Minipen

Minipen (a mini version of Penpoint's reference tools) is a slim sidebar that sits along the right side of Manuscript Mode (where you write your prose). It lets you look up your characters, locations, items, and more without leaving your writing.

Opening & Closing

When closed, Minipen collapses to a small sidebar icon on the right edge of the screen. Click that icon to slide Minipen open. To close it again, click the close button at the top of Minipen. Penpoint remembers whether you left it open or closed.

Minipen is resizable: drag the left edge of Minipen to make it wider or narrower.

Navigation

The row of eight small icons (representing characters, items, locations, and more) below the search box lets you jump between different sections. Hover over any icon to see its name.

• Characters: See all your characters in a list. Pick one to read their details, or add a new character with the + button.
• Items: Look up and create items.
• Locations: Look up and create locations.
• Chapters: Review your chapter details.
• Arcs: Check your story arcs (the big plot threads) and character arcs (how characters change over the story). Click the button at the top of the Arcs section to flip between the two.
• Notes: Browse, create, and edit your notes.
• Tags: See your tags and which characters, locations, items, chapters, arcs, or notes they are attached to.
• Settings: Reach your interface, spellcheck, import/export, community & updates, storage & backups, and about screens.

The Notes section also holds your Templates folder, so you can start a note from one of your Note Templates without leaving your manuscript.

Read a Chapter's Details While You Write

Halfway through Chapter 9 and can't remember whose funeral it was? You can bring a chapter's details up beside you without losing your place. Your cursor stays exactly where it was in your prose, so you check the detail and carry straight on typing.

There are three ways to do it, and they all end up in the same place:

• Right-click (or Ctrl+click on Mac) any chapter or scene in the list of chapters and scenes down the left side of Manuscript Mode, and choose Open in Minipen. Minipen switches to that chapter no matter what it was showing before, and opens itself first if you had it closed. Right-click a scene (one of the sections within a chapter) and it lands on that scene rather than the top of its chapter.
• Press Ctrl+Shift+N (Cmd+Shift+N on Mac) for the chapter you're writing in right now. (If that three-key combo is an awkward reach, the button below does the same thing.)
• Click the small target-style button (a dot inside a circle with short lines poking out, like a little crosshair). Hovering it shows Open the active chapter (or Open the active scene when your cursor is inside a scene). "Active" just means the chapter your cursor is sitting in right now. The button sits both at the top of Minipen's Chapters section and inside a chapter's details, so you can reach your writing chapter without backing out to the list. It appears whenever you have a chapter open in your writing area.

Keep Minipen on the Chapter You're Writing

If you'd rather Minipen keep up on its own, open a chapter in Minipen's Chapters section, then click the little gear (settings) icon at the top of that chapter's details and turn on Link to the active chapter. After that, while you're looking at the Chapters section, moving to a different chapter in your manuscript opens its details here automatically, so your chapter notes are always the ones for the chapter you're writing. You can turn it back off from the same gear any time.

It only follows while you're on the Chapters section, so switching chapters never pulls you away from Characters, Arcs, or anywhere else in Minipen. Leave it off and Minipen stays put until you ask it to move.

Search

The search box at the top of Minipen searches across everything in your book: characters, locations, items, chapters, and more. Start typing to search, and results appear after two or more letters. Click a result to jump straight to it inside Minipen.

Search results for scenes (the sections within a chapter) work a little differently: clicking a scene result takes you straight to that scene in your manuscript. Scene results also need at least four letters before they appear, since prose turns up far more matches than a name does.