Narrative Mode
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Narrative Mode is your primary manuscript-order workspace. It displays all scenes from all subplots on the outer ring, organized by act divisions (default 3 acts, configurable in Settings → Core → Acts). Each act spans an equal segment of the 360° circle. This view emphasizes Narrative time (the order readers will experience the story). Status and progress stage overlays are hidden so the focus stays on story structure and subplot balance.
- Structure: Scenes are distributed across Act 1..Act N (based on your Settings → Core → Acts → Act count).
- Book or Saga scope: Switch between one active book and a combined Saga view.
- Subplot Colors: The outer ring segments are colored by their subplot. This lets you quickly visualize which plot threads are dominant in each section of the book.
- Publishing markers: Optional outer-ring placards can show chapter starts and part boundaries from your active novel PDF layout.
- Story Beats: Displays story beats (like Save the Cat) along the timeline, helping you pace your narrative structure.
- Interactive Reordering: You can drag scenes on the outer ring to reorder them. See Reorder Scenes for details.
- Scene right-click menu: Add a scene after the current one, set a chapter marker, change Status, change Publish Stage, or flag it for Pulse — see below.
- Recent moves overlay: Narrative Mode can show a top-left list of recent committed scene and beat moves. Toggle it in Settings → Advanced → Configuration.
Right-click any scene on the timeline to open a context menu that lets you add a scene or update scene frontmatter without opening the note. The current value in each group is marked with a checkmark.
Add scene — inserts a new scene after the selected one, using that scene as the anchor for placement and context.
Set chapter — adds, edits, or clears the Chapter: marker on the selected scene. The modal previews current chapter containers so you can see how the marker affects the manuscript structure.
Status — set Status to Todo, Working, or Complete. When you mark a scene Complete, the Due date is automatically set to today, keeping the Progress Mode completion estimate and pace tracker accurate.
Publish Stage — set Publish Stage to Zero, Author, House, or Press. Useful for moving scenes through revision tiers without leaving the timeline.
Flag Triplet Pulse — sets Pulse Update: Yes on the scene so the next Scene pulse analysis run will reprocess it.
The timeline refreshes immediately to reflect the change.
The title-bar book selector controls which manuscript the timeline shows.
- Choose a book to inspect one Book Manager profile.
- Choose Saga to combine all configured books into one multi-book Narrative timeline.
- Saga scope is available when more than one Book Manager profile is configured.
- Saga scope stays in Narrative Mode, because multi-book scene order is a narrative-structure view rather than a chronology or progress view.
Narrative Mode can show publishing-aware placards on the outside of the scene ring:
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C — a
Chapter:field starts a chapter at that scene. - P — the selected PDF layout prints a Part opener at that act boundary.
- P/C — a Part and Chapter begin at the same boundary.
These placards reflect the novel PDF layout selected in the Manuscript Export panel. For example, a layout that prints chapter openers can show C markers, while Signature can also show P markers for Parts. Changing the selected export layout updates the timeline markers after the layout is saved.
When a scene belongs to multiple subplots, the outer All Scenes ring must choose one color. You control which subplot wins:
- Click a scene: Sets its dominant subplot. That subplot's color is used for the scene on the outer ring, taking precedence over all others.
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Folded corner indicator: Each subplot ring shows a small folded corner motif at its start. The corner has three states:
- Missing — the subplot is not assigned to this scene.
- Gray — the subplot is assigned but is not dominant.
- Darker hue of the subplot ring color — this subplot is dominant and expressed on the outer ring above all others.