

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