The codex: notes, characters, and locations
Every story carries a codex — a place for everything that surrounds the prose: working notes, frontmatter and endmatter pages, and records for your characters and locations. You reach it from the Notes, Frontmatter, and Endmatter links on the story's structure screen, or from the left panel while writing a scene.
Story notes
Story notes are freeform pages for research, outlines, character sheets, timelines — whatever helps you write. They stay private and never appear in exports or published stories.
On the Notes page you can:
- Create a note by giving it a title; it opens straight into a rich-text editor.
- Edit a note's content, which autosaves as you type.
- Rename a note from the pencil button.
- Delete a note. Notes are deleted permanently (they do not go to the Recycle Bin), so a delete asks you to confirm.
- Reorder notes with the up and down arrows.
Starring a note
You can star one note per story. The starred note is pinned as a ⭐ Note button in the scene editor, one click away while you write — ideal for a style sheet or a running outline you refer to constantly. Starring a note automatically un-stars any previously starred one, so there is always at most one.
Frontmatter and endmatter
Frontmatter and endmatter are pages that do appear in your exports and published stories. Frontmatter renders at the front — copyright, dedication, a map — and endmatter at the back — about the author, other works, acknowledgements. They work exactly like story notes (create, edit, rename, delete, reorder) but land in the finished book instead of staying private.
Characters
Each character record can hold:
- An alias — the short name shown in menus and scene links (required).
- A full name.
- A colour used to distinguish the character in the editor.
- A portrait — an uploaded picture, reduced to a 512px square on upload; without one, a coloured initial stands in.
- A rich-text profile for anything else — background, appearance, arc.
Characters are listed on the Notes page. Each has its own card, which also pops up in the scene editor so you can check a detail without leaving your writing.
Locations
Each location record holds:
- A name (required).
- An optional link to another location in the same story, for places that belong to or connect with one another.
- A rich-text description.
Locations appear alongside characters on the Notes page and get the same card treatment in the editor.
Assigning cast to a scene
In the scene editor's left panel, the Characters and Locations folds let you mark which of your cast appear in the scene you are writing, and pick one character as the scene's point-of-view (POV). Assigned characters and locations show as clickable chips; click a chip to open that record's card. Setting a POV character and a location on every scene is one of the things that can earn a badge.
This tagging also feeds the Cast and Places tabs on the structure screen, which turn it into whole-story pictures of who appears where and whose point of view carries the book — so the more scenes you tag, the more those tabs can show.
Templates and the codex
If you started your story from a template, the codex may already be populated — notes, frontmatter and endmatter, characters, and locations can all be pre-filled, including a pre-starred default note. Everything is yours to edit or remove.