Navigator & Structure

The Navigator is the list down the side of the window. Everything in your project lives there.

The sections

Click a section heading to open or close it; Ravenburst remembers which are open for each project. Navigate → Jump to… takes you straight to a section, and Window → Move Navigator Left / Right moves the whole panel. Only the Manuscript, Front Matter and Back Matter ever go into an export; everything else is for you.

Manuscript

The + next to Manuscript adds a Chapter, a Part, a Dedication or an Epigraph. A project has at most one dedication and one epigraph; once added, they're greyed out in the menu.

• Parts group chapters (Part One, Part Two…). A part is a page of its own in the editor and in exports.
• Chapters hold scenes. Clicking a chapter shows its title page and opens its details in the Inspector. To add a scene, right-click the chapter and choose New Scene Inside.
• Scenes are where the writing goes. Right-click a scene for Add Scene Above or New Scene Below. File → New Document (Ctrl+N) adds a scene to the selected chapter (or to the top level of the Manuscript if no chapter is selected), and File → New Chapter Folder (Ctrl+Shift+D) a chapter.
• The Dedication and Epigraph always sit at the top, then the Prologue; the Epilogue always sits at the bottom. They keep those places when you drag other things around, and compile in that order.

Each compilable row has a compile checkbox. Untick it to leave that document out of every export without deleting it. A prologue, epilogue, dedication or epigraph that's unticked is also read-only, with an Include in Final Draft button above it, so you don't write a whole prologue that will never be printed.

Chapter and part titles

Double-click a chapter or part (or right-click → Rename) to open its title dialog:

• Include “Chapter N” label: untick for chapters with a name and no number.
• Number style: Numerals (1, 2, 3), Roman numerals (I, II, III) or Words (One, Two, Three).
• Include word, with the word itself: Chapter, Act, Section, Book or anything you like.
• Title: the chapter's own name, if it has one. It's kept separately from the chapter's synopsis, so writing a synopsis never renames the chapter.
• Separator between the number and the name: none, colon, em dash, hyphen, slash, pipe or middle dot.
• Page break after chapter (chapters only), and Return to Default.

The preview shows the result, for example “Chapter Three — The Storm”. When you reorder chapters, their numbers follow. The default label word and separator for the whole project are in Project Settings (see The Inspector), along with the heading style for every chapter and part.

Working with rows

• Open a document by clicking it.
• Rename by double-clicking, pressing F2, or right-click → Rename. You can also rename the open document by clicking its name in the bar above the editor.
• Reorder by dragging. Drop a scene onto a chapter to move it inside. Notes and Reference items reorder within their own section. Drag anything onto the Trash heading to delete it.
• Word counts appear when you hover over a row, along with a trash icon that moves it to Trash after asking.
• On a chapter or part, the + that appears on hover adds a new scene inside it.

The right-click menu has, depending on the row: New Scene Inside, Add Scene Above, New Scene Below, Rename, Include in / Exclude from Compile, the four statuses, Save as Template, Apply Template…, Scene Break Style…, and Move to Trash.

Status and labels

Each document has a status: Draft, In Progress, Done or Needs Revision. Set it from the right-click menu, by clicking the colored dot on a row (which cycles through them), or in the Inspector. The Inspector's All button sets the status of many documents at once. Status doesn't affect compiling.

A label color (seven colors, or none) colors the left edge of a row. Set it in the Inspector. Use labels for whatever you like: point of view, timeline, subplot.

Front and back matter

Front Matter has one folder per kind of book: Manuscript Format, Paperback, Ebook, Screenplay and TV Script. Your project has the ones that fit its type. Each export uses its matching folder, so your paperback can have a copyright page and dedication while your agent submission has just a title page. See Compiling for which export uses which folder.

• The + next to Front Matter or Back Matter adds a new page.
• The built-in pages use merge fields such as {{title}} and {{author}}, filled in when you compile. While a front matter page is open, the { } button on the Format Bar inserts one.
• Front and back matter pages can't be moved to Trash. Right-click → Reset to Default puts back the original wording.

Templates

The Templates section has two groups. Default holds the templates that came with your project type, and Custom holds your own.

• New template: the + next to Templates asks for a name and, optionally, a document to start from.
• Save as Template (right-click any document) copies it into Templates as “Template: title”.
• Apply Template… (right-click a manuscript document) replaces that document's text with a copy of the template. If the document already has text, you're asked first, and Ctrl+Z undoes it.

Templates are copied, not linked: changing a template later doesn't change documents made from it. Built-in templates can't be moved to Trash.

Duplicating and moving

• Documents → Duplicate copies the selected document and everything inside it, titled “title (copy)”.
• Documents → Move To and Copy To send a scene, note, reference note or template to the top of Manuscript, Notes, Reference or Templates. Chapters and parts can't be moved this way; drag them instead.
• Documents → Move To → Trash asks first, and won't trash the prologue, epilogue, front or back matter, or a built-in template.

Trash

Deleted items go to Trash, grouped by where they came from: Manuscript, Front Matter, Back Matter, Notes, References, Templates, Characters, Places.

• Restore: right-click → Restore puts an item back where it was. You can also drag it onto a section heading.
• Delete for good: right-click → Delete Permanently, after a confirmation. To delete several at once, Ctrl-click or Shift-click to select them (or right-click a group → Select All in…), then click Delete. This can't be undone.

Items stay in Trash until you delete them yourself.

The Inspector

The panel on the right (Ctrl+Shift+]) has two tabs.

Details

For the selected document: its type, Include in Final Draft, word count and Target Word Count, Status, and Label color. For chapters and parts it also has Edit Title… and a Heading Style (font, size, bold and italic, subtitle inline or below) that applies to every chapter or every part. Parts can be centered on the page or placed at the top. Children's book pages have Image Position.

Notes

A Synopsis for the document, which also shows on its Corkboard card and in the Outline.

Project Settings

With no document selected (or from Project → Project Settings…), the Inspector shows settings for the whole project: Title, Author Name and Year (used by the merge fields and in exports), Target Word Count, the chapter and part label words and separators, a Chapter Title Ornament, the chapter header format, and Scene Break Style.