The Story Pages
Plan's story pages chart your cast and chronology across the manuscript. Choose Plan at the top of the window, then Story after Beats and one of its pages; the tab then shows the page's name. The column beside them lists your people, most present first, in their colours, then your places, objects and motifs, with Add a character or place and Suggest names… below (see Name Generator).
| Tab | Shows |
|---|---|
| Cast & Places | Your characters, places, objects and motifs, and their details. |
| Timeline | A lane for each character across the days of the story, a dot for each scene they're in: filled for the point of view, faded if the time is estimated. A line joins the people in the same scene. Choose a dot to see that scene, who's in it and Open in Write. Choose By reading order for the charts in book order: story time against the order of telling, character lanes, and objects and motifs. |
| Character study | The person chosen in the column: what their study page says, a strip of the scenes they're in, and who they share scenes with most. Open study page goes to the page; Edit details opens Cast & Places. |
| Chronology | Scenes in the order they happen, on a calendar. Choose Lanes to group them by POV, setting or character, and Show Estimated Times to include scenes without a time. Drag a scene to change its story time. |
| Continuity | Possible errors. See Continuity Checks. |
| Shape | The manuscript scene by scene: length, sentences, dialogue and vocabulary. See Shape. |
| Glossary | The names and words the story uses. See Glossary. |
In a screenplay or a play, a character who speaks in a scene is on stage in it: their name heading a speech is enough, as a point of view or a setting in the scene's details is. A name in a direction only mentions them.
Each character has a colour, used for their lane, their dot on cards and their point-of-view edge on the corkboard. Choose another in Cast & Places. A character's Role (their part in the story, in a line) appears under their name in the character study.
Suggest Story Times… (the wand on the Timeline and Chronology) fills in times from the scenes' openings; see Story Time and Setting. On Mac, choose View > Open Timeline in New Window to keep it beside the text.
The Timeline follows the current arrangement: the manuscript, or an alternate order you're trying out. Folders, trashed documents and notes are left out.
Distances between places
In Cast & Places, choose a place that's on the map, then another in Distance. You see:
- In a straight line: worked out on your device, true for any period.
- Today, by Apple Maps: walking, driving and public transport, with each route's length. Public transport is only shown where Apple Maps has it. Show in Maps opens the journey in Maps.
- In the story's period: how long each of the story's ways of travelling takes, over a route as long as today's walking route.
To set how people get about, choose Travel in the Story… under Places. Choose By today's transport for a story set now, or By the story's period and list its ways of travelling with their average speeds: on foot, a horse-drawn cab, a steam train. The travel time check uses the fastest of them.