Pipeline · Scenes · Step 1

Scene Intent — the concept

The first step of every scene. The Scene Intent is the scene’s concept — its people, place and time, what happens beat by beat, and the note it ends on — written as a few plain paragraphs. Everything downstream is built from it, so this is the page to get right before you spend anything on prose.

The Scene Intent tab — world/culture, POV/location/time and cast selectors above a free-form scene-concept text, a finale field, and a Generate/Editor action bar with tier and word target — Scene Intent: the scene’s frame (top), the concept text with its beats, the finale, and the action bar.

What the Intent is

The concept text isn’t prose and isn’t meant to be — it’s the plan the writer follows. It already carries the beats you tuned back in Structure, woven into a readable brief with the moves called out inline (who provokes, who reveals, what the register is, what the action is). You can edit it freely: rewrite a line, add a beat, change the ending. It auto-saves as you type.

The scene’s frame

Above the text sits the scene’s frame — the fixed facts the writing has to honour. Set these first:

World / Culture — binds the scene to one world and culture. This gates the cast — only characters who belong to that world can be added — and feeds the writing the right setting. Shown when your project has worlds.
POV — whose eyes the scene is seen through — the viewpoint character. POV-capable characters are listed first.
Location — where the scene takes place, from your Locations.
Time — when it happens — morning, evening, and so on.
Cast — everyone present in the scene, added as chips. The POV character is marked. Changing the world prunes anyone who doesn’t belong there.

The continuity check

Each time the Intent saves, a quiet continuity check runs and reports next to the word count — you’ll see “Validation passed” when it’s clean, or small warnings when something doesn’t line up (a character in the text who isn’t in the cast, a canon rule the scene brushes against). It’s advisory — nothing blocks — but it’s a cheap way to catch a slip before it reaches the prose.

The finale

Below the main text is a short finale field — the note the scene closes on and hands to the next one: the last image, the open question, the after-taste. It’s optional, but a deliberate ending here is what makes scenes chain instead of just stopping.

The action bar

Generate

Turns this Intent into the Contract — the next step. It runs at the tier you pick and aims for the Words length. This is the button that moves the scene forward.

Editor

A literary-editor pass over the Intent itself — it sharpens the turn, adds concrete specifics and tightens the ending, without changing what happens. It rewrites the concept in place; you review it, then Generate. The single best way to lift a flat scene before it becomes prose.

Tier

Bronze · Silver · Gold — the quality/cost dial for Generate and Editor. Since this step is still structural, Bronze or Silver is plenty. Your own AI key (BYOK) appears as a fourth option when set up.

Words

How long the Contract’s events should run (default 600). This sizes the blueprint, not the final prose — the reader-facing scene length is set later, in Book Settings.

Tune it here — then move on

This is the last cheap place to shape the scene. Read the concept back: do the beats land the events you wanted, does the turn actually turn, does it end on the right note? Fix it here — by hand or with the Editor pass — before you Generate. Every step after this inherits whatever the Intent says, so a minute here saves a re-render later.

When the concept reads the way you want, hit Generate to turn it into the Contract — the structured blueprint the prose is written from, and the next step.