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Find your way around the editor

The three parts of the screen

Left: the manuscript. Your book's structure, top to bottom—front matter, then the chapters with their scenes, then back matter. Click a scene to open it. The … menu on any chapter or scene renames, moves, archives or adds; Add a chapter sits at the bottom of the list.

Centre: the page. The scene you are writing, shown as it will sit on the printed page—same trim size, margins and fonts as the build. The page number shown is this scene's own; the real numbers belong to the book when it is built.

Right: notes and review. The Notes rail holds the scene's working notes and the book's notes—never printed. The review rail shows comments and suggestions when there are any; hide it when you want the width.

The toolbar

  • Book — Details (title, imprint, cover), Page setup (trim, margins, fonts; owner only), and Publish, which builds the PDF or EPUB.
  • Work — Write or Outline; the view of the whole book as a list of scenes with their summaries is Outline. Then Notes, Find (Ctrl+F; Ctrl+H for replace), and Listen, which reads aloud from the cursor so you can hear what needs work.
  • View — guides for the margins, a dark page, and the theme.
  • Paragraph — the paragraph style of the cursor's paragraph (Ctrl+Shift+E centres).
  • Images — a picture from the media library set into the text after the current paragraph, and the library itself.
  • Zoom — or Alt + scroll. Fit scales the page to the space you have.
  • Mode — Writing or Suggesting. Suggesting marks every change for the author to accept or reject; an editor on the book may be held to it.

Saving

Write saves as you type. Saved and Saving… at the top right say which; there is no save button and nothing to lose by closing the tab. Every save keeps a version, so an earlier draft of a scene can be brought back.

Word count

The scene's count sits at the bottom of the page; the book's is in the Library under its title and in Details.

Where you were

The editor remembers the scene you had open, per book. Coming back later lands you there.

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