Chapters & Scenes

How Your Manuscript is Organized

StorytellerOS organizes your writing in a hierarchy:

• Book — The complete work
• Chapter — Major divisions of your book
• Scene — Individual scenes within chapters

This structure lets you write in small chunks, rearrange easily, and see progress at every level.

Creating Chapters

1. Open your book
2. Go to the Chapters tab
3. Click + New Chapter
4. Enter a chapter title (or leave as "Chapter 1")
5. Click Create

Chapter Fields

Creating Scenes

1. Click on a chapter to open it
2. Click + New Scene
3. Enter a scene title or description
4. Click Create

Scene Fields

Reordering Content

Moving chapters and scenes is simple:

Drag and Drop

1. In the chapter list, click and hold a chapter or scene
2. Drag it to the new position
3. Release to drop

Using Order Numbers

1. Edit the chapter or scene
2. Change the order number
3. Save

Other items automatically adjust their order numbers to make room.

Moving Scenes Between Chapters

1. Edit the scene
2. Change the Chapter field to a different chapter
3. Set the order within the new chapter
4. Save

Deleting and Restoring Chapters

You can delete a chapter you no longer need. Before anything is removed, StorytellerOS saves a copy of the whole chapter: its text, its scenes (including archived ones), its notes, its version history and its links to characters, places and events.

Delete a chapter

1. In the Writing Studio chapter list, hover over the chapter and choose the trash can
2. Check the chapter name in the question, then choose Delete

Any changes you were still typing are saved first. If they can't be saved, nothing is deleted and you'll see a message asking you to try again.

Work on several chapters at once

In the Writing Studio chapter list, choose Select next to Manuscript. Tick the chapters you want (hold Shift and tick a second chapter to pick everything in between, or use Select all), then choose:

• Edit to set the part, the draft stage, or where the chapters print (main text, front matter or back matter) for all of them. Your words are not touched.
• Move to put them together at the start of the book, at the end, or after a chapter you choose. They keep their order, and chapter numbers update to match.
• Delete to delete them all. You confirm once for the whole set. A copy of each chapter is saved first, so you can bring any of them back on its own.

If a chapter's latest changes haven't saved yet, that chapter is not deleted. It stays selected and nothing in it changes, and we tell you which one it was.

Choose Done to stop selecting.

Bring a chapter back

1. In the Writing Studio, open History in the right-hand panel
2. Open Deleted chapters. It lists every deleted chapter in the book, whichever chapter you have open
3. Choose Restore next to the chapter

To look inside a deleted chapter without bringing it back, choose View. You can read each scene, select any passage, or use Copy for one scene or the whole chapter.

The chapter comes back with its text, scenes, notes and version history. If another chapter now uses its old number, we ask before adding it after your last chapter instead. Links to characters, places or events you have since deleted are left off, and we tell you how many.

Outlining Mode

Before you write, you can outline your book:

1. Create all your chapters with summaries
2. Create scenes with descriptions of what happens
3. Leave the scene content empty
4. Set scene status to Outline

This gives you a roadmap before you start drafting. As you write each scene, change its status to Draft.

Word Count Tracking

Word counts update automatically as you write:

• Scene word count — Words in that scene
• Chapter word count — Sum of all scenes in the chapter
• Book word count — Sum of all chapters

The dashboard shows your total progress and daily writing stats.

Point of View Tracking

For books with multiple viewpoint characters, assign a POV character to each scene:

• See at a glance whose head you are in
• Filter scenes by character
• Balance screen time across characters
• Spot POV patterns in your structure

Scene Status Workflow

Use status to track your editing progress:

Splitting, Merging and Moving Scenes

Splitting a scene in two, merging a scene into the one before it, moving a scene (within its chapter or to another chapter of the same book) and adding a new scene at a chosen place are being turned on one account at a time. Where it is on:

• Each change happens all at once: the scenes and the chapter text change together, or nothing changes.
• If the chapter changed somewhere else since you opened it (another window, or your assistant), the change is refused and nothing is changed. Open the chapter again and try once more.
• Every change can be undone. Open History in the Writing Studio's right-hand panel, then Scene changes, and choose Undo. Text before shows the chapter as it was before the change, so you can copy from it even when an undo is no longer possible.
• A chapter that is open in another tab can't save over the new scenes. That tab shows a notice; your text from it is kept in the chapter's history as "Unsaved editor text (scenes rearranged)". Reload the chapter to keep writing.
• A merged-away scene is archived, never deleted, and a chapter always keeps at least one scene.

Front and Back Matter

Create special chapters for:

• Title page — Book title and author
• Copyright page — Legal notices
• Dedication — Personal message
• Acknowledgments — Thanks to helpers
• About the Author — Author bio
• Also By — Other books

Set these chapters to order 0 (for front matter) or very high numbers (for back matter) to position them correctly.

Best Practices

• Write scenes, not chapters — Smaller pieces are easier to write and rearrange.
• Use descriptive scene titles — "John confronts Sarah" is more useful than "Scene 4."
• Add summaries while drafting — It helps you remember what happens where.
• Update status as you go — Knowing which scenes need revision helps planning.
• Use notes for reminders — "Fix pacing here" or "Add more description" notes help during revision.