Appearances

Appearances is a grid: Scenes down one axis, Entities across the other, a mark where an Entity appears in a Scene. It answers the questions that are miserable to answer by rereading:

• When did this character last appear on the page?
• Which scenes happen at the harbour?
• Does the antagonist vanish for the whole second act?

Open Coverage from the Manuscript’s navigation.

Reading the grid

Long empty stretches in a character’s row are the “where has she been?” problem made visible. A Scene’s column shows its cast at a glance — and a column with almost nothing in it is often a scene that isn’t pulling weight.

Filter by Entity Type to look at just characters, just locations, just factions.

Where the marks come from

Appearances are derived from your writing — [[ ]] references and Entity mentions in each Scene — so the grid stays current as you write. It’s a lens over the text, not a checklist you maintain by hand.

See also: Arcs for through-lines, References for the link graph underneath.