Plot and time
JustWrite has four planning surfaces that all touch on plot and chronology, and the differences between them are worth understanding before you start using them. Two of them — Narrative strands and the Plot Board — are about story shape. The other two — per-entity Events and the project Timeline — are about world chronology.
This page explains each in turn, and (importantly) when you would use one vs. another.
Narrative strands — the short answer
Section titled “Narrative strands — the short answer”“My romance subplot and my main plot feel like they’re running in parallel universes. I write chapters for one, then the other, and I’ve lost track of how they connect or whether one is even pacing the other.”
A narrative strand is a continuous thread that runs through your manuscript and has its own internal shape — a beginning, turning points, and a resolution.
That’s an intentionally broad definition. Different writers draw the same map differently. In practice, a strand is whatever you decide is worth tracking as a through-line.
Common examples:
- The main plot — protagonist vs. antagonist
- A romantic subplot
- A character’s internal arc — e.g. “Elena moves from denial to acceptance”
- A mystery thread — clues planted, the reveal
- A thematic spine — a motif or question the book keeps returning to
- A secondary POV character’s independent plot
A typical book has two to six strands. The test: “Does this thread have its own turning points?” If yes, it deserves its own strand so you can map those turning points to chapters.
Strands view — planning one thread in detail
Section titled “Strands view — planning one thread in detail”The Strands view (Manuscript section in the sidebar) is the dedicated notebook page for a single strand. You open one strand at a time.
What’s on the page
Section titled “What’s on the page”- Strand name — inline-editable header.
- Blurb — a one-or-two-sentence italic summary. Useful as a quick reminder of what the strand is about without opening the full notes.
- Colour swatch picker — ten preset colours. The chosen colour flows through to the strand’s row label on the Plot Board and to the left-border accent on every beat card.
- Status — same status palette used everywhere else (Draft, Revise, Done…).
- Rich-text notes body — a full prose editor. Write as much as you want: a synopsis for this thread, notes on each character involved, decisions you’ve made and why. This is your long-form planning document for the strand.
- Beats — labelled turning-point markers pinned to specific chapters or scenes. Each beat has a label (e.g. “Midpoint”), an optional note, and a scene assignment. Beats are sorted automatically in story order. Preset autocomplete suggestions on the label field: Inciting, First turn, Midpoint, Crisis, Climax, Resolution, Setup, Reveal, Setback, Refusal.
- “Appears in scenes” — a read-only index of every scene that has been tagged with this strand via its Links panel. Click to jump to the scene.
- Groups — strands can be grouped alongside characters and locations.
How to use it
Section titled “How to use it”“I know roughly what my character arc is supposed to do, but every time I open a new chapter I’m re-reading my messy planning notes to remember where I left it.”
Use Strands view when you are planning a single thread in depth. The notes body is where you think through:
- What does this arc need to accomplish?
- Where does it start, where does it end, what has to happen in the middle?
- Which characters are involved? What changes?
Use beats to mark the structural skeleton once you know roughly where the thread turns. Use the scenes list to audit coverage — if your romance subplot has zero scenes tagged for four chapters in a row, that’s a gap worth addressing.
Plot Board — the wide-angle view
Section titled “Plot Board — the wide-angle view”“I have three subplots and I genuinely don’t know if they’re paced anywhere near each other. I need to see all of them at once, laid across all the chapters, before I can figure out what’s wrong.”
The Plot Board (Planning section in the sidebar) is a two-axis grid:
- Rows are narrative strands.
- Columns are chapters (plus an Unassigned column on the left for beats that aren’t yet placed in any chapter).
Each beat appears as a small card at the strand × chapter intersection, with the strand’s colour as a left border.
What you can do
Section titled “What you can do”- Click an empty cell to add a new beat in that strand and chapter immediately.
- Click a beat to edit its label, note, or scene pin.
- Drag a beat to move it across chapters or strands. (If you drop into a different chapter, the scene pin is cleared, since scenes belong to chapters.)
- Drag a strand label to reorder the rows.
- Rename a strand inline by clicking its name in the row header.
- Delete a beat with the X that appears on hover (with an undo toast).
Plot structure templates
Section titled “Plot structure templates”There’s an Apply template dropdown that creates a new strand pre-loaded with the beats from one of five standard structural frameworks:
| Template | Beats | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Three-Act Structure | 7 | The universal scaffold. Works for almost anything. |
| Five-Act Structure | 7 (Freytag’s pyramid) | Tragedies and ensemble dramas. |
| Save the Cat | 15 (Blake Snyder) | Tight, popular for genre fiction (thriller, romance, comedy). |
| Hero’s Journey | 12 (Campbell / Vogler) | Transformational arcs, fantasy, myth. |
| Story Circle | 8 (Dan Harmon) | Compact; works at the chapter level or the arc level. |
When you apply one, all the beats start in the Unassigned column. You drag them onto chapters as you decide where they land.
The AI on a strand
Section titled “The AI on a strand”The ✨ beside a strand’s name opens its AI menu:
- Fill this template for my story — on a strand applied from a template. The AI writes each beat’s note for your book — the event, who drives it, what it changes — from your premise, genre, world rules, Setting and main cast. They open in a review window beside what’s there now: a note that still gives the template’s general advice comes ticked, one you’ve written doesn’t; edit any, then Apply. One Ctrl/⌘ + Z takes the whole fill back.
