Bonafor

Guide

Five rooms, one sidebar.

A map for when you want one. Nothing here is needed to start.

Every screen has the same five parts

  1. 1The rail changes the room: Library, Plan and Plot, then Write and Crew once a book is open. The book you have open stays open.
  2. 2The sidebar reads the same in every room: Inbox, My tasks, Comments and Every book, then the open book's Plotlines and Vault, then your Series and Books.
  3. 3The menus are File, Edit, Insert, Format, View, Go and Help. The toolbar under them holds this screen's tools as icons, and each one says its name when you point at it.
  4. 4The page is the work itself.
  5. 5The side panel, in Write, holds what is about the open chapter: where its scenes sit in the plot, and its comments.

The rooms

  • LibraryYour books, and your series as groups on the shelf. New books and imports start here. Delete a book or a series and it waits under Deleted until you restore it; a deleted series’ books stay on the shelf on their own, and go back into it when it is restored.
  • PlanPhases, tasks and dates from first draft to launch, as a list, a board or a schedule. Who has what, and when it is due.
  • PlotBeats across the top, plotlines down the side, scenes on the board. Also as an outline.
  • WriteThe manuscript, chapter by chapter, and the notes in your vault. Track changes and comments, as in Word.
  • CrewEveryone helping with this book, and the part each of them plays.

One book, two shapes

A book has the shape a reader meets and the shape its story has to keep. Bonafor holds both, joined where a scene lands a beat, so neither has to pretend to be the other.

The book What a reader meets, in order Chapter Scene
A scene can land several beats. A beat can take several scenes.
The story What the book has to do Act Beat

So Plot can tell you which beats still have no scene, wherever in the book the scenes sit. A structure template gives you beats to start from, and from then on they are yours to change.

Plot has a guide of its own

Structures and the beats they give you, plotlines with beat sheets of their own, setups and clues, what is open, and a whole series on one board. How plotting works →

Words you will meet

  • Beat sheetThe beats a structure gives you: the book’s, across the top of Plot, or a plotline’s own, in a lane just under the book’s.How plotting works →
  • CrewEveryone helping make this book: a coauthor, editors, a book coach, beta and ARC readers.
  • PassOne round of editing on the whole book. You open it for an editor, who works in their own draft and sends the chapters back as changes.
  • My tasksEvery task given to you, across every book.
  • ChangesProposed edits, each accepted or rejected, one at a time or all at once. Word's word, and Word's three markup views.How editing works →
  • VaultYour world: characters, places, groups and secrets. It belongs to the pen name, so it carries across every series.
  • PhaseA stage of making the book: Drafting, Copy edit, ARC readers, Launch. Most tasks sit inside one.
  • ExportA copy of your work as Markdown and spreadsheet files in one download, which open without Bonafor.