Views

When the prose stops telling you what is wrong, look at the story another way. A view is a way of looking at your project. Views open as tabs, so you can put a timeline next to the scene you are writing. They all read the same notes: change something in one and the others follow.

There are three ways to open a view:

• The ribbon on the left. It starts with the five views your kind of project uses most. Every other view is under More, grouped as Plan, World, Read and publish, Team and progress, and Tools. You choose which ones stay in the ribbon.
• The command palette (⌘P). Each view has a command in the Views group; the names are in the tables below.
• The binder. Right-click a folder or a chapter to open it in a view that works on a folder. A timeline, a canvas or a dialogue tree opens when you click it, like any note.

Views that are always thereCopy Anchor Link

The details are on their own pages:

Views that work on a folderCopy Anchor Link

Corkboard, Plot grid, Manuscript and Read work on a folder or a chapter. So do Production, Translate and Publish when their modules are on. There are two ways to say which folder:

• Right-click a folder or a chapter in the binder and choose the view. A note of any other kind offers the same views once it has notes inside it.
• Open the view from the ribbon or the command palette. It opens on the folder or chapter you have selected or open. If the note you have open has nothing inside it, the view opens on the folder that holds it. With nothing selected, it covers the whole project.

Views that are notesCopy Anchor Link

A timeline and a canvas are notes in the binder. Create one like any other note and click it to open it. A project can have several of each. "New timeline" in the command palette creates a timeline. Both are covered in full in Timeline and canvas.

TimelineCopy Anchor Link

Story time on a horizontal axis. Scenes sit where their Story date property says and last as long as their Duration; drag a scene and the properties change. You can add events that are not scenes, split the timeline into lanes by plot thread, point of view or location, zoom from minutes to centuries, switch between story order and reading order with flashbacks marked, and use a calendar of your own invention.

Everything is in Timeline and canvas.

Canvas (storyboard)Copy Anchor Link

An endless board for arranging things by hand: cards that show real notes, plain text cards, image and shot panels, groups, and labelled arrows between them. Several people can work on one canvas at once. A note placed on a canvas counts as a link to it.

Everything is in Timeline and canvas.

DialogueCopy Anchor Link

A dialogue note is a branching conversation. It can be created only while the Interactive narrative module is on. See Interactive narrative.

Views that come with a moduleCopy Anchor Link

A project's modules switch groups of tools on and off, so a novelist doesn't see game tools. The project type picks the starting set. Change it in Project settings. A view whose module is off is not in the ribbon, under More, or in the command palette.

The commands are "Open release roadmap", "Open secrets & setups", "Open continuity", "Open sources", "Open reviews", "Open production", "Open quest designer", "Open strings (short-text fields)", "Open translate", "Open publish" and "Open AI chat". The AI view is offered only while AI is on for the workspace, the project and you.

Views and the spoiler horizonCopy Anchor Link

When a spoiler horizon is on, the Outline, Graph, Codex, Timeline, Read and Quests views leave out what the audience has not been told yet. The Codex filters this project's pages, not those of a shared world. The Corkboard, Plot grid, Manuscript, Relationships and Canvas views show everything regardless, and so do search and the quick switcher. The full list is in What it hides.

Where a view keeps its settingsCopy Anchor Link

Some things are stored in your browser and not with the project: the positions on the relationship map, the property columns you chose in the outline, which continuity warnings you dismissed, the spoiler horizon, your writing session's word count, and the pane layout you didn't save as a named layout. They won't follow you to another computer, and your co-writers don't see them.

A timeline's calendar, lanes, mode and reading-order line are stored on the timeline itself, so everyone sees the same. A canvas is a shared document: every card and connection is the same for everyone. Plot threads and relationships belong to the project. Filters in the graph, the outline and the codex are not kept at all; they reset when you close the tab, and so do the graph's positions and a timeline's zoom.