- Suggest next beats and Plot twists — Brainstorm’s plot ideas for this strand, from your book and the strand’s beats so far, never one the strand already has. They open on Brainstorm’s panel: type a seed prompt to steer them, or leave it empty, and press Generate; Add as beat puts an idea on the strand as a beat card in the Unassigned column. The window stays open, so you can add several; each added idea reads Added.
Routable as Planning → Fill this template for my story and Brainstorm in Settings → AI.
How to use it
Section titled “How to use it”“Chapter 9 has four things happening and Chapter 12 has nothing. I don’t know if that’s intentional pacing or if I just forgot to write the middle.”
The Plot Board is for asking structural questions:
- Which chapters are doing all the heavy lifting? (Look for chapters with beats from many strands.)
- Where is the midpoint of my romance subplot relative to my main plot’s midpoint? (Should they coincide? Or deliberately not?)
- Does Chapter 9 have beats from three different strands converging? Is that the climax I intended?
It is also where you spot structural gaps: a stretch of chapters with no beats in any strand is probably a sagging middle.
Apply a template when starting a new project, or when you suspect a structural problem and want the standard turning-point names in front of you as a checklist.
Strands vs. Plot Board — they share the same data
Section titled “Strands vs. Plot Board — they share the same data”Important: Strands view and the Plot Board are two views of the same data, not two separate systems. Every strand you create appears as a row in the Plot Board. Every beat you add in one view appears in the other.
The difference is your angle of approach:
- Strands view = close-up on one strand. Notes + beats.
- Plot Board = wide-angle on all strands. The grid.
Use whichever lens fits the question you’re asking right now.
Per-entity Events — biographies and place histories
Section titled “Per-entity Events — biographies and place histories”A separate concept entirely.
Every character, location, object, group, and the world Setting has its own Events timeline, accessible from an Events button on the entity’s detail page. An event has:
- A date / time (optional — undated events fall to the bottom of the timeline)
- A title (required)
- An optional note
Events are biographical and historical records:
- For a character: their life history. “Born in Argos, 1842. Father dies, 1856. Joins the merchant guild, 1860. First voyage, 1861.”
- For a location: the place’s history. “Founded 1720. Great fire of 1854. Rebuilt in 1860.”
- For an object: an artefact’s provenance.
- For the Setting (a singleton entry under the Architecture view): world-level events that don’t belong to any one entity.
Why a writer would use this
Section titled “Why a writer would use this”“I just wrote a scene where my character mentions her mother died when she was twelve — but I already wrote somewhere that she was nine. I have no idea which is right because I never wrote it down properly.”
Events are most valuable when your story has dates that matter:
- Historical fiction
- Multi-generational sagas
- Time-travel
- Mysteries with carefully placed past events
- Anything where your characters’ arrival, departure, or birth dates need to line up
If your novel takes place in a single afternoon, you probably don’t need events. If it spans decades, you’ll thank yourself for filing them.
The Timeline view — your world’s history
Section titled “The Timeline view — your world’s history”The Timeline view (Planning section in the sidebar) is a read-only merged view of every event from every entity, sorted chronologically.
Each row shows the weekday, date, time, title, optional note, and an icon badge identifying who or what the event belongs to. An event with only a date (its time left at midnight) shows the date alone; an entity’s Events list shows them the same way. Click the title to edit the event; click the badge to jump to the entity’s page.
When to use it
Section titled “When to use it”“I need to check whether Aria could physically have been in Dunmore before the flood, given when she left the capital. I’ve scattered that information across three character pages and I can’t hold it all in my head at once.”
Use the Timeline when you need to audit chronology:
- “Did Aria arrive in Dunmore before or after the flood?”
- “When the regent died, where was each of these characters?”
- “Did this character leave before they arrived?” (Sounds silly, but it happens. Especially in revision.)
You add events from the entity’s page; the Timeline collects them automatically. There is no manual entry on the Timeline itself.
Putting them all together
Section titled “Putting them all together”The four planning surfaces and when to use each:
| Question you’re asking | Best surface |
|---|---|
| “What is this subplot about and where does it turn?” | Strands view — prose notes + beats |
| “How do all my threads weave across all chapters?” | Plot Board — the grid |
| “What happened in my story world and when?” | Timeline (project-wide) or the entity’s Events timeline |
| “I need a known structural framework laid over my outline.” | Plot Board → Apply template |
| “Did this character arrive before the war started?” | Timeline — chronological events |
| “How many chapters of romance subplot have I actually written?” | Strand → Appears in scenes list |
Most writers use strands and the plot board heavily and reach for events and the timeline only when chronology matters.
A practical workflow
Section titled “A practical workflow”A realistic order:
- Apply a template to your Plot Board to get a main-plot strand with the canonical beats. (Or skip this if you prefer to design your own structure.)
- Add one or two subplot strands. A romance, a thematic question, a character arc.
- For each strand, write a short blurb so you know what it is when you come back next week.
- Drag beats onto chapters as you decide where they land. Leave beats in Unassigned until you’re ready.
- Tag scenes with strands via the Links panel as you write. This populates the “Appears in scenes” list on each strand and feeds the Plot Board.
- (If chronology matters) Add events to your main characters as you write — birth dates, arrivals, departures, deaths. Check the project Timeline occasionally for contradictions.
See also
Section titled “See also”- Writing — the Links panel, where scenes get tagged with strands
- Story bible — Characters, Locations, Objects (which carry their own event timelines)
- Analysis — strand distribution charts and cast presence heatmap