Manuscript

The whole story on one page. Every prose note of the project in reading order, stitched into one read-only page with the folder tree as its outline. Open it from the ribbon (the book icon) or with Open manuscript; it opens beside the current tab so the editor stays in view.

Reading it

• The outline comes from your folders. Part One/03 Chapter Three.md reads as Part One › Chapter Three, with the sort prefix stripped. Folder names are small eyebrows above the chapter title, so the outline reads apart from the text.
• Each note gets its name as a heading, then its text as reading view would show it. A note whose first heading already is its name shows that heading once. The headings inside a note nest under the outline: a # Camp scene in a chapter in a part reads as level three.
• Order is manuscript order, the same the story map, plot grid and threads use: notes by path, unless story-order: 3 in a note's front matter says otherwise.
• Selecting a paragraph (a click, or the arrow keys) marks it and makes the editor follow to it without taking focus: the editor already showing that note, else the editor beside the page with its file swapped, else a new split. Enter or a double click goes into the editor at that sentence and puts the cursor there. Click a heading to open the note at its top. Links in the text work as they do anywhere.
• Prose only, in the toolbar, hides lists, tables, code and callouts and keeps paragraphs, headings, quotes and scene breaks (***).
• Reading time sits in the toolbar next to the word count (4 h 5 min to read) and beside each section's title. It is an estimate at an average adult pace, 250 words a minute; set your own under Settings → Manuscript → Reading speed.

The page follows your typing: edit a chapter in the editor beside it and that chapter redraws after a moment, the rest of the page untouched, the scroll position and the selection kept. A page in a hidden tab waits and redraws when it is shown. Return to manuscript (a command; give it a hotkey) brings you back from the editor to the paragraph the cursor was in.

Keyboard

The page is one Tab stop; Tab and Shift+Tab move between the project list, the toolbar, the page, the comment field and the comment list. The toolbar ends in a ⋯ menu that repeats its switches and the export as rows, each naming the command it is, for Settings → Hotkeys.

Key	Where	Does
Up / Down	page	previous / next paragraph
Alt + Up / Down	page	previous / next chapter
Home / End	page	first / last paragraph
Enter	page	edit this paragraph in the editor
c	page	write a comment on it
Enter	comment field	save the comment
Shift + Enter	comment field	new line
Escape	comment field, list	clear the field, then back to the page
Up / Down, Enter	comment list	move; go to that paragraph on the page, the editor following
Shift + Enter	comment list	into the editor at that comment

What is on the page

Only the story. These stay out:

• Typed notes: characters, places, items, factions, events, whether typed by type: in front matter or by a Characters/, Places/… folder.
• The plugin's notes: Story map.md, Story threads.md, the writing log, an exported manuscript, the plot grid's export and snapshots.
• Notes with manuscript: false in their front matter: research, an outline, the project note when it is not the manuscript itself.
• Notes with no prose: a list of beats, an empty placeholder chapter.

manuscript: true puts a note on the page regardless of its type. The scope rule applies first: a note the plugin does not count is not read at all.

Comments and tags

Obsidian's %% comments %% are the right place for notes to self: they live in the text, sync with it, and never count as words. Reading view hides them; the manuscript page keeps them beside the text. One tag is the plugin's own: %% REF: [[Card]] %% links a passage to a card on the writer board, stays off the page and out of the export, and is counted by the board as a use.

