Manuscript structure

The Explorer panel shows your book as a tree of story units and is your main way to move through the manuscript. It opens on the left and toggles from the toolbar.

The hierarchy

A scene is the only unit you must have — it holds the manuscript prose. Parts (or acts) and chapters are optional containers you add when they help. Any combination works: scenes directly under the book, chapters with no part, or the full spine:

Book
└── Part (or Act)
    └── Chapter
        └── Scene

You never have to set up containers before you start. A new book can be a single scene, and you can write the whole first draft that way. Add parts and chapters later — or never. Writer Studio will not force acts or parts on a first project.

Structure can also emerge from text you already have. As a draft grows or after you import material, split it into scenes and group them into chapters when the shape becomes clear (see Extract to scene and Import).

Navigate

Click a scene to open it in the editor.
Click a part or chapter to open a read-only reading preview of its scenes; use the row's chevron to expand or collapse its contents in the tree.
The tree shows the active item, its place in the hierarchy, each container's expand/collapse state, and a word count per item.
To find an item by title quickly in a large book, use quick open (Cmd+P / Ctrl+P) instead of browsing the tree — see Search and Navigation.

Create, rename, reorder, delete

Right-click an item (or empty space in the tree) for its actions, or use the + button in the Explorer header to add a part, chapter, scene, or note:

Action	What it does
Create	Add a new part, chapter, or scene at the chosen place
Rename	Rename the item
Move / reorder	Move Up / Move Down reorder an item among its current siblings. Move Into Item Above puts a scene or chapter last inside the chapter or part just above it; Move Out One Level puts it right after its current chapter or part, one level up. Where the move is not allowed, nothing happens
Delete	Send the item, with everything inside it, to Trash

Moving or renaming an item keeps its text, metadata, story links, and version history intact. After a move, a story entity's appearance still resolves to the scene's new location. Deleting sends a container and its contents to Trash as one unit, and restoring brings them back together.

You can also drag and drop: drag a scene into another chapter or part, or a chapter into another part. The target highlights as you hover — drop to nest. The same moves are in the command palette, and they act on the selected item.

Extract to scene

When drafting reveals a better boundary, select a passage in the editor, then choose Extract to Scene from the right-click menu. The selection becomes its own scene next to the source scene, the source keeps the rest, and no text is lost. The new scene behaves like any other — rename, move, or revise it freely.

Templates

When you create a book you can start from a structure template instead of a blank scene. Templates pre-create ordinary parts, chapters, and scenes with titles you can edit — use one as a starting shape or an outline. Every template-created item is just like a hand-made one: rename, move, or delete it freely. No template locks you into one way to write.

See also: Editor | Item properties | Search