Plan your acts and chapters

Your story's plan lives in its Outline tab: a list of chapters, each with a few sentences about what happens in it, grouped into acts. Planning is optional. You can plan every chapter before you write, plan one chapter ahead, or skip it and write. Adding and changing chapters yourself uses no credits; Ando's suggestions use AI credits.

An act is a run of chapters that does one job for the story. Most stories have three: act 1 sets things up, act 2 is the long middle where things get harder, and act 3 is the ending.

Add a chapter

1. Open your story and select the Outline tab.
2. Select Add chapter. In a story with no chapters yet, it's under Prefer to plan your chapters first?
3. Write a Summary: what happens in this chapter, in a few sentences. A Title is optional.
4. If you'd like to plan more, select More planning options. There you can list the chapter's Key moments, say its Purpose, choose a Point-of-view character, write an Ending hook, pick an Act, set a Word count goal and add Notes. Ando follows all of these when it writes the chapter, and works without them when they're empty.
5. Select Add chapter at the bottom.

The new chapter goes at the end of your outline. Chapters stay in the order you add them: you can't move a chapter to another place in the outline.

The Outline column says Detailed once a chapter has a summary. Above the list, Storiando counts your chapters, the words you've written and, if you've set word count goals, the words you've planned.

Group your chapters into acts

Choose an act yourself

1. In the Outline tab, select a chapter's row, or select the three dots at the end of it and then Edit outline.
2. Select More planning options if it's folded away, then choose the chapter's Act. The list shows the acts your outline already has, the chapters in each, and one more act after the last, to start a new one.
3. Select Save changes.

Once chapters have acts, a bar above the list shows how many chapters each act holds, so you can see at a glance if your beginning runs long or your ending is rushed. Chapters with no act show as No act.

Let Ando suggest acts

On the Creator and Pro plans, Ando can read your outline and suggest where each act starts. Suggest acts appears once your outline has three chapters, and it uses AI credits at the Balanced price. On the Free plan, it shows a lock and opens Plans.

1. In the Outline tab, select Suggest acts. Ando reads your chapters; to stop, select Stop.
2. Read the suggestion: each act has a name, the chapters it holds and a sentence on why the story turns there.
3. Select Apply to outline to use it, or Cancel to leave your outline as it is. Nothing changes until you apply.

Applying sets the act of every chapter and keeps each act's name and explanation. To read one again, select the i beside the act in the bar above your chapters. You can still change any chapter's act by hand afterwards.

Ask again and Ando may divide your chapters differently, so read each suggestion before you apply it. If you later move a chapter into a different act and that changes where an act starts, the chapter's form warns you that the act's explanation will no longer show.

Let Ando suggest chapters

On the Creator and Pro plans, Ando can help plan chapters too, from your story, its characters and locations, and the chapters around the one you're planning. Each suggestion uses AI credits at the Balanced price. On the Free plan, these buttons show a lock and open Plans.

Ideas for the next chapter

1. At the top of the Outline tab, select Suggest next chapter. In a story with no chapters yet, it's Suggest first chapter.
2. Ando offers up to three ideas, each with a title and a few sentences. To stop while it's thinking, select Stop.
3. Select the idea you like. It opens in Add chapter with its title and summary filled in.
4. Change anything you like, then select Add chapter. Nothing is added before that, and closing the dialog leaves your outline as it was.

Fill in a chapter's plan

1. In Add chapter, or in a chapter's Edit chapter, select Suggest chapter outline at the bottom.
2. Ando writes a summary and fills in the planning details you've left empty: the title, key moments, purpose, ending hook and word count goal, and the point-of-view character and act when it can. Details you've already filled in stay as they are.
3. Read it through. Undo suggestion puts back what the form had before, until you edit the form yourself.
4. Select Add chapter or Save changes to keep it. Nothing is saved before that.

The summary is always rewritten, so if the chapter already has one, Storiando asks first: Keep mine leaves your summary alone and asks Ando for nothing, Replace goes ahead.

Change or delete a chapter

To change a chapter's plan, select its row, change anything, then select Save changes. If you close the form before saving, Storiando asks whether to keep editing or discard your changes. If a save doesn't go through, your changes stay in the form: check your connection and try again.

Changing a chapter's plan, or its act, never changes the words you've written in it.

To delete a chapter:

1. Select the three dots at the end of its row.
2. Select Delete chapter, then Delete chapter again to confirm.

Deleting a chapter deletes its plan and everything you've written in it, and can't be undone. The chapters after it move up one number, so there's no gap.

Related

• Start your first story
• Turn a brainstorm into a story
• Add and edit characters
• Choose Swift, Balanced or Deep