A board for a novel, a world or a long piece of research
A long piece of writing has two documents: the one you are writing, and the much larger one made of everything you had to work out first. The second one is a mess by nature, it is mostly connections, and it is the thing a word processor is worst at holding.
Everything visible at the same time
Characters as note cards, locations as images, the chronology on a timeline card, the unresolved questions on a task list. Spread out rather than filed, because the value is in seeing that two things you wrote a month apart contradict each other.
Connect cards with lines to record relationships — who knows whom, what causes what. The lines are the part a folder structure cannot represent.
Research that stays where you found it
Link cards keep the source. PDF cards are readable in place with page controls, so a cited document sits on the board rather than in a downloads folder. Quote cards hold the passage you are going to use, attributed, next to the note about why.
Code cards are syntax-highlighted, which matters more than it sounds for anyone whose research involves data, queries or the odd script.
Structure without commitment
Nested boards let a subplot or a region grow its own board and collapse back to one tile. Comment zones group a thread loosely and carry their contents when you move them, which is the right amount of structure for something whose structure is not settled.
Export to Markdown when the board has done its job and the prose needs to move somewhere else. Export to JSON if what you want is the board itself, backed up, re-importable.
What this is not good at
This is not a manuscript editor. There is no long-form writing mode, no chapter compiler, no word-count target and no export to a manuscript format. Notes are rich text on a canvas — the drafting happens in whatever you draft in.
Questions
- Is there a limit on how many notes I can have?
- No. Cards and boards are uncapped on every plan including free.
- Can I write the actual manuscript here?
- You can, in rich-text note cards, but it is not built for it — there is no chapter structure, word-count target or manuscript export. This is for everything around the manuscript.
- Can I get my work out?
- Markdown for the text, JSON for the board itself. The JSON re-imports cleanly, so it is a backup rather than a picture.
Start a board
Free, uncapped, and no card. Boards, cards, collaborators and exports are not metered on any plan — hosted uploads are the one thing Pro adds that free does not have.