Help › Planning

Card Properties and Custom Fields

Track anything on your cards with typed properties, an Obsidian-style property block, starter sets, bulk editing and custom card types.

Every card can carry properties: small typed fields such as a status, a date, a point of view, a word target or anything you invent. Properties power the Outliner columns, the Writer Timeline, filters and search.

Where you see properties

The Properties panel: choose View › Properties Panel or press ⌥⌘P. It shows the selected card's fields in sections such as General, Properties, Status & Tags, Appearance, Targets, Progress, Word stats, Media, Manuscript and Connections.
The property block in the editor: a compact table above the text, in the style of Obsidian properties.
The Inspector in Manuscript Mode, under Metadata (or Properties for cards).
The Outliner, where properties can be shown as columns.
On the card face: up to four properties can be printed on the canvas card.

Property types

Type	Good for
Text	Short values such as a source or a code
Long text	Notes or descriptions
Number	Page counts, runtime, budget
Date	Deadlines, story dates
Date & time	Appointments, timed events
Checkbox	Done / not done
Select	One choice from a list
Multi-select	Several choices from a list
Link to cards	Linking a scene to characters, sources or other cards
List	A list of free values

A property's type applies to every card that uses that name. If a value does not match the type, WriterMorph shows a warning and offers Convert value or Clear value. It never deletes a value silently.

Adding a property

Select a card or open it in the editor.
Choose Documents › Add Property (⌥⌘;) or click + Add property under the property block.
Type a name. WriterMorph suggests names you already use.
Pick a type, then enter the value.

When you define a property, you can decide whether it applies to all cards, to cards of one type, or only to this card. Each card keeps its own value.

Click ⋯ at the end of a row for:

Find cards with this value
Rename… (everywhere, or only on this card)
Edit property…
Clear value
Hide from the text (the value stays in the Inspector)
Remove from this card…
Apply to all cards of this type, or to all cards
Move up / Move down
Delete property everywhere…

Tip: In Settings › Editing, choose whether the property block above the text is visible, collapsed or hidden.

Built-in fields

Fiction planners come with built-in fields such as Act, When, Synopsis, Summary, Subplot, Characters, POV, Status, Beat, Tension and Location. Character cards also get Role, Gender and Appears in. Non-fiction planners use friendlier labels, for example Summary instead of Synopsis and Date instead of When.

Starter sets

Starter sets add a ready-made group of properties and card types for a kind of writing. There are 34 sets in seven areas:

Academic: Thesis / Dissertation, Research Paper / Journal Article, Literature Review, Lab Report, Research / Grant Proposal, Conference Talk / Poster
Student: Essay / Assignment, Study Notes / Revision, Book Report, Group Project
Teaching: Lesson Plan, Course / Module Design, Marking / Feedback
Non-fiction: Non-Fiction Book, Memoir / Biography, Journalism / Feature Article, Blog / Newsletter, Travel Writing
Work: Business Report, Proposal / Pitch, Technical Documentation, Meeting / Project Notes, Legal / Policy, Grant / Funding Application
Creative: Novel: Scene Craft, Screenplay / Stage Play, Poetry, Short Story Submissions, Podcast / Radio Script, Worldbuilding, Comic / Graphic Novel
Personal: Journal / Diary, Recipe Collection, Goals & Life Planning

To switch a whole planner to another kind of writing, choose Project › Convert Planner To and pick a set. Nothing is deleted; properties with the same name are kept.

You can also save your current properties as your own set and apply it to other projects.

Editing many cards at once

Select two or more cards. The Properties panel switches to Bulk edit:

Fields where the cards share a value show it; fields that differ show "mixed".
Change the fields you want. Each picker also offers Leave unchanged and None (clear).
Choose Apply to update every selected card in one undoable step, or Discard.

Bulk edit covers the card type, status, color, POV, whether the cards appear in the manuscript, word-count settings and, for story projects, scene type, beat, tension, story time, place and era.

Custom card types

Open Project › Project Settings… (⌥⌘,), then Cards › Node Types. You can rename and recolor built-in types, duplicate a type, or create your own. Design… opens the type designer, where you choose:

Appearance: an emoji or icon, card color, text color, and which built-in type it behaves like.
Panels & fields: which sections appear for this type.
Property template: the properties every new card of this type starts with.

Ready-made card type sets are available for novels, scripts, academic writing, students, lesson plans, non-fiction, business reports and poetry.

Story categories

Story projects can track more than characters and places. In Project Settings, add a category such as Factions, Themes, Objects, Subplots, Eras or Mood. A category becomes a single- or multi-select property on your cards, appears in the Properties panel and search, and can have its own profile card for each item.