The plot grid

A grid for the whole book: chapters down the side, plotlines across the top, and in each cell a short note on what happens in that thread in that chapter.

Open Plan for a book and choose Grid, beside Cards and Outline.

Plotlines

A plotline is a thread that runs through the book: the mystery, a love story, one character's arc. Add a plotline asks for a name and a colour. The … button in a plotline's heading renames or recolours it, moves it left or right, or deletes it with its notes (the message at the foot of the screen has an Undo).

Click a cell, or press Enter on it, and type. Enter saves the note and Escape leaves without saving. A note is a line or two, up to 300 characters; clear the words and the note is gone.

If the book uses scene plans (a synopsis or point of view on a scene, set on the Plan board or in a chapter's Details tab), Show scenes puts a row under each planned scene, so a note can sit on a scene as well as on a chapter. A scene's note follows the scene when it is moved to another chapter.

Point of view and tags

Point of view and Tags swap the plotlines for columns worked out from your chapters: a column for each character who is the point of view of a chapter, or for each tag. A mark shows which chapters (and, with scenes shown, which scenes) have it. These columns are read-only; change a chapter's point of view or tags in its Details tab.

With the keyboard

The grid is one place to Tab to. Inside it the arrow keys move between cells, Home and End go to the start and end of a row, Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End to the corners, and Page Up and Page Down five rows. Enter on a chapter opens it, and on a plotline's name opens its menu. On a phone the grid scrolls sideways and the chapter names stay in view.

Where the notes are kept

In a plain file in the book's folder, books/<book>/plot.yml, next to book.yml. Each note is filed under its chapter's name (the part of the file name after the number, such as the-ledger) or its scene's short name, never a number, so moving chapters about loses nothing, and renaming one's title changes nothing. Merging two chapters joins their notes.

If a chapter is deleted its notes stay in the file and are listed under the grid as Notes with nowhere to go, until you clear them. If the file stops making sense (a slip when editing it by hand), the grid says so and leaves the file exactly as it is until you fix it.