Writing a Series

In Penpoint, your whole series lives together as one book file in your Library: a trilogy, a saga, however many volumes your story needs. It appears as a single stacked card, and clicking the card opens the series' own shelf of Books.

The payoff: your cast travels with you. Sherlock Holmes exists once, present in Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3, so when you refine his profile while drafting the finale, he's up to date everywhere. No more duplicating a book for each new volume and re-typing everyone.

What's Yours per Book, What's Shared

• Each Book keeps its own: chapters, scenes, manuscript, and Book Arcs. That's the story of that volume. (Arcs are Penpoint's plot-planning page, a bird's-eye view of your story's threads.)
• Shared between Books: characters, items, and locations. Each one carries a Presence: the list of Books it appears in. (Changing Presence only controls which Books' lists it shows up in; it never deletes anything.) Their Importance is the exception to the sharing: it's kept per Book, so a character can be Primary in one and Background in another.
• Series-wide: Notes, Tags, Series Arcs, and Character Arcs cover the whole series, no matter which Book you're in. (Notes can also be kept with a single Book, using a Book Notes folder, if you like.)

Note Templates reach further still: a template saved in any Book is available in every book and series on your computer.

Life in a Series

These guides walk through the whole lifecycle, from the first conversion to the (rarely needed) exit door:

• Converting a Book to a Series: turn an existing book into Book 1 of a new series
• Your Series in the Library: the series' own shelf, where you add Books (new or existing), reorder them, and manage each volume
• Switching Between Books: jump between Books from the bar at the top of the app, without leaving the page
• Presence: Which Books a Character Is In: control which Books each character, item, and location appears in
• Importance Across Books: let a character matter more in one Book than another
• This Book vs All Books: narrow your view to just the Book you're drafting
• Book Arcs and Series Arcs: plot each volume, and the saga that spans them all
• Using Dedicated Book Folders: keep book-specific notes in a folder for each Book, while the rest of your Notebook stays series-wide
• Splitting a Series into Separate Books: break the series back into standalone books, if you ever need to. Your writing survives; each Book becomes its own book file in your Library