Collections
Structure the things you keep returning to.
Characters, places, factions, sources, clues. When one kind of thing appears again and again, a Collection gives each one the same shape, without turning the book into a database.
When repeated information deserves structure
Some of what surrounds a novel comes in sets. Twelve characters. Six locations. A list of revision issues that keeps growing. Each member of a set tends to want the same few facts recorded, and a loose stack of Pages stops being enough once you want to see those facts side by side.
A Collection is a set of Entries that share properties. You name the Collection; you name the properties; you decide what each one means. Sutura does not know that Characters is different from Clues, and does not need to.
Properties without turning the book into a database
An Entry is not a row. Open one and it is a document: its properties stand in a compact block under the title, parted from the body by a single line, and beneath them is room to write as much as the subject needs. Role, Affiliation and Status for a character, then the pages of notes that are the character.
Properties are typed, and one type is a relationship: it points at another object in the project. The character’s affiliation is the place itself, not its name typed again, and the scene she first appears in is the scene. Rename the place and every link holds.
None of it is required. An Entry with nothing filled in is still an Entry.
Different views, same underlying objects
A Collection can be read as a List, a Table, a Board or a Timeline, and it may keep several saved Views at once: all characters as a table, the cast by status as a board.
A View never duplicates anything. Move a card between the lanes of a Board and you have changed that Entry’s status; open it from the Table and it is the same Entry. There is one Ada Marsh, however many ways you look at her.
Give the Entries a date and the same cast can be read along it: who came to the island when, lane by lane. Nothing was entered twice to make this View.
Structure remains optional
Nothing in Sutura asks you to build a Collection. Many books never need one, and a Page is the right home for a character until it is not. When a set does form, a Collection should make it easier to see, not heavier to carry. Add a property when you want the answer across every Entry, and not before.
Scenes can carry their own writer-defined properties too. Scene properties
Structure should clarify the work, not become the work.