Chapters

You can find your chapters in the sidebar's Chapters tab, listed in the order you set. Clicking one opens it, and the editor takes over the page.

Every chapter needs a unique title within the book.

You write in the chapter editor. A chapter is built from blocks: paragraphs, headers, media, and Triggers (covered below). Your work saves as you type; a small save indicator sits at the top. The chapter's settings live in the side panel. Each header has its own settings popup.

The chapter's title is the H1 at the top of the editor. Type it inline like any other header. It can be up to 100 characters and must be unique within the book. Your reader sees it as the chapter heading.

Everything else lives in the side panel:

• Tags: labels a Trigger or Decision Template can match on later. Give several chapters the same tag to act on all of them at once, for example hiding every chapter tagged dream sequence when your reader wakes up. Up to 5 per chapter. The same cap applies everywhere tags appear in the editor.
• Hide by default: when this is on, your reader can't reach the chapter until a Trigger reveals it. Use it for branch chapters that should only appear after a specific decision. Chapter 1 can't be hidden (see below).

A chapter is an ordered list of blocks, and blocks come in four kinds:

• Paragraph: your story text. Each is capped at 800 characters (more on the Story Flow page). If you type past the cap, the editor moves the last word into a new paragraph. If you backspace across the gap, the paragraphs merge again. You can bold and italicise inline, and you can add mentions (see below).
• Header: three levels. H1 is the chapter title (one per chapter, automatic). H2 and H3 are sub-sections inside the chapter. Use them in longer chapters when you want a Trigger to reveal one section instead of the whole chapter. Each header has its own settings popup (covered below).
• Media: an image or video you upload, rendered full-width in the chapter. Use the media modal to upload artwork or pick a file from your book's gallery.
• Trigger: how your story responds to what your reader has done. When the reader reaches it, it checks its conditions and runs its results. A Trigger is also the only way one of the Dynamic Components opens for the reader. Full details on the Triggers page.

The chapter editor has one settings modal of its own: the per-header popup. It sets whether a header starts hidden, whether it's a ghost, and which tags it carries.

The per-header settings modal

Every header has a small settings popup. You can reach it through the drag handle that appears to the header's left when you hover it: click it and pick Settings from the menu that opens. The one exception is the chapter title at the very top: its tags and hide-by-default live in the chapter side panel instead.

• Hide by default: when this is on, the header and every block under it stay hidden from your reader until a Trigger reveals them. This is how you hold back a whole sub-section of a chapter for a later reveal.
• Ghost header: invisible to your reader, but still a structural marker. Blocks sit under it, and reveal-by-tag results can target it. The reader never sees the heading text. Use it to group a stretch of paragraphs without a visible heading.
• Tags: like chapter tags, but on this header only. Up to 5; the same cap applies everywhere tags appear. See below for what header tags are for.

What header tags are for

Any Trigger, Decision Template, or other Dynamic Component with a results block can target "every header tagged X" in one step, using a Multi Select result. One Trigger result like "reveal every header tagged side-quest unlocked" can open ten sub-sections across five chapters at once. The same goes for hiding headers, and for assigning or removing their tags.

Tag precisely, so that a month from now you can still tell which headers a "hide all flashbacks" result will affect. Chapter tags act on whole chapters; header tags act on parts of one.

To bring a Glossary Item into your text, type @ in a paragraph. The mention picker opens. Pick a Glossary Item and the editor inserts a small pill linked to it. Two useful things follow from that:

• Renames carry through. Rename the Glossary Item and every mention of it in every chapter updates. Your reader sees the new name everywhere.
• Reveal gating. A mention only becomes clickable once you've revealed that Glossary Item to your reader. Mentions of items they haven't met yet look like plain text. You reveal items through Triggers and Decision Templates.

Your reader starts in the first chapter, so its Hide by default toggle is locked off. Every reader needs a visible starting point. The other chapter-level settings (title, tags) work the same as on any other chapter.

Once a chapter is part of a published expansion of your book, the editor locks it. A banner at the top tells you:

You can't rename it, retag it, change its visibility, edit its blocks, or delete it. Readers who bought the expansion keep the version they paid for. If you need to change something, do it in your next expansion. See the Publishing page.

A chapter can have two kinds of problem. They behave differently, and only one of them blocks publishing.

• The editor refuses to save when you rename a chapter to a title another chapter in the book already uses. Pick a different title and try again. The rest of your edit is kept.
• The chapter goes invalid when a Trigger inside it goes invalid: a broken reference, a forward-only rule, or a fired Dynamic Component pointing at the wrong spot. A chapter has no validity of its own; it inherits the status of the worst Trigger inside it. A small warning icon appears on the broken Trigger. Click it to open the Trigger; the bad row carries the same warning, so you can go straight to the fix.

The second kind blocks publishing: the publish check refuses any book with an invalid chapter. The first kind doesn't, because the save never goes through.