Placeholder Cards

Sometimes you know something happens between Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, but not what yet. A placeholder is a sticky note for exactly that: it holds the spot and the idea without becoming a real chapter. When the idea firms up, you turn it into one.

Placeholders live in your chapter outline and on the Corkboard, the index-card view of your book. See The Corkboard.

What a Placeholder Won't Do

This is the point of the whole feature. A placeholder never appears in Manuscript Mode (the side of Penpoint where you write your prose), never lands in an export, never shows up in search, and never adds to your word count. It holds no scenes, links to no characters or items, and takes no chapter number, so your Chapter 5 stays Chapter 5 no matter how many placeholders sit around it. Scatter as many as you like; none of them touch your real book.

All of that holds right up until you promote the card. That's the moment it becomes a real chapter, with everything that comes with it.

Making and Filling One

Add a placeholder with the + Placeholder button above the Corkboard, by right-clicking (or Ctrl+click on Mac) empty space on the board, or from the + button at the top of the chapter outline. It lands just after the chapter you had selected, and you can drag it elsewhere anytime.

A card has a title and a note. Click either one and type; both save on their own. In the title, Enter finishes and Tab jumps down to the note. Whatever you write carries over when you promote.

Turning a Placeholder Into a Real Chapter

When you're ready to write it, promote the card. Penpoint confirms first, because this reshapes your book: the new chapter takes the placeholder's spot, and every chapter after it moves up a number (the one that was 5 becomes 6, and so on). The confirmation window shows the number it will take and lets you tidy the title and details first. Everything you'd written, color included, is already filled in. The placeholder is removed, and you land on the new chapter.

Note: Promoting can't be undone. Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on Mac) won't bring the placeholder back, so check the confirmation window before you click through it.

From there it's an ordinary chapter with an empty scene, ready to write in. See Editing Chapter and Scene Details.

Coloring, Moving, and Deleting

Select a card to reveal buttons for its color, promote, and delete along the bottom edge. Right-clicking the card, or its dashed row in the outline, offers the same actions plus Rename, Move Earlier, and Move Later. Dragging sets where the card sits in your book's order; it travels with the chapter above it, and if you delete that chapter the placeholder floats to the top rather than vanishing.

Note: Deleting a card asks you first and warns that its notes will be lost. There's no undo, so read the question before you click through it.

Placeholders Inside Folders

Placeholders can live inside a chapter group, including one that holds no chapters yet. This is what lets you rough out a whole section (say, an empty Act II folder) as a stack of cards before any of it is written. Promote one of those cards and the new chapter appears inside the same folder.

Folders live in the chapter outline on the Chapters page, the list down the left side, so that's where you put cards into them. Grab a card by the small handle at the left edge of its row (it appears when you hover it), then drag it onto the folder. A folder with nothing in it shows the words Empty group: drop your card on those and it becomes the first thing in the folder. Once there's a card in there the label is gone, so from then on drop the next one onto a card already inside. Drop a card under one of the folder's chapters instead and it rides along with that chapter.

Watch the folder while you drag: it tints and draws an outline around itself when the card is going inside it. If it doesn't light up, the card is landing beside the folder rather than in it. Changed your mind mid-drag? Press Esc to call the whole thing off.

A folder's header shows a sticky-note icon and a number for the cards it holds, so you can tell at a glance that a closed folder still has your notes inside.

Note: A collapsed folder can't take a dropped card. Expand it first so you can see where the card is going to land.

Note: The Corkboard doesn't draw folders, so cards in a folder appear there as part of the ordinary run of cards. Moving one on the Corkboard positions it against the chapters around it, which can take it out of its folder. If you're arranging folders, do it in the outline.

The Corkboard: the index-card view placeholders were built for.
Chapter Groups (Folders): the folders placeholders can live inside.
Creating Chapters and Scenes: making a real chapter instead.
The Chapter Outline: the list where placeholders also appear.