Your own templates

A template is the shape of a book or of a chapter with the writing taken out. Use one to start the next book of a series with the same word goal, status names and front matter, or to begin every flashback chapter with the headings and scenes you plan for it.

Save a chapter as a template

On a book's Plan page, open the … menu on a chapter's card or row (More about “the chapter's title”) and choose Save as a template…. With the chapter open, the same is under More above the page, as Save this chapter as a template…. Give it a name and choose Save template.

A chapter template keeps the chapter's headings, its scene breaks and each scene's plan (the synopsis and point of view), and the chapter's own synopsis, point of view, word target and tags. It leaves out every word of the text, and also the chapter's title, status and part, which belong to one chapter and not to its shape.

Save a book as a template

In the book's … menu (More about this book), choose Save as a template….

Always kept: the word goal, genre, cover colour, language, paper size and the book's own status names. Never kept: the title, subtitle, author, deadline, the contact and publishing details, or the text of any chapter. Three more things are yours to choose:

• Front and back matter pages, copied as you wrote them. A copyright page or an author note is worth keeping; change what needs changing in the new book.
• Story wiki categories: the settings of Characters, Places and the rest, never the pages in them.
• The chapter list: each chapter's title, part and details, with its headings, scene breaks and scene plans, and no text. A part exists only as a label on its chapters, so this is how a template carries a book's parts. It suits a book of a set shape, such as three acts; it does not suit the second book of a series, so it is off unless you tick it.

A template is never replaced. If the name is taken the window says so and waits for another name.

Start from a template

• New book in the library: under Start from, choose a template. The word goal, genre, language and cover colour fill in for you (change them as you like), and the book is made with the rest: its status names, paper size, pages, chapter list and any wiki categories your project does not have yet. A category you already have is left exactly as it is.
• New chapter, on a book's page or beside the chapter you are writing: under Start from, choose a template and give the chapter its title. It starts at the end of the book, as a Draft, with the template's details and structure. Each scene plan gets a name of its own.

With no template saved, those windows are as they were.

Your templates

Manage templates…, in the New book and New chapter windows, lists every template with a Delete button for each, and an Undo straight afterwards. Deleted files stay in your storage's history where it keeps one.

Where they are kept

Templates are plain files in a folder called templates in your project, so they go wherever your project goes (this browser, a folder, GitHub, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or a zip from Download everything). A chapter template is one file, templates/chapters/flashback.md: the chapter's details at the top, then the headings and * * * breaks, with each scene's plan as <!--@scene synopsis: The smell of paraffin.-->. A book template is a folder, templates/books/series-starter/, holding book.yml (no title, and the template's own name in template:), front/ and back/ pages, chapters/ and codex/ when you kept them. You can read or change any of it in another editor, or make a template by hand.

They are never taken for your writing: they are not among your notes, not in search, not in any word count, and not in an export. If you already keep notes in a folder called templates, those stay notes; only templates/books and templates/chapters are templates.