Plan your plot with story events and the changes they cause

An outline answers "what happens next?" for the writer. A story bible has to answer a harder question: "what is different afterwards?" A cause and effect plot outline is one that answers both. When the Watch fires on the grain queue in Duskhollow, Rowan Ashe stops serving the Crown and starts informing for the Ashen Circle. That is one scene in your outline and four facts in your story bible: an allegiance, a membership that ends, a membership that begins, a new place he sleeps. If the scene and the facts live in different tools, they drift apart the first time you move the scene.

So the outline should live inside the story bible. Lokee's Story Events page holds the plot as events you can nest and reorder, place in your world's chronology, link to the entities, chapters and notes they involve, connect as causes and consequences, and give Effects: the changes the event made, recorded into the history of the characters and relationships themselves. That last part is what makes it more than an outline.

The running example is The Ashen Circle, the demo story. The guide assumes you know what a world point is; if not, read three kinds of when first. Story Events is available in the browser and the desktop app, not in the Android app.

Why a cause and effect plot outline needs two orders

The most important idea on this page is that an event has two independent positions.

• Plan order is the order you work in: the order of your outline, nested into acts, arcs or threads however you like. It can follow the reader, the protagonist, or simply the order the ideas came to you.
• World order is when things happened in your world, worked out from where each event is placed on the Timeline.

Most outlines force one order on both. That is why flashbacks, parallel plotlines and prologues set years earlier feel awkward in outlining tools. In Lokee you plan in plan order, place events in world time when you know where they sit, and switch views with the Plan order / World order buttons at the top of the page (they appear once you have events).

Building the event plan

Open Story Events from the sidebar, or from Tools in the Writer's toolbar.

1. Press + New event. Give it a Title ("The eastern wall riot") and a Description.
2. Save it. It appears in the plan.
3. Hover over a row to see its controls: + adds a sub-event, ↑ and ↓ move it among its siblings, ← outdents it and → indents it under the event above, ✎ edits and ✕ deletes.

There is no drag and drop; the arrow buttons are how you restructure. Indent makes an event the last child of the one directly above it; outdent makes it the next sibling of its parent. That is enough to build any shape: acts with chapters' worth of events under them, or plot threads ("Rowan", "Iseult", "The Magistrate") each holding their own events.

For The Ashen Circle, a first plan might be:

• Before the book
  • The first grain winter
  • The eastern wall riot
• Act one
  • Meeting at the Gilded Lantern
  • Iseult opens the ledger
  • Ophelia lays out three reports

Notice that "Before the book" is just a grouping event. Nothing requires an event to be a scene; it is whatever unit of plot helps you think.

Two other buttons sit at the top. Export Markdown downloads the plan as a Markdown outline, handy for sending to an editor. Extract from text… proposes events from a chapter or from pasted text using AI; you see the cost first (Lokee credits in cloud vaults; your own key or a local model is possible in local vaults on the desktop app), review every candidate, and commit only what you keep. Extracted events carry an AI — unreviewed badge so you know which ones you have not checked.

Linking events to people, chapters and notes

In the event editor, Links connects the event to the rest of the vault. Choose Entity, Chapter or Note, then type in Search to link….

• Link the characters who take part: Rowan, Captain Aldric, the Crown Watch.
• Link the chapter where the reader sees it: for "Meeting at the Gilded Lantern", Chapter 1 — The Lantern's Price.
• Link a research note or the scene sketch you keep in Notes.

Links are references, nothing more. The Effects section says it plainly: "Only what you list here is recorded — linking an entity changes nothing." This is a deliberate refusal to guess. Being at a battle does not make someone a veteran, and appearing at a riot does not make Rowan a rebel. Lokee will not infer either. Effects, below, are where you say what changed.

Placing an event in world time

The editor's Place in world time section has three choices:

• Not placed, the default. The event lives only in plan order.
• A single date: one moment. Under When, choose a world point.
• A period: something that lasts. Choose where it Begins and where it Ends.

For each end you can pick an existing point with Choose a world point… or create one on the spot with Create a new world point…, giving it a Point name (Lokee suggests "The first grain winter — begins") and an optional date. New points go at the end of the timeline; move them into place on the Timeline page with Move earlier and Move later. One event uses one calendar: when you create an end point, it takes the start's calendar. Dating events in a calendar of your own is covered in building a calendar and timeline for an invented world.

You can also place events from the other side. On the Timeline, each world point has Events here: choose an event and whether the point is where it begins or ends. An end needs a start, and Lokee says so if you try to give an event an end before it has a start elsewhere.

