The corkboard

Opening it#

1. Open the book you want to look at.
2. Press ⌘⇧K / Ctrl+Shift+K, or choose View → Toggle Corkboard View.
3. The board opens over the editor, with the book’s title and a view switcher along the top.
4. Press Esc, or click the ✕, to go back to writing.

The switcher at the top moves between Editor, Corkboard, and Outliner without leaving the overlay.

Working with cards#

Each card is one section, showing its title, its synopsis, and the characters in it — with the point-of-view character marked.

Reorder

Drag a card to its new position.

Select

A single click.

Open a scene

Select its card and press Enter, which takes you back to the editor there.

Grouping

Cards are grouped by front, main, and back matter, in manuscript order.

To fit more or fewer cards across the board, use the Cards per row control in the header. Fewer, larger cards suit reading synopses; more, smaller ones suit seeing an entire act at once.

Writing synopses#

A card is only as useful as its synopsis.

1. Double-click the card. (From the keyboard: select it and press F2.)
2. Type a line or two describing what the scene does — what changes by the end of it, not what happens in it.
3. Click away to finish. There’s nothing to save.

With every card filled in, the corkboard becomes an outline you can take in at a glance — useful for spotting pacing gaps or a scene that isn’t pulling its weight.

Corkboard vs. outliner#

The corkboard is spatial and visual; the outliner is a structured list with more detail. Many writers plan on the corkboard and revise in the outliner.