An outline that's part of your manuscript

Novel outlining software works best when the outline and the manuscript are the same thing. Writer Studio structures a book as project → book → optional part (or act) → optional chapter → scene, and only the scene is required — so you can outline every level in detail, or write a single scene and let the rest of the shape emerge later.

What structure does novel outlining software need?

Just one thing: a scene. Parts (or acts) and chapters are optional containers you add only where they help, and any combination is allowed — scenes sitting directly under a book, chapters with no part around them, or the full project → book → part → chapter → scene spine. Nothing forces you into acts or parts for a first project.

A project can hold any number of books, so a series and its side novellas can live in one place without splitting your notes across separate files. Each scene can also carry POV, status, and links into the Book Wiki, so the outline stays connected to who's in the story and not just what order things happen in. See the full rundown in the structure documentation.

Level	Required?	What it's for
Project	No	Holds one or more books — a series and its novellas can share one project
Book	Yes	The manuscript itself
Part (or Act)	No	Optional top-level grouping; label it "Act" if that fits your story better
Chapter	No	Optional grouping of scenes for reading and navigation
Scene	Yes — the only unit you must have	Holds the prose itself; every book needs at least one

Can I outline before I write, or does structure grow out of a draft?

Both. Some authors plan a full chapter-and-scene shape before typing a word; others start from a blank page and let the shape reveal itself. If you're drafting and a passage clearly wants to be its own scene, select it and use Extract to Scene — the selection becomes a new scene next to the source, and no text is lost. Group the results into chapters once a pattern is visible.

If you'd rather start from a known shape, a story structure template pre-creates editable parts, chapters, and scenes — three-act, Save the Cat, and others — as a starting point you can rename or rearrange freely. For a broader look at breaking a story into acts and chapters, see how to organize a novel.

How do I reorganize a novel without losing chapters?

Right-click any item, or use the Explorer's + button, to create, rename, reorder, or delete a part, chapter, or scene. Dragging a scene into another chapter — or a chapter into another part — moves it; its prose, metadata, and story links travel with it, and an entity's appearance in the Book Wiki still resolves to the scene's new location afterward. Deleting sends an item and everything inside it to Trash as one recoverable unit, never a silent loss.

The structure tree is also the single source of order for the editor, export, search, and revision — there's no separate outline to keep in sync by hand. Move a chapter here and export, search, and the writing surface all agree on the new order immediately.

Is there a visual way to plan a novel's structure?

Two visual planning views are in the app as alpha features: a corkboard that turns a chapter's or part's scenes into cards you can drag to reorder, and a plot grid that lines scenes up against POV and status so you can spot a viewpoint or thread that's gone quiet. Both are still being refined — worth trying, but not yet as settled as the structure tree itself, which is where the actual order lives either way.

Structure in Writer Studio is free, works fully offline, and needs nothing in the cloud to use. Download Writer Studio and start from a blank scene or a template.