Chapters

The Chapters page is where you organize your book's structure. It pairs an outline of chapters and scenes on the left with the right side of the screen, where chapter details appear. Scenes are where you fill in details like dates, characters, locations, and more. The same scenes are written in Manuscript Mode.

It helps to keep two things straight as you work here. Chapters hold your scenes: they carry the chapter number, title, and overall identity readers will see. Scenes are where your actual Worldbuilding content lives. A scene holds its own details (dates, characters present, locations, items, and so on) and corresponds to a stretch of prose you'll write in Manuscript Mode. Every chapter has at least one scene, even if you never give it a name. Essentially, in a single-scene chapter, the chapter itself is the scene. So even if you never use individual scenes in Penpoint, for the sake of clarity, the root chapter itself is considered a 'single-scene chapter.'

Getting Around

Most of your time on this page starts in the outline. Click a chapter or scene there, and its details appear on the right.

• The Chapter Outline: the tree on the left side of the page.
• The Corkboard: a second view that lays your chapters out as index cards.
• Placeholder Cards: sticky notes for chapters you haven't written yet.

Working with Chapters and Scenes

Everything you can do to add, rename, rearrange, combine, or remove chapters and scenes lives in these articles:

• Creating Chapters and Scenes: adding new chapters or scenes.
• Editing Chapter and Scene Details: filling in the details on the right side of the screen.
• Reordering and Organizing Chapters: moving items earlier or later, or between chapters.
• Chapter Groups (Folders): gathering related chapters into acts or parts.
• Merging and Deleting: combining items, or removing them safely.

The Detail Area

The right side of the page is built from blocks (small sections like a date field, a character list, or a notes field). You decide which blocks appear and in what order, then fill them in for each scene.

• Customizing Chapter Layout: adding, removing, and reordering blocks.
• Chapter Block Types: what each block is for and when to use it.
• Calendar Block: placing scenes on your book's timeline.
• Assigning Things to Scenes: connecting characters, locations, and items to a scene.

How Chapters Connect

Chapters don't live in isolation. These articles cover how the page connects to the rest of your book:

• Open in Manuscript: jumping straight from a scene to the prose you're writing.
• Calendar Settings: configuring the book-level calendar that scene dates use.

If this is your first time on the page, start with The Chapter Outline. Once the outline makes sense, everything else follows naturally.