Pipeline · Structure

Chapters, scenes & beats

This is the stage to slow down on. By now your plot is fully worked out — acts, chapters, scenes, and the beats inside each scene — and everything here feeds the prose. Before you render a word, this is where you read the plot back and tune it. It’s the cheapest, highest-leverage place to shape what actually happens in your book.

The whole book at a glance

The Structure screen — acts and chapters, one chapter expanded to show its goal, characters, locations, key events, tension and hook — Acts → chapters. Each chapter expands to its full breakdown; the top bar acts on the whole book.

The book is laid out as acts and chapters. The top bar acts on everything at once: Update structure (re)generates the chapter skeleton, Break into scenes splits every chapter into scenes, and Concepts for all scenes drafts a concept for each. Each has a quality-tier pill — use Bronze or Silver here: this is structural work, not final prose, so a fast tier is plenty (save Gold for the render).

Inside a chapter

Expand a chapter and you see everything the writing must honour: its goal, characters, locations, key events, a tension read-out, and the hook into the next chapter. Per chapter you can Edit any of these by hand, Regenerate the whole chapter, Break into N scenes, or Clearit. Nothing is locked — the plot is yours to tune before you go deeper.

Inside a scene

A chapter broken into three scenes — each with a goal, position badge, tension, through-line, and an expandable list of beats — Each scene: its goal, position (entry/crisis/exit), tension curve, through-line, and its beats.

Break a chapter down and each scene carries its own plan: a goal, the viewpoint, location and time, a position badge (entry · crisis · exit), a tension curve (e.g. 0.10 → 0.40), a through-line, and — the heart of it — its beats. The Auto-VECTOR button turns a scene into the concept the render works from.

The scene editor — where you tune the plot

The scene editor — editable beats (numbered), scene obstacle, scene turn, exit state, and first/last-line style — Editing a scene: the beats, the obstacle, the turn, the exit-state — every lever on what happens.

Hit Edit on a scene and everything opens up. The top fields set the scene’s frame — goal, cast, location and time, the emotional shift, its key events and the connection to the next scene. Under “Advanced fields” sit the levers the render actually writes from:

Position in chapter — entry · development · crisis · exit — where the scene sits in the chapter’s arc
Tension in → out — the pressure the scene starts and ends on (0–1) — the shape of its rise or release
Through-line — the one thread this scene carries through the chapter
Beats — the beat-by-beat breakdown (5–7) — the moves the scene is written from. Edit, add or remove them
Scene obstacle — what pushes back inside the scene
Scene turn — the moment the scene pivots
Exit state — the state things settle into as the scene ends
First / last line — the opening and closing move (sensory hook, image, line of dialogue…)

These advanced fields are auto-generated (that’s what Auto-VECTOR does), but any edit you make holds until the next regeneration — so you can hand-tune a scene and it stays tuned.

The Auto-VECTOR settings — how the scene reads

The Auto-VECTOR button doesn’t just fire — it opens Scene Vector Settings, four dials that shape how the scene reads before you spend the vector. The vector is the concept the render writes the prose from, so these choices steer the prose without you writing a word.

Scene emphasis

The mix the scene leans into.

AffectsWhich mode the vector (and so the prose) favours — how much of the scene is doing, saying, or thinking.

Balancedaction + dialogue + thoughts, evenly (the default)
Action & movementlean into what’s done and happening
Dialogue & interactionlean into what’s said between characters
Internal world & reflectionlean into thought and interiority

Bridge style

What the scene leaves you with as it hands off to the next.

AffectsThe kind of “bridge” closing the scene — the residue that carries the reader into the next beat.

Sensory + Emotionalboth a physical sensation and an emotional after-image (recommended)
Sensory traceclose on a physical sensation
Emotional residueclose on an emotional after-image

Through-line intensity

How loudly the scene’s central question or threat shows.

AffectsWhether the through-line is named outright, felt as subtext, or only in the air — tunes how “on the nose” the scene reads.

Explicitstated directly — in a line, a thought, or an action
Subtextpresent, but implied rather than said (the default)
Backgroundonly in the atmosphere — a detail or hint, never named

Scene tempo

The pacing of the scene.

AffectsThe rhythm and density the vector aims for — short and driving vs. slow and textured.

Autoderived from the scene’s position (entry/crisis/exit) — the default
Fastshort phrases, lots of action
Moderatean even pace
Slowdetails, atmosphere, inner world

Leave them on the sensible defaults for a first pass; reach for them when a specific scene wants a specific feel — an action beat kept fast, a quiet turn played as internal and slow, a threat you’d rather keep in the background. As with everything at this stage, Bronze or Silver is plenty.

Two different layers — how this relates to Author Style. These four dials shape the vector — this scene’s plan. Your book-wide voice, prose balance, sensory density and AI-tic bans live in Book Settings → Author Style and are applied later, when the prose is rendered. So the two don’t fight: Auto-VECTOR decides what a scene emphasises; Author Style decides how the whole book is written. One thing to keep coherent — the per-scene Scene emphasis here and Author Style’s book-wide prose-balance both touch the action/dialogue/interiority axis; set them to pull the same way, unless you mean a scene to break the pattern.

Review your beats — before the prose is written

This is the moment to check your plot. The beats — together with the scene’s obstacle, turn, exit-state and tension — are the granular units the prose is written from. Change a beat here and you change what happens in the scene and how it reads on the page. Fixing a plot problem at the beat level costs a few coins and seconds; fixing it after the prose is written costs far more.

So before you move on to render: read the beats of each scene. Do they land the events you wanted? Does the tension rise where it should? Does the turn actually turn? Edit anything that’s off — rewrite a beat, add one, drop one, sharpen the obstacle or the exit-state. Get the beats right here and the prose follows, because the render writes from them. It’s the single highest-leverage edit you can make in the whole pipeline.

When the beats read the way you want, you’re ready for the next stage — turning each scene into prose.