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Organizing a Novel

A novel has a lot of moving parts — chapters, characters, locations, research, and plot threads that all need to stay connected. This guide suggests a workflow for fiction writers using Atlas to manage a novel, short story collection, or serialized fiction project.

Folder Structure

A common approach is to organize by narrative structure:

Draft/
├── Part One/
│   ├── Chapter 1 — The Arrival
│   ├── Chapter 2 — Old Friends
│   └── Chapter 3 — The Warning
├── Part Two/
│   ├── Chapter 4 — Into the Forest
│   └── Chapter 5 — What Was Lost
Research/
├── Characters/
│   ├── Maren (Protagonist)
│   ├── Thorne (Antagonist)
│   └── Lira (Mentor)
├── Locations/
│   ├── The City
│   └── The Forest
└── World-Building/
    ├── History
    └── Magic System

Tip

Remember that any document can contain children — a chapter document can hold its own notes, cut scenes, or research without needing a subfolder.

Using Tags for Status Tracking

Create tags to track each document's progress:

  • Draft — First pass, rough content
  • Revised — Edited at least once
  • Final — Ready for export

Tags span the folder hierarchy, so you can quickly filter to see all documents in a particular stage regardless of where they live in your project.

Synopsis for Chapter Summaries

Write a synopsis for each chapter to create an at-a-glance overview of your novel's structure. Synopses appear in the Folder Outline View and on canvas cards, making them useful for:

  • Reviewing the flow of your story from the Folder Outline
  • Building a visual plot overview on a canvas using synopsis display mode

Canvases for Plot Mapping

Create a canvas to map your novel visually:

  • Plot arc — Lay out chapters as cards in narrative order, with edges showing cause-and-effect or timeline connections
  • Character relationships — Place character documents as cards and draw edges showing relationships, alliances, and conflicts
  • Timeline — Arrange events chronologically using document cards or text labels

Pin markers are useful for locations or key events that need to be visible on the map without full document cards.

Use [[ to link freely between documents:

  • Link character profiles from chapter documents where they first appear
  • Link location descriptions from scenes set there
  • Link research notes from the passages they inform

For example, typing [[ in a chapter and selecting "Maren" creates a clickable link to your character profile. Later, opening the Maren document and checking Incoming Links in the Inspector shows you every chapter where she's mentioned — a character index that builds itself as you write.

See Also