• Marked paragraphs carry a dot in the gutter per comment, in the tag's colour; a highlight is a small square. Hover the dot's paragraph for a moment, or move onto it with the keyboard, and its comments appear in a box.
• The pane (the speech-bubble toggle in the toolbar) has two parts. This paragraph shows the comments of the selected paragraph and one field: type CHECK: was it a coat in chapter three? and press Enter, and %% CHECK: was it a coat in chapter three? %% lands at the end of that paragraph in the note, through the open editor if there is one. The tag is read from the prefix and shown as a chip while you type; no prefix means an untagged comment; Shift+Enter makes a new line. The chips under the field are a legend, and a click drops that prefix in. Press c on the page to jump to the field. All comments is one list of every comment and highlight of the manuscript in reading order, grouped under the chapter each is in, whose header stays put while its rows scroll by and carries the count; each row shows its tag as a bar down its edge and, in italics, the line of prose it hangs on; the dropdown filters by tag. This paragraph is pinned above the list and does not scroll with it. A click or Enter on a row takes the page to that paragraph, the editor following; a double click or Shift+Enter goes into the editor at the comment.
• A comment on a line of its own (%% … %% as a block) belongs to the paragraph before it.
• Tags colour a comment by the word it opens with. An uppercase word and a colon, nothing else. The defaults are TODO (something still to write), FIX (prose known to be wrong), CHECK (continuity, facts, names), IDEA (a possibility) and CUT (kept only until you are sure); add your own under Settings → Manuscript → Tags. Resolve a comment with the check mark at the end of its row (or r on the row): a ✓ goes in at the end of the comment, %% TODO: the lamp ✓ %%, so the tag and its colour survive, the row dims, the count says how many are still open, and the same mark reopens it. Delete the comment when it has nothing more to say.
• In the editor, the tag word is tinted in the same colour, so a TODO stands out in the dimmed comment. Only inside %%: a TODO in dialogue is left alone.
• Insert comment here (a command) drops %% %% at the cursor with the cursor inside. With a selection, the selection becomes a highlight and the comment follows it.

When the view is narrow the pane sits under the page instead of beside it.

Settings

Settings → Manuscript outline: how many folder levels become headings, whether note names do, what to strip from names (numbers and separators, nothing, or a pattern of your own), and whether the notes' own headings nest under the outline. Manuscript comments: tag tinting in the editor and the tag list. Manuscript page: the ruler, the story and echo marks, and the reading speed behind the reading time. Prose only and the comments pane are switches at the top of the page and are remembered there. See Settings.

The rest of the plugin on the page

The page is the one place with the whole book in view, so the other views lend it what they know.

• The ruler under the toolbar (the ruler toggle) is the shape of the book: one segment per section, wide by its word count, coloured from easy to dense by the same reading-ease bands as the writing desk, underlined in the accent colour when the section changed today, a dot when it has comments. Hover a segment for the numbers, click it to go there; Left and Right walk it.
• Story (the people toggle) lays the story map over the page: a cast line under each section title, everyone in it in the map's colours, most mentioned first; In this scene in the pane for the selected paragraph; a click on a name opens its note. A name the map found without a note (a candidate, dashed) opens a menu instead: character, place, item, faction or event makes the typed note in the project's folder for that kind, and not a name adds it to story-ignore, the same exits the map offers. Where the threads view found two scenes disagreeing on a fact, a red diamond sits in the gutter of both, the hover box and the pane say what clashes, and a click on the row takes the page to the other scene (a double click, into its editor). This toggle builds the map on every refresh, so it is off by default. With it on, a directed thread's anchored plant is an accent-coloured mark in the gutter at its sentence, pointing on, and a payoff or reversal one pointing back, each naming the other end; a click takes the page there.
• Voices (the quote toggle) tints each sentence of speech in its speaker's colour, grey when nobody is sure, and dims the narration, exactly as the dialogue lens does in the editor, from the same cast and rules. Hover a sentence, or select the paragraph and press v, and the box offers the cast as chips: a click, or the arrows and Enter, pins the speaker as a hidden %% Name %% comment right before that sentence in the note; Not speech for quotes that are not dialogue, Unpin to take a pin back. This is the proof-reading pass: read the book with the talk lit and pin as you go. Off by default.
• Echoes (the repeat toggle) marks what the echo finder heard: a purple dot in the gutter at every sentence holding a phrase that recurs elsewhere in the book, its title naming the nearest other place the words occur; a click takes the page there, and the pane and the hover box list the echoes of the selected paragraph. Off by default for the same reason as Story.

Export

Export at the top of the page, or the command Export manuscript to a note, writes the page as one note beside the project: My Novel (manuscript).md, the outline as headings, the text as it is, comments left out, highlights kept. It is a snapshot for Pandoc, a reader or a printer: export again to refresh it, delete it whenever. Its front matter carries creative-writer-manuscript: 1, so the plugin never reads it back as a chapter, counts its words, or shows it on the page.

The page itself is derived from your notes every time; nothing else is written anywhere.