Plotting with novelibre

Applying a story structure model

If you want to divide a story into stages according to a structure model (e.g. the Three Act Model, or the Save The Cat beatsheet), just insert the stages between the regular sections at the beginning of each phase. This gives you color-coded subheadings in the tree view.

With the nv_templates plugin you can load pre-made story structure models from Markdown template files, and you can save the story structure of your project for reuse.

Defining plot lines

novelibre provides plot lines as a powerful and flexible concept for plotting.

“Plot line” can mean a variety of things: narrative strand, thread, character arc, storyline, subplot, sequence of cause and effect, sequence of setup and payoff, and so on. You can think of a plot line as a line on which plot points are arranged that characterize the progression of the story. These plot points can be assigned to sections to indicate the section’s relevance to the plot.

novelibre lets you define any number of plot lines.
Any number of sections can be assigned to each plot line.
Any number of plot lines can be assigned to each section.
Each plot line can contain any number of plot points.
Each plot point can be assigned to exactly one section.
Any number of plot points can be assigned to each section.

The association of sections and plot points is shown in the “Plot points” column of the tree view.

You can use plot lines to establish named connections between sections, such as setup → payoff, so you can keep track of this relationship even if the sections are far away from each other.

Plot grid

The novelibre plot grid is a spreadsheet with a row for each section, and a set of plot-relevant section metadata in the columns. The first visible column contains links to the sections in the manuscript. Each plot line has its own column in the plot grid, Where the plot line notes are shown. The plot grid offers you a convenient way to enter the plot line notes by seeing the big pictures of your plot construction.

Hint

You can assign a section to a plot line by entering text in the corresponding Plot line notes cell of the plot grid.