Overview

The Plot Lines workspace is a story map of scenes that contribute to selected plot lines. It follows canonical plot-thread events in manuscript order. It does not repeat every scene: a gap label shows how many scenes or whole chapters pass before the next selected contribution.

Focus And Weave

Select one plot line for Focus mode. Select two or more for Weave mode. In Weave, a scene that contributes to several selected lines appears once as a shared junction, connected to each participating route. Each line retains its own contribution role.

Use the thread filter when you need to isolate a smaller strand inside the selected lines. Use the book selector to narrow a series, or choose a scenario to inspect the same contributions in that scenario's proposed order. The workspace does not apply a scenario.

Reading The Map

Manuscript order runs left to right. Each selected line has a separate horizontal route and a pinned name and number. Use Edit colour beside a line to change its saved colour. Legacy default colours use a stable colour derived from line identity. Scroll within the map or change Spacing to follow longer stories. Callouts alternate above and below routes; hover or keyboard focus reveals a short preview. Warnings remain small markers, with details in the inspector.

Thread labels mark known introduction scenes; missing boundaries are left unspecified. Dashed breaks show intervening scene and chapter counts for each line. Shared scenes appear once, with separate coloured connectors ending at the scene card. Explicit structural targets and visible scene dependencies are drawn only from stored connections.

Associate Scenes

Switch from View to Associate Scenes to browse the manuscript sequence. Markers distinguish selected-line membership, other-line membership, pending suggestions and unattributed scenes. Select a scene and choose Add selected scene on a line, or drag it directly onto its horizontal route. The route highlights while it is a drop target.

The existing thread-event editor opens in a dialog. Choose a thread and event type, refine the title or description, and save. The editor closes after saving and the map updates in place, preserving Association mode and scroll positions. Less common structural fields are under Connections / Advanced. Switch back to View for the clean contribution map.

Inspecting A Contribution

Select a compact scene callout to open its inspector. The Contribution section keeps the canonical event and thread role primary. When a canonical event came from an imported narrative candidate and has an exact source-and-scene match, the Evidence section shows the imported title, description and evidence as supporting detail.

The Scene section shows scene context and loads manuscript text only when requested. Other Lines shows every canonical plot line represented in the scene.

Pending And Unattributed Scenes

Pending suggestions are off by default and remain separate from canonical contributions. Turn them on when you want review context; their presence does not mean the scene belongs to that plot line.

Open Unattributed scenes to distinguish:

• Proposed only: no canonical contribution, but at least one pending suggestion.
• No known attribution: neither a canonical contribution nor a pending suggestion.

Related Guides

• Plot Lines
• Plot Threads
• Scene Inspector Threads
• Timeline Plot Lines

Health Review

A small summary beside a line opens Health in the existing inspector. Diamond markers link to positioned evidence; a quiet-stretch marker at the route end covers trailing silence. No summary is shown when there are no findings.

Stored author status is the thread's saved planning/current status. Observed activity is what canonical scene contributions record. Health highlights Information, Review or Warning findings; it never changes status or fixes the manuscript automatically.

Mentions and notes count as touches, but do not reset meaningful progress. V1 reviews progress silence after 10 scenes. Internal stretches count intervening scenes; trailing stretches count scenes after the last progress through the evaluated cutoff. Chapter distances count distinct ordered chapter identities after the source chapter, including across books; they do not subtract chapter numbers. Leading silence is factual, and an unstarted planned thread is informational.

Health also reviews recorded introductions without later development, open questions/clues, payoff readiness without evidence, status/boundary disagreements, closure ordering, contributions outside boundaries and explicit structural targets. Open at a book/project cutoff does not mean the author should have resolved the thread there. A payoff is recorded closure evidence, not proof that every thread in the line is resolved.

Select a finding to see its role, scenes, positions, stored status, scope and order, or open the existing thread/scene editor. Questions and clues use coarse recorded roles; these checks cannot judge whether a creative payoff is satisfying.

Focus and Weave evaluate whole selected lines, independently of scene search/thread filters. Scenario findings use scenario positions only. Partial coverage is labelled; absence-based findings become informational because omitted scenes may contain relevant events. Association mode remains unchanged; positioned health annotations do not compete with drop targets. Evidence is loaded only when requested.

Positioned resolution/abandonment and actual-resolution boundaries delimit ordinary quiet-stretch review. A later contribution is still shown as evidence of a possible disagreement. Undated stored status is never used to move a resolution backward to an earlier evaluated cutoff.

Installed app ribbon

In the installed PlotDirector app, page Help and page-level commands are available in the contextual ribbon. Existing Project and Book ribbon commands are reused. Scope selectors, page-wide search and section jumps appear there when appropriate; workspace controls remain beside the content. If the ribbon is collapsed, choose Expand ribbon or select a ribbon category. The normal browser version keeps its existing page headings, buttons and Actions menus.