Core Workflows

Planning Your Novel

• Story Beats: Use any story beat system (Save the Cat, Hero's Journey, Story Grid, or Custom) to lay out the story momentum scaffolding.
• Act Structure: Create and distribute scenes by act (1-3) to see your three-act structure take shape as scene ideas come to you.
• Subplot Tracking: Each ring represents a different subplot—see how plot threads interweave.
• Beat Templates: Generate complete story beat sets like Save the Cat using Settings → Story beat system.

Command: Create template scene note Settings: Story beat system

Tracking Progress

• Status Colors: In Subplot Mode, scenes are color-coded by status (Todo = plaid, Working = pink, Overdue = red, Complete = publish stage color customizable in settings). In Narrative and Chronologue modes, scenes display their subplot color.
• Completion Estimates: Plugin calculates target completion date based on your recent writing pace.
• Capture actual completion dates: When you mark a scene as Complete, update its Due date to the day you finished. Those timestamps power the completion estimate calculations, so keeping them current improves the forecast.
• Publishing Stages: Track manuscript through Zero → Author → House → Press.
• Subplot Mode: Switch to subplot mode (navigation top right via page icon or keyboard 2) for a per-subplot view (no combined outer ring) that emphasizes publication progress and Todo/Working/Overdue status patterns.

Modes: Narrative (key 1) or Subplot (key 2) Settings: Publishing stage colors

Zero Draft Mode

Prevents edits to completed zero-draft scenes. Click completed scene → modal for pending edits → save ideas for later revision. Keeps you progress to new scenes instead of endlessly revising.

Settings: → Radial Timeline → Zero draft mode

Manage Subplots in Bulk

Need to rename or delete a subplot across dozens of scenes? Use the Subplot Manager command (command palette → “Radial Timeline: Open Subplot Manager”). The modal lets you:

• Rename a subplot and automatically update the frontmatter of every scene using it.
• Delete a subplot and strip the tag from all scenes in one action.

This is especially helpful after reorganizing your B/C plots—you no longer have to hunt through every note manually.

Moving Scenes

You can reorder scenes directly on the timeline using drag-and-drop. This feature is exclusive to Narrative Mode.

1. Switch to Narrative Mode (keyboard 1).
2. Hover over the scene number square on the outer ring. The cursor will change to a double-arrow.
3. Click and drag to the target position (another scene number square). A tick mark tracks your progress around the timeline.
4. Release to drop. A confirmation dialog will appear with details of the move.
5. Confirm to reorder.

Note: If you move a scene to a different Act, the feature will automatically evaluate the target scene's act and amend the YAML frontmatter to match.