Project home page > Main help page > Advanced features
The "advanced features" are meant to be used by experienced OpenOffice/LibreOffice users only. If you aren't familiar with Calc and the concept of sections in Writer, please do not use the advanced features. There is a risk of damaging the project when writing back if you don't respect the section boundaries in the ODT text documents, or if you mess up the IDs in the ODS tables. Be sure to try out the features with a test project first.
This will load yWriter 7 chapters and scenes into a new OpenDocument text document (odt) with invisible chapter and scene sections (to be seen in the Navigator). File name suffix is _manuscript.
You can write back the scene contents and the chapter/part headings to the yWriter 7 project file with the Export to yWriter command. Comments right at the beginning of the scenes are written back as scene titles.
Chapters and scenes can neither be rearranged nor deleted. Added chapters and scenes are not taken into account when writing back.
This will generate a new OpenDocument text document (odt) containing a full synopsis with chapter titles and scene descriptions that can be edited and written back to yWriter format. File name suffix is _scenes.
You can write back the scene descriptions and the chapter/part headings to the yWriter 7 project file with the Export to yWriter command. Comments right at the beginning of the scene descriptions are written back as scene titles.
This will generate a new OpenDocument text document (odt) containing a brief synopsis with chapter titles and chapter descriptions that can be edited and written back to yWriter format. File name suffix is _chapters.
Note: Doesn't apply to chapters marked This chapter begins a new section in yWriter.
You can write back the headings and descriptions to the yWriter 7 project file with the Export to yWriter command.
This will generate a new OpenDocument text document (odt) containing a very brief synopsis with part titles and part descriptions that can be edited and written back to yWriter format. File name suffix is _parts.
Note: Applies only to chapters marked This chapter begins a new section in yWriter.
You can write back the headings and descriptions to the yWriter 7 project file with the Export to yWriter command.
This will generate a new OpenDocument text document (odt) containing character descriptions, bio and goals that can be edited in Office Writer and written back to yWriter format. File name suffix is _characters.
You can write back the descriptions to the yWriter 7 project file with the Export to yWriter command.
This will generate a new OpenDocument text document (odt) containing location descriptions that can be edited in Office Writer and written back to yWriter format. File name suffix is _locations.
You can write back the descriptions to the yWriter 7 project file with the Export to yWriter command.
This will generate a new OpenDocument text document (odt) containing item descriptions that can be edited in Office Writer and written back to yWriter format. File name suffix is _items.
You can write back the descriptions to the yWriter 7 project file with the Export to yWriter command.
This will generate a new OpenDocument spreadsheet (ods) listing the following:
Only "normal" scenes that would be exported as RTF in yWriter get a row in the scene list. Scenes of the "Unused", "Notes", or "ToDo" type are omitted.
File name suffix is _scenelist.
You can write back the table contents to the yWriter 7 project file with the Export to yWriter command.
The following columns can be written back to the yWriter project:
This will generate a new OpenDocument spreadsheet (ods) listing plot related metadata that can be displayed and edited.
File name suffix is _plotlist.
In yWriter, you can divide your novel into Plot Sections (e.g. acts or steps) by inserting "Notes" chapters. They will show up in blue color and won't get exported.
Plot-related events (e.g. "Mid Point", "Climax") can be identified by "scene tags" if you want to link them to a specific scene.
You can use scene notes for plot-specific explanations.
If you want to visualize character arcs, you can use the project's rating names by changing them to the names of up to four main characters. Then you can quantify the state of these four characters and put them into the scenes. It's easy then to let OpenOffice Calc show a diagram for the scene ratings over scene count or word count.
You can write back the table contents to the yWriter 7 project file with the Export to yWriter command.