Story Plotter

0:00 Use Writing Desk's Story Plotter to organize and map your novel's chapters and narrative threads.

0:05 To get started, open your manuscript, then expand the left-hand sidebar and click Story Plotter at the bottom.

0:13 Here you can add chapter summaries and scene-by-scene breakdowns for each of your chapters, with as little or as much detail and structure as you like.

0:22 Match the chapter title in Story Plotter to the title in your manuscript to import chapter notes into your Pad for each chapter with a click, so your chapter notes are always there when you need them, but never in the way.

0:37 The Pad is a free-form area where you can brain dump without structure.

0:41 There are two additional views. First, the Board view.

0:46 Here you can map chapters and scenes against any of 11 different story structures.

0:51 If we click Save the Cat, you'll see it lays out the Save the Cat story beats broken out across three acts.

0:59 Drag and drop chapters and scenes as needed until you're happy with your story's pacing.

1:07 The final view is the Timeline, where you can track all the narrative threads for your story.

1:15 Click to expand the chapter summary and add each thread you want to track below it, whether that's a relationship, the main plot, or a plant-and-payoff moment.

1:27 It highlights open threads so you can see whether they've been fully developed and resolved, or left half-baked and dangling.

1:34 Click an empty space to add a new thread card with a title, description, and tag, so you can track multiple threads and complex plotlines with ease.

1:46 Add as many or as few cards as you need.

1:49 Give your novel as much or as little structure as you like, and keep everything in one place with Writing Desk's Story Plotter.