Outline problem

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I'm having problem with parenting my second chapter of a story to the first.

I enter my author name under outline and can then see a list of every story except my most recent. Is it something I'm not doing correctly?

Comments

Now fixed

I fiddled some more and now it's fine. Sorry to bother anyone.

Hierarchies 'R Us

Iolanthe Portmanteaux's picture

I can see that you've got a ton of stories and maybe it's too late for this tip, but what I do when I have a new story is to FIRST create a title page that only has the title and a blurb or quote. You link the title page to your author page.

Then, when you create chapter one and subsequent chapters, you link them to the title page.

Here's an example of a title page: https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book-page/86182/minority-one

The hierarchy is like this:

My author page ==> title page for Minority of One ==> individual chapters for "A Minority of One"

If you've got groups of stories, you can make another page that's a child to your author page, and all the individual title pages are children of THAT page, like this:

My author page ==> Altered Fates Stories ==> "How I Met Your Mother-in-Law" ==> individual chapters

I've got four Altered Fates stories, so those four title pages are listed on my "Altered Fates Stories" group page. The individual chapters are children of each of the title pages.

- io

Even higher archies

I can add to that.

If you are dedicated enough - or even insane enough - then your story may grow so large that you need to subdivide it into books in order to manage it better, then exactly the same method applies.

For example:

My Author page ==> The Voyage of the Visund ==> Book 1 Castaway ==> individual chapters

Note that the story title should be repeated for each chapter with the chapter number after the story title[1] followed by optional chapter title. Chapters are sorted alphabetically by title (within each level) so it is best not to use words or Roman numerals when numbering chapters but plain digits. I wrap mine in -nn- since apparently the code can pick it out more easily if there are delimiters. Make your own up.

When you get to more than 9 chapters then you'll need to adjust the weighting. As I mentioned, chapters are sorted alphabetically so chapter 20 will follow chapter 2 and come before chapter 3 if you don't. Add 1 to the weighting for each extra digit in your chapter number. The weighting can also be used to adjust sections of your book or books within a story if necessary.

Penny

[1] Beware typos in titles! Your chapter gets stored under the first title you entered and, even though you can change the text, the original storage key won't be changed. This can result in some very strange happenings. Ask me how I know.

A very arch hierarch weighs her words

Iolanthe Portmanteaux's picture

You've carried hierarching to another level with your comments.

Seriously, though, the point about typos is well taken -- I've puzzled myself there (momentarily!). And your explanation of weights couldn't be clearer.

- io

Fixable

erin's picture

The "original storage key" (which is not what it is, it's just a sorting string used for URLs) can be changed by me if you have problems with one.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Thanks everyone

For their input.

I think Erin’s comment was particularly relevant as I had slightly changed the title of my story after it was published. It must have meant there was a discontinuity between the URLs of the first and second Chapters.