Entering Overviews
Every node in the tree — from Act down to Beat — can have an overview that describes its purpose and content at that level of abstraction.
What Overviews Are
Overviews are summaries or descriptions written at each level of the hierarchy. They serve as the generation layer input — the instructions that guide how content is created at lower levels.
- Act overview — The dramatic movement this act covers, its arc, its purpose
- Chapter overview — What this chapter accomplishes in the narrative
- Scene overview — What happens in this scene, the conflict, the change
- Beat notes — What this specific moment achieves
How to Enter an Overview
- Select a node in the document tree
- Switch to Input view mode using either the global toggle (top bar) or the per-node toggle on the node row
- The beat notes editor appears inline beneath the node
- Write your overview as bullet points — the editor auto-formats each line as a bullet
Bullet Formatting
Beat notes and overviews are always displayed as bullet-point lists. When editing:
- Each line is automatically prefixed with a bullet (
•) - Pressing Enter creates a new bullet line
- Text is stored without bullets and re-formatted on display
Entity Highlighting
When typing in beat notes, recognised entity names (characters, locations, objects) are highlighted with colour-coded underlines:
- Characters — accent colour (pink/red)
- Locations — blue
- Objects — amber
Clicking a highlighted name opens that entity’s detail modal, making it easy to review or edit entity information without leaving the tree.
Why Overviews Matter
Overviews feed into AI generation. When Writan generates prose for a beat, it uses the beat notes along with the scene overview, chapter purpose, and act arc to understand the full context. The more specific your overviews, the better the generated output.
See What Data Feeds Into Generation for the complete picture.