Placed events show up across the vault. In the plan, each row shows its placement next to the title. On the Timeline, an event appears on the points where it begins and ends, with a period joining the two; the Calendar view shows periods as bars and links back to the plan. In the Viewing control, points are labelled with the events that begin or end there, so "The eastern wall riot (begins)" is easy to find.

Placing an event changes nothing else. It is not an effect, and it does not move any character.

Reading World order

Switch to World order and the plan is re-listed by placement on one timeline: the one you are viewing (if Viewing is set to a world point), otherwise the canonical one. If the vault has several timelines, a picker lets you choose. Events not placed anywhere are grouped under Not placed in world time, and those placed only on other timelines under On other timelines, so nothing silently disappears.

If something about a placement looks wrong, the row carries a ⚠ flag instead of being corrected: ends before it begins (order), ends before it begins (date), begins and ends on unrelated timelines, or a world point is missing. Like everywhere else in Lokee's time model, order is trusted and dates annotate, and only you know whether an oddity is a mistake.

World order is the view to read when you need to check that your prologue's twenty-years-earlier events actually sit before act one, or that two plot threads you planned separately do not collide.

Causes and consequences

Once an event exists, open it again with ✎. A Causes / Consequences section appears. Choose Is a cause of… or Is a consequence of…, type in Search events…, and pick the other event. Links are listed as Cause of or Consequence of, with a button to remove each.

For the demo story:

• The first grain winter is a cause of the eastern wall riot.
• The eastern wall riot is a cause of Meeting at the Gilded Lantern. Rowan only meets Sera because he has already turned.
• Ophelia lays out three reports is a consequence of the meeting.

Causal links are independent of both orders. A cause can sit later in your plan than its consequence (a mystery often works that way), and Lokee does not complain. There is no chain or graph view of causes yet; they are listed on each event. Even so, writing them down is useful: when you cut an event in revision, opening it shows you which other events lose their cause.

Effects: what the event changed

This is where the plan meets the story bible. Effects also appear only when editing an existing event. The section explains itself: "What this event changed. Only what you list here is recorded."

To add effects to "The eastern wall riot":

1. In Add an effect on… (search an entity), type "Rowan" and pick him.
2. In the new row, choose what changes. The list has his Fields, his existing Relationships, and A new relationship….
3. For a field, choose how it changes (becomes, gains, loses or is cleared) and the value: Allegiance becomes Ashen Circle; Location becomes The Gilded Lantern.
4. For an existing relationship, choose whether it ends, begins, changes type to another type, or whether its lineage becomes Confirmed, Alleged, Unknown or Disputed: Member Of the Crown Watch ends.
5. For A new relationship…, answer With whom? and pick the type: Member Of The Ashen Circle.
6. Each row has a Still true now tick, on by default. Ticked, the change is also applied to the current card and current relationships. Untick it when the effect was later undone: a wound that healed, an alliance that has since broken.
7. Choose Record at: a world point, with the event's own points labelled "— the event begins" and "— the event ends". It defaults to where the event begins.
8. Press Record 4 effects (the count follows your rows).

Before writing anything, Lokee takes a restore point. Then each effect becomes an ordinary recorded change at that point, tagged with the event. If one fails, the others are still recorded and the message says how many could not be.

After that, the history reads in both directions. The event lists everything it caused under Effects. On Rowan's card, the ⟲ history of his Allegiance answers "Why is Allegiance this?" with Changed during The eastern wall riot and the point. To edit or delete a single effect, go to that entity's History tab (or its Relationships history): an effect is a recorded change like any other, as described in recording changes instead of overwriting.

Choosing the right point for an effect

A period gives you two natural moments. "The first grain winter" begins when Iseult starts rerouting grain and ends when the Undercroft is stocked. Her allegiance changes at the beginning; the Duke's treasury shrinks by the end. Record each effect where it belongs, using the event's begin or end point. If an effect only lands much later (an inheritance settled years after a death), create a separate world point for it rather than stretching the event.

Deleting events without losing history

Deleting an event with recorded effects opens a question: Delete the event, keep its effects or Delete its effects too. Keep them when the changes are still true of your story and only the event is going away (you are merging two events, or you no longer want the riot as its own entry). Delete them when the event was the reason for the changes and the changes should go with it.

Either way, the event's world points stay on the Timeline: they are part of your chronology, not of the event, and other records may sit on them.

An event with no recorded effects is deleted at once, with no confirmation. That is quick when you mean it and unpleasant when you clicked ✕ on the wrong row. If it happens, Restore Points in the sidebar can roll the vault back; Lokee takes one automatically before recording effects, and you can save one yourself before a big restructuring.

