Guide
Beats across the top, plotlines down the side.
Plot is where your story’s shape lives: what the book has to do, the threads that run through it, and the scenes that do the work. Every example here is from Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Nothing here is needed to start.
- 1 · BeatsWhat the book has to doAcross the top, in acts: the book’s structure, the row called Beats. The opening, the midpoint, the climax, whatever your structure calls them, and whatever you call them.
- 2 · PlotlinesThe threads running through itDown the side, in two groups: the book plot, the book’s own story with the main plot first, and the subplots beside it. Mr Utterson’s inquiry is a plotline.
- 3 · ScenesWhere a thread meets a beatThe cards on the board. The Carew Murder Case sits on the main plot under the beat it serves.
Starting from a structure
A structure gives the book its beats to start from. From then on they are yours to rename, move, add to or take out.
Nine structures to choose from: Three-act, The hero’s journey, Freytag’s pyramid, The Fichtean curve, Seven-point, The story circle, Freedom for the Feline, The mystery and The romance arc. Pick one when you start a book, or from an empty board, which offers them all with what each is for. No structure yet is a real answer too.
Change it later from the Edit menu. Before anything moves, Plot says what will happen to your beats and scenes, and changing back brings them back as they were.
Each beat is a diamond on the row of beats, drawn as a plotline’s beats are: filled once a scene sits on it, an outline until then. Point at one to read what it is for, roughly where it falls in the book, and how it usually goes wrong. Choose its name to rename it, say what it is for, move it earlier or later, open its comments, or take it off the sheet. + Beat, at the end of the row, adds one of your own, and you can drag a beat to a new place by the grip beside it.
Call them something else. The row is called Beats, and the acts are named by the structure. From the row’s menu, rename the row for this book, or choose Call the acts something else: Movement One instead of Act One. Everyone on the book reads the same words.
Two structures, on purpose
The story’s plan and the book itself are two different things, and Plot keeps them apart.
The switch in Plot’s toolbar turns the board between Beats across the top, the story’s plan, and Chapters across the top, the book: the same scenes, under the beat they serve or filed in the chapter they are in. The i beside it says the same thing whenever you need it.
Most planning tools give you one set of columns, because the prose lives somewhere else. Here the chapters hold your words, so a chapter is real and a beat is a promise, and the board can tell you how far the writing has carried the plan.
Start one from the other. Plot beats first and open Chapters across the top, and Plot offers to make a chapter for each beat, with every scene filed in its beat’s chapter. Start from chapters, an imported draft or a book written chapter by chapter, and the empty board offers a beat for each chapter beside the structures; choose a structure instead, and Plot offers to place each scene on the beat nearest where its chapter falls in the book. Each offer says what it will do before anything moves, Not now leaves everything where it is, only scenes not yet placed move, and afterwards the two go their own ways.
Scenes
A scene goes where its plotline meets its beat. Point at an empty cell, or tap it, and choose the plus to name a scene there. Drag a card to another cell to move it, or to another place in its cell to reorder.
The pencil on a card opens the scene beside the board, which stays where it is. It starts with the scene’s name and what it is for. Everything else waits on one line each, saying what it holds until you open it: goal, conflict and outcome; Notes in this scene, for who is in it, whose eyes, where, secrets and tags from your vault; Where it sits, its plotline, beat, chapter and Also serves, for a scene that does two jobs; setups and payoffs; the plotline beats it lands; and Your thinking, room for everything else you know about it. Each field saves as you leave it, and the pencil on another card moves the panel to that scene. Esc closes it.
A card’s menu moves it: to the beat before or after, or onto another plotline. Take it off its beat puts it under Not placed yet, kept on the board until you Put it back on a beat, and Take off the board takes it out altogether.
Each card says where it is in the book: the chapter it sits in, or Not in a chapter yet, and the characters and places it names from your vault. Open a card to read the rest. When you’re writing, the same scene is in the side panel beside the chapter, with the same fields.
Plotlines
Two groups. The Book plot holds the book’s own story: the main plot, always first, and any line that carries that story with it. The Subplots sit beside it: a romance, a mystery, a character’s arc. A new plotline starts in the subplots, and its menu moves it to the book plot and back. Each heading has its own i, and its menu renames it for the book, Threads or Arcs if that is how you think of them. The sidebar lists the plotlines the same way.
The box that adds a plotline, at the foot of the rows, takes a name, a note from your vault, a structure, or a note and a structure together. Type to find what you want; each note is listed under its kind, and what you pick sits in the box until you add it. In a book of a series it lists the series’ own plotlines first, under From this series, so picking Mr Utterson’s inquiry in book two carries it on rather than starting a second one.
