Revision Notes

Revise the book without writing over it.

The questions, reminders and problems of a revision, kept beside the manuscript and never written into it. On a scene, a chapter or the whole book, and cleared when the draft has moved on.

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 Revision Notes exist

Revising a book makes a second kind of writing: the questions, reminders and small alarms that come up while you read what you have. Tighten this exchange. Seed this earlier. Does Ada know this yet? They matter now, and none of them belong in the manuscript. Revision Notes are where that thinking goes, so the prose does not have to carry it.

A note is written on a scene, a chapter, a part or the whole book, and the panel shows the notes for whatever you have open, shaped like the manuscript itself.

Keep the manuscript clean

Without a place for them, revision thoughts end up in the draft: a bracketed TODO, a line in capitals, a reminder left at the top of a scene to be deleted later. Each one is a small debt, and each one shows up in the word count, the export and the next read-through. With Revision Notes, the manuscript holds only the book.

Reading Mode can take a note about a passage as you read. The note keeps the passage it was written about, quoted, and leads back to it when you return to work.

Think about the draft without writing on it.

Temporary by nature

A revision note is made to be finished with. Mark it resolved and it steps back; hide the resolved and the panel shows only what is still open; delete a note and nothing about the manuscript changes. The draft moves on and the notes move with it, or go.

This is what sets them apart. Thinking the book keeps, a character, a place, a question of research, belongs in a Page. Facts about a scene, its point of view or status, belong in its properties. Revision Notes are for the thinking that is only true of this draft.

Thinking the book keeps belongs in a Page. Pages

Close to the scene, never in it

Revision Notes open beside the writing, in the same region the Inspector uses, so there is never more than one sheet beside the manuscript. The Inspector describes a scene: its place, its properties, its history, its connections. Revision Notes are what you mean to do about it. Both stay beside the writing, and both close when you are done.

The scene’s context and properties are the Inspector’s. The Inspector