The Inspector

The details stay close.

A scene's properties, its place in the manuscript, its earlier versions and its connections, in one sheet beside the writing. There when you need context, gone when you do not.

ReadRevision Notes

The Letters

The Thursday Boat

The letters came on the Thursday boat, three of them, tied with the grey string her mother had always used. Ada did not open them at the harbour. She carried them up the hill the way one carries something that might still be warm.

By the time she reached the house the wind had turned. She set the letters on the table beside the lamp and left them there while she made tea, as if the ordinary tasks could be made to go first.

Why the Inspector exists

A manuscript is full of things that are true about a scene but are not the scene. Whose point of view it is. Where in the book it falls. How many words it has grown to since Tuesday. Which page of notes it leans on. Sutura keeps all of that out of the writing surface, and the Inspector is where it goes instead.

It opens beside the writing and closes when you are done. The writing column keeps its measure as long as there is room.

Details without leaving the writing

Select a scene and the Inspector describes it: its kind and title, the Group and Chapter above it, its position among its siblings, its length. Below that, its properties, each edited in place; below that, its History: the versions Sutura keeps automatically as you write, each a time and a word count, any of which you can open and read.

Nothing here has to be filled in. A scene with no properties shows a few plain suggestions and otherwise leaves the sheet quiet.

The properties themselves are the writer’s to define. Scene properties

Context should be available, not unavoidable.

Connections that lead into the workspace

The last section is where the manuscript meets the Workspace. Under Connections, the Inspector lists what a scene is linked to, a Page of research, an Entry in a Collection, and under Referenced by, everything that mentions the scene in turn. Each is one step away.

The Inspector is not only for scenes. Select a Chapter and it lists the Chapter’s scenes; a Page, an Entry or a Canvas, and it says where in the Workspace they stand and what they connect to.

What the Inspector points to lives in Pages and Collections. Pages

Quiet when not needed

The Inspector is a panel you open, not one that opens itself. It shares one region with Revision Notes, so there is never more than one sheet beside the writing, and while you are typing the shell’s chrome recedes until you pause, so the page is the writing and little else.

The other thing that sheet can hold is your revision thinking. Revision Notes