The words the Organizer uses, one line each. They are working terms: use them as far as they help, and rename anything in your own copy.

The idea

Term What it means here
Premise The book in one sentence: a person, the pressure on them, and what it puts at risk.
Genre promise What a reader who picks up this kind of book expects to feel, and expects the ending to deliver.
Theme question The question the book keeps asking, written as a question. The ending can answer it, complicate it or refuse it.
Pressure An outside force that finds an inside fault. The force is what happens to the protagonist; the fault is why it hurts.
Story question The question a reader carries from the opening to the climax, in one sentence.

Idea Bank stages

Stage What it means here
Spark Caught: a line, an image or a question.
Sketched The premise is written.
Tested Checked against the premise questions.
Chosen The one you are writing.
Shelved Kept for later.

People

Term What it means here
Want What a character is after, and would say so if asked.
Need What would change them, which they usually cannot see yet.
The lie A belief the character takes to be true that keeps them from what they need.
Ghost and wound The ghost is what happened to them; the wound is the damage it left.
Weight For secondary characters: promote (give them more of the book), keep or dim (reduce them to a line).

Kinds of arc

Arc Where the character's belief ends
Change The lie given up; the truth lets them act.
Fall The lie kept, and a worse one taken up.
Corruption A truth once lived by, traded for a lie.
Disillusionment The lie given up for a bleak truth.
Steadfast A true belief kept while the world around them changes.
Partial Part of the way, or in one relationship only.
Failed The need reached for, too late or not far enough.
None The belief does not move, which suits most secondary characters.

Plot and scenes

Term What it means here
Inciting incident The event that disturbs the protagonist's ordinary life and starts the story.
Commitment The protagonist chooses to go after something, and the way back closes.
Midpoint A turn that changes what the protagonist is after, or what they understand about it.
Crisis A choice between two options, each with a cost.
Climax The protagonist acts on that choice, and the story question is answered.
Resolution What the world looks like afterward, and what the change has cost.
Thread A subplot or line of story beside the main plot. It earns its place when it changes the main plot's course.
What changes What is true at the end of a scene that was not true at its start. A scene where nothing changes is usually a candidate for summary or cutting.
Speed Scene: moment by moment. Half-scene: a scene compressed, with a line or two of dialogue. Summary: time covered quickly in narration.
Planted and paid Anything the book gives emphasis to is a promise. It is planted when the reader first meets it and paid when it comes to matter.
Beat One step in the shape of the book. The Organizer starts with the six landmarks; rename or replace them with any structure you use.
Placed and open A beat is placed when at least one scene carries it, and open until then.
Note A thought about the book that belongs nowhere else yet: a fragment, a line of dialogue, an image or a question to yourself. Research findings go in Research.

World

Term What it means here
Presses by How a place presses on the protagonist: it constrains, exposes or tempts.
Constrains A place limits what someone can do or where they can go.
Exposes A place brings out what someone would prefer to keep hidden.
Tempts A place offers something a character should refuse.
Rule Anything the world enforces that the plot depends on: a law, a custom, a physical fact, a magic system. Every rule has a cost and someone who pays it.
Used, bent, notes only What you did with a research finding: used it as found, changed it for the story on purpose, or kept it out of the book.

Working

Term What it means here
Round A finite stretch of work with a finish line, a few decision dates and an end. Five weeks is a good default.
Finish line What the round will produce, written so someone else could check it, then made one size smaller.
Season The kind of time you are in: drafting, intake (reading and gathering), rest or returning.
Door note A few lines left at the end of a session: where you stopped, what comes next and what you were unsure of.
Revision debt A problem you noticed while drafting and logged for later, so you could keep going. Cheap repairs take twenty minutes; expensive ones touch several scenes or the shape of the book.
Placeholder A bracket in the manuscript, such as [check: the sister's name] or [scene: the funeral], marking something to come back to. Search for the opening bracket to find them all.
Handoff A note written at the end of a round, so that you could open the book in six months and follow it in half an hour.