A plotline’s swatch gives it a colour, and its menu renames it, adds a line under its name, gives it a beat sheet, says what it is about, hides it or removes it. A hidden plotline keeps its label, marked hidden, so nothing has to be remembered to bring it back.
A plotline about a character is one made from their note, or given one later with About a note. Made from the note with no name of your own, it takes the note’s name and follows it when the note is renamed, until you rename the plotline. Under its name is a link to the note, and the note lists the plotline under Linked from.
A story inside the story
Some books have a second shape running through them: a mystery beside a quest, a romance inside a fantasy.
A plotline can carry a structure of its own, chosen from the same nine: pick one in the add box, or choose Give it a beat sheet from its menu. Its beats sit in a lane of their own at the top of the board, under the book’s beats, each at the beat nearest where it roughly falls, and the lane stays in view while the rows scroll. They add no columns, and the book’s beats do not change.
Keep the top of the board small. Fold a lane to one line, its diamonds and its count, or hide it with the eye on its label; a hidden lane waits at the foot of the lanes to be shown again. Structure, at the top of the board, folds every lane away at once. From a book’s third beat sheet on, a new lane arrives folded.
Any scene can land one of its beats, on any row: the mystery’s reveal is landed by Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case, on the main plot. A landed beat is filled in, an open one is an outline, and a thread runs through the lane from the first one landed to the last. When the scene that lands a beat is on another row, the beat says which. From a beat’s menu you can land it, move it, rename it, write your thinking on it, or take it off.
Move a beat along its lane by its grip, or with Move earlier and Move later in its menu. A beat stays between the beats either side of it, because their order is the structure, and when it cannot go further the menu says which beat holds it.
Nothing changes before you are told what will. Change the beat sheet and Take the beat sheet off each say first how many beats go, how many arrive, and whether any landings go with them. Changing back brings the beats back with their names, your thinking and their landings.
Setups and clues
Plant one in the scene’s panel: open Setups and payoffs, choose Plant a setup here, and say which kind: a setup, a clue or a red herring. It shows on the card by its kind and name: Clue, The cheque signed by Jekyll.
Pay it off from the scene that answers it: in that scene’s panel, type the setup’s name under Pays off here. The payoff shows on that card, and the setup’s marker closes. Across a series, a clue planted in book one can pay off in book two.
What is open
There is no list of what is missing. Each open thing is marked where it is, quietly, and one button brings them all forward.
- A beat with no sceneA dashed No scene yet where the beat meets the main plot, which is also where you add one, and the beat’s diamond an outline.
- A beat with no purposeOne you added yourself, with an open ring beside its name until you say what it is for. A structure’s beats arrive explained.
- A plotline’s skipped beatThe thread breaks at a beat left open behind one you have landed. What the story has not reached yet is not marked: it is the part still to plot.
- A clue nothing pays offIts marker keeps an open ring until a scene pays it off.
- A chapter with nothing writtenAn open ring beside it in the sidebar.
Press What is open in Plot’s toolbar and everything else steps back, while each open thing says what is missing where it is: Lowest point has no scene yet. The number on the button is how many there are on the board. It is a count, never a score. Press it again to put the board back.
Seeing the board your way
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Timeline or Outline | The grid, or the same scenes as a document, chapter by chapter. |
| Beats or chapters across the top | Lay the board out by the story’s beats, or by the chapters a reader meets. |
| Show | Pick who, where, secrets or tags from your vault, and the cards that don’t match dim, or are put away. The count on it says how many. |
| Compact cards | In the View menu: narrower columns and cards down to their names, for seeing a whole act at once. |
| This book or The series | In a series, widen the board to every book at once. |
Across a series
Choose The series and the books band across the top, each over its own acts. A plotline that carries on shows once, through every book it runs through, and its menu says which.
A plotline’s beat sheet stays in the book it was given in. From a beat’s menu, land it with a scene of its own book, or choose Move to another book the plotline runs through; it arrives there open. Each scene’s card says which beats it lands, and a clue planted in one book shows with the scene that pays it off in a later one. A book the series’ arc says nothing about is marked on its band.
Words you will meet
- BeatsThe book’s own beats, the row across the top of Plot. Rename it for a book if you think of them another way.
- Beat sheetThe beats a structure gives you: the book’s, or a plotline’s own, in a lane under the book’s beats.
- LaneA plotline’s beat sheet, as a row at the top of the board. It folds, hides, and stays in view.
- PlotlineOne thread through the book, as a row: the main plot, a subplot, a character’s arc.
- LandsWhat a scene does to a beat when it is the scene where that beat happens.
- Setup, clue, red herringSomething planted in a scene that a later one pays off.
- Book plot, SubplotsThe two groups of plotlines: the book’s own story, and the lines beside it.
- Not placed yetWhere a scene waits when it is off its beat, kept on the board.