PlacesWhere are we?

How Falcontext finds your places

On the Edit tab, the Places section has its own button: Scan places. It lists the names your book uses after a word that says where (“in”, “into”, “through”, “at the”, “reached”) and someone’s own place (“Mara’s flat”), each found at least twice. Your tracked characters are never on it, and weaker hints (“to Mara”, a sentence starting “In Shen”) only count for a name also found after a surer word.

Under Places found, tick the real ones. A place it missed? Type it in.

Which chapters each place is in

Every place you tick gets a row, with a dot for each chapter that names it. Click a place to step through where it’s mentioned in your text.

Where each chapter is set

Under the rows, Where each chapter is set gives each chapter its place: one its heading names (“Chapter 2: Prolly Town”), or else the one the story puts it in. A place “in”, “at” or “into the…” counts most; one they’re going “to” or came “from” doesn’t count, and one they “had” been in, or only see from afar (“he saw the mountains looming”), counts for less: that isn’t where they are now. What’s said in dialogue counts for little: characters talk about places they aren’t in, but a chapter that’s nearly all talk (“You’re in Drimmad”) still gets its place. When no place is clearly ahead, it looks at where the last chapter ended: if this chapter still mentions that place and nothing else is ahead of it, it shows it marked (as before?), a guess, so you can tell it from a place the chapter makes clear. Still not clear? Then the scenery: a chapter full of sand and dunes that mentions one desert place is probably set there, and one full of stone and peaks in the mountains it mentions. That guess is marked (by the scenery?). A place’s landscape comes from its name (“Metal Mountains”) or from the chapters clearly set there. Otherwise it says no clear place rather than guess.

When you know better

Every chapter in Where each chapter is set has a small change menu. Pick the place (or No place) and the chapter says it, marked (yours). Your answer always wins, and the guesses for the chapters after it go from there. Falcontext’s answer in the same menu gives the chapter back.

Under Inside and other names, each place has two more settings:

• Inside: the place it’s in, such as Hinan in the Desolation, or Baker Street in London. Where a chapter names a few places in the same region but none clearly, they add up to the region, and the most specific place that’s clearly ahead wins. A place that everything is inside (the whole world of your book) never wins this way.
• Also called: other names for it, with commas, such as “the Hall” for Baskerville Hall. Each counts as the place, so give only names that always mean it: not “home” when your book has more than one home.

All of it is kept with your manuscript, and synced with it if you sync.

A place spelled two ways

Harrogate on page 12, Harrowgate everywhere else? Name spelling slips catches places as well as people.

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