Arrangements, the Inbox and Book Structure

Arrangements

A project holds several arrangements: separate trees of documents. The tile above the contents names the one you're looking at; choose it to switch.

  • Manuscript: the book. It's what compile, statistics and targets use.
  • Publishing: the front matter, back matter and submission documents (see Front Matter, Back Matter and Submissions).
  • Research & Notes: your research, notes, the Inbox, Sources and a study page for each character (see Character Studies). Shown in the Research room.
  • Trash: documents you've moved to the Trash. Nothing in it is deleted.
  • Alternates: other versions of folders and orders you're trying out (see Alternates).

The panel also lists your collections, with how many documents each holds, and the project's tags under Tags (see Status, Labels and Collections).

The Inbox

Ideas you capture away from your desk go to an Inbox folder in Research & Notes, created the first time something arrives. Items come from:

  • Capture on iPhone, and Capture… in the iPad's ⋯ menu
  • The share sheet, from other apps
  • The Add to Inbox shortcut
  • Reviewer comments that couldn't be matched to your text
  • Drafts from assistants, if you let them add drafts (see Assistants)

To file an item, use Move To (below).

Moving and choosing several items

Control-click a document or folder (or touch and hold) and choose Move To to put it in another arrangement or folder: the top level of the Manuscript, a chapter folder, Research & Notes. Everything inside a folder goes with it. A note moved into the Manuscript becomes a scene, and anything moved out of the Trash is back in use.

Convert to Folder makes a document a folder, keeping its text, synopsis and anything under it; a folder of documents in the Manuscript is a chapter. Convert to Document turns a folder back. Both are in the same menu, and in Structure on Mac, which also moves the selection up, down, in and out (⌃⌘ and an arrow key).

To act on several items at once:

  • Mac: ⌘-click or ⇧-click rows in the contents, then Control-click one of them. Move To, Convert to Folder, Status, Label and Move to Trash apply to all of them, as do Structure ▸ Move To and Move to Trash (⌘⌫). You can also drag several rows together.
  • iPad and iPhone: tap Select above the contents, tap the items, then use the bar at the bottom: Move To, More (Status, Label, Convert to Folder) and Move to Trash. Tap Done when you've finished.

Locking

To keep a finished chapter or a reference document from changing by accident, Control-click it (or touch and hold) and choose Lock; on the Mac it's also in the Structure menu, and the inspector has a Locked switch. A locked document shows a lock beside its name. Its text, title, synopsis and notes don't change, and it isn't moved, trashed, split, merged or converted — nor rewritten by Replace, Fix Quotes, Clean Up or a restore from a checkpoint — until you choose Unlock. Locking a folder locks everything in it.

Status, labels, tags and comments still change on a locked document: they're notes about it, not the document. Co-writers' edits made before the lock reached them still arrive.

Status, labels and word counts

In Write, Scene (⌘D) shows the scene's status, point of view, beat, story time, setting, tags, people and notes; its All details tab, and the inspector (⌥⌘I on Mac), have everything else, including the Label. The label colour tints the document in the contents. The Outliner shows and edits these fields for every document in a folder. Control-click a document (or touch and hold) to set its status or label, and see Status, Labels and Collections for the status workflow and collections that fill themselves.

The inspector shows only what applies to the document. Scenes in the manuscript also have the Story section, Alternates, Section type and Include in compile. Front and back matter have Include in compile. A character's study page shows the character instead.

Parts, chapters and scenes

Compile reads the book's structure from the contents:

  • A folder of documents is a chapter.
  • A folder of folders is a part.
  • Documents are scenes.

To override this for one item, set its Section type in All details or the inspector. See Compiling.

Chapters and parts show their numbers before their titles, as compile numbers them. Turn Numbered off (in the inspector, or the row's menu) for a prologue or interlude: it keeps its title and no number, and the chapters after it are numbered as if it weren't there.