The riot, end to end: from a line in the outline to a changed card

Here is one event taken all the way through, on a vault with Rowan, the Crown Watch, the Ashen Circle and the Gilded Lantern as cards and no events yet.

1. Plan it. Story Events → + New event → Title "The eastern wall riot", Description "The Watch fires on the grain queue; Rowan walks away from the Watch." Save. Add "Before the book" the same way, then select the riot and press → so it nests under it.
2. Place it. ✎ on the riot → Place in world time → A single date → Create a new world point…, Point name "The eastern wall riot", no date. Save. On the Timeline, the new point sits at the end; Move earlier until it comes after "Rowan takes the Watch oath" and before "Meeting at the Gilded Lantern".
3. Link it. Links → Entity: Rowan, The Crown Watch. Chapter: none yet, because the reader only hears about the riot later; link the chapter where that happens once it exists.
4. Cause it. Causes / Consequences → Is a consequence of… → "The first grain winter".
5. Record what it changed. Effects → Add an effect on Rowan: Allegiance becomes Ashen Circle; Location becomes The Gilded Lantern; Member Of The Crown Watch ends; A new relationship… Member Of The Ashen Circle. All four with Still true now ticked, Record at the riot. Record 4 effects.
6. Check the card. Open Rowan. Allegiance shows "Ashen Circle" with "⟲ 1"; click it and Why is Allegiance this? says Changed during The eastern wall riot. Set Viewing to "Rowan takes the Watch oath" and Allegiance shows Ashen Circle marked earliest recorded, because nothing older is recorded yet. That marker is your prompt for the last step.
7. Record the before. On Rowan's card at Current, Record a change… beside Allegiance: at "Rowan takes the Watch oath", it becomes "Crown Watch". Now the oath shows Crown Watch, the riot shows Ashen Circle, and Current is unchanged.
8. Read World order. Back on Story Events, switch to World order. The riot sits after the grain winter, which is the order the cause link implies. If it did not, one of the two is misplaced on the Timeline.

Eight steps for the first event; two or three for every one after it, because the points and the cast already exist.

Common mistakes

Linking a character and expecting the card to change. The most common one, and the one the Effects hint is there to prevent. Links say who was there. Effects say what changed.

Recording an effect that was later undone with Still true now ticked. Rowan is wounded at the riot and healed by chapter 6. Tick Still true now and his card says wounded forever. Untick it, and record the healing as a separate change at a later point.

Stretching a period to cover its consequences. The grain winter does not last until the riot; it causes it. Keep the period to what it was, and record late consequences at their own points.

Deleting an event's world points to tidy up. The points stay when the event goes, on purpose: other records may sit on them. Delete a point only on the Timeline, and only after checking the History tabs that use it; a change whose point is gone shows "Its point can no longer be found" and the check flags it as Nowhere to sit.

Planning in chronological order because it feels tidy. Then the prologue goes to the top, act one's first scene is five rows down, and the plan no longer looks like the book. Plan in the order you think in; let World order be the chronology.

Never reading World order. It is the only view where two threads planned separately can be seen colliding. Open it once per act.

What Lokee doesn't do here

Causes and consequences are a list on each event, not a diagram. If you want to see the whole chain from the grain winter to the final chapter, you follow the links event by event, or draw it on a Board. Participation changes nothing, by design, so there is no "mark everyone who attended the battle as a veteran" shortcut; you record each effect.

Two smaller things to know. Export Markdown currently names the downloaded file plan-wydarzen.md in every language and writes linked entities, chapters and notes as their internal ids rather than their names, so rename the file and expect to tidy the links before sending it to anyone. And there is no Viewing control on the Story Events page itself; World order follows the timeline you are viewing elsewhere, or the canonical one.

In five minutes

The loop that keeps a plan and a story bible in step during drafting:

1. Plan freely. Add events in plan order with + New event, nest them with →, and do not worry about chronology yet.
2. Place what you know. For events whose position in the world matters, use Place in world time: a single date for moments, a period for anything with a duration.
3. Link the cast and the chapter, so that each event points at who is involved and where the reader sees it.
4. Record effects for turning points. Not every event changes something durable; the ones that do get Effects, and the first effect on a field gets a "before" recorded by hand.
5. Read World order. Check that the chronology you have built is the one you meant.
6. Run the check. The continuity check flags dates that disagree with your order, contradictions between effects and hand-recorded changes, and characters in two places at once.

If you are still deciding what the plot is, how to start worldbuilding for a novel argues for finding the one rule the plot bends around before building the event list. The help section on events and effects summarises the controls, and the Timeline section explains how events appear on the world chronology. For a broader view of keeping a book's facts straight, the story timeline software page is a reasonable overview.