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Book Designer

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Eric Rhys Taylor edited this page Feb 7, 2026 · 20 revisions

Book Designer

The Book Designer is a powerful setup utility that generates a complete manuscript skeleton tailored to your specifications. It creates scene files with pre-configured YAML frontmatter, distributes them across acts and subplots, and can even generate story beat templates.

This tool is perfect for starting a new project or rapidly prototyping a story structure.

Accessing the Book Designer

You can open the Book Designer in two ways:

  1. Command Palette: Open the Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl + P) and search for "Radial Timeline: Book designer".
  2. Welcome Screen: If your timeline is empty, click the "Book Designer" button on the Radial Timeline Welcome Screen.
Book Designer modal with preview donut chart
Book Designer — configure structure, subplots, and templates with live preview

Workflow

The Book Designer modal guides you through three key configuration sections:

1. Location & Structure

  • Target location: The folder path where your new book files will be created (e.g., Book 1). The folder will be created if it doesn't exist. Otherwise root of the vault will be used.
  • Scenes to generate: The total number of scene files to create.
  • Target book length: Used for numbering distribution. For example, if you generate 10 scenes with a target length of 60, scenes will be numbered 1, 7, 13, etc., leaving gaps for future scenes.
  • Acts to distribute scenes across: Choose which acts (1..N) to populate, where N comes from your Settings → Acts → Act count. Scenes are distributed evenly across the selected acts.

2. Content Configuration

  • Subplots: Enter your subplots, one per line. Scenes will be assigned to these subplots in a round-robin fashion. Each scene will belong to only one subplot.
  • Characters: Enter your main characters, one per line. These will be added to the YAML frontmatter of the generated scenes.

3. Templates & Extras

  • Scene template: Choose between 'Base' (minimal) and 'Advanced' YAML templates. These templates are defined in the Radial Timeline settings. Note, the Advanced YAML can be customized.
  • Generate Beats: Optionally generate beat sheet files based on your selected beat system (e.g., Save the Cat, configured in Settings).

Visual Preview

As you adjust the settings, the Preview donut chart updates in real-time to show you how your scenes will be distributed across acts and subplots. This helps you visualize the structure before generating any files. After generation, if you don't like what you get, open the Book designer and regenerate.

Generating Your Book

Once configured, click Create Book. The plugin will:

  1. Create the target folder.
  2. Generate individual markdown files for each scene, populated with the correct YAML frontmatter (scene number, act, subplot, characters, date).
  3. (Optional) Create beat sheet notes if selected.

You'll see a notification confirming the number of scenes and files created. Your Radial Timeline will immediately update to display your new story structure.

Customizing Templates

The Book Designer uses one of two templates:

  1. Base: A minimal template with only the essential fields required for Radial Timeline.
  2. Advanced: A richer template with analysis fields, stats, and more.

Adding Custom Properties

If your writing methodology uses fields beyond the built-in keys (e.g., Story Grid values, Dramatica signposts), you can add them to the Advanced template:

  1. Go to Settings → Scene YAML templates & remapping.
  2. Enable Advanced YAML editor.
  3. Add your custom keys to the list.
  4. In the Book Designer, select Advanced as your template type.

Note: Radial Timeline already tracks draft status (Status and Publish Stage), point of view (POV), and many other metadata fields in the built-in templates. Only add custom keys for data that your methodology requires beyond what the plugin already provides. See YAML-Frontmatter for the full list of built-in fields.

Custom Beat Systems

If you use a story structure not listed in the standard options (like 7 Point Story Structure):

  1. Go to Settings → Story beats system and select Custom.
  2. Define your custom beat system name and beat list in Settings → Story beats system.
  3. In the Book Designer, enable Generate Beats to automatically generate beat notes for your custom system.

You can also create custom beat notes manually:

  • Create a new note for each major beat (e.g., "Pinch Point 1").
  • Add the following frontmatter: 
    Class: Beat
Beat Model: Custom
  • Radial Timeline will detect these notes and display them in Gossamer mode alongside your scenes based on settings. If the new manually created note doesn't match the beat model name in settings, it will not be recognized.

Advanced Metadata

Some writing methodologies rely on tracking complex properties rather than just linear beats. You can accommodate this using the Advanced Template:

  1. Go to Settings > Scene YAML templates & remapping.
  2. Enable Advanced YAML editor.
  3. Add custom keys for your methodology.
  4. When you generate or edit scenes, these properties will be preserved, allowing you to use the plugin's timeline to visualize your story while maintaining your specific data structure in the notes.

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