--- title: "Chapters & structure" description: "Build your novel's shape in Galley: chapters, parts, drag-to-reorder, synopses, chapter stages, front and back matter, and the 30-day bin." source: https://usegalley.com/docs/structure --- # Chapters & structure In a word processor a "chapter" is just a big heading you typed and hoped stayed put. In Galley chapters are real objects: you pick them up, rename them, reorder them, group them, and mark how finished each one is. The shape of your book is something you hold, not something you fake with formatting. *The Galley chapter sidebar showing front matter, two parts of chapters with draft, revised and final stages, back matter, and add-chapter, add-part and bin buttons.* The chapter sidebar: front matter, the main run of parts and chapters, back matter, and the add-chapter, add-part and bin buttons at the bottom. ## The sidebar The left rail lists everything in the book, top to bottom, in reading order. It's split into three bands that appear as you need them: - **Front matter**: Title page, copyright, dedication, and the like. Collapsible. - **Chapters**: The main run: your parts and chapters, drag-to-reorder. - **Back matter**: About the author, acknowledgements, glossary, references. Collapsible. Each chapter row shows its title, its word count, and its stage chip. Hover a row for its controls: a drag handle, a to rename (or just click the title), and a menu for the rest. ## Adding and arranging chapters At the bottom of the sidebar: **Add chapter** **Part** **Add prologue or epilogue** - **Add a chapter** with **Add chapter**. It lands at the end of the main run, named "Chapter N", ready to rename. - **Reorder** by dragging the handle. Everything renumbers itself. - **Rename** by clicking the title or the pencil. - **Delete** from the menu. It goes to the bin, not the void (see below). When the book exports, each chapter becomes a proper chapter opening: the title dropped a third of the way down a fresh page, the way novels do it. Exactly how that opening looks is your call, over in [Book design](https://usegalley.com/docs/book-design). ## Prologues, epilogues and interludes Use **Add prologue or epilogue** at the bottom of the sidebar. The book gives these no chapter number. A prologue keeps the word "Prologue" wherever a chapter title would print, including in the contents, and your first chapter stays Chapter One. An interlude works the same way, anywhere in the book. They count as manuscript, so the consistency sweep, overused words, the pacing map and your word count all read them. Put an epilogue in the back matter instead and it drops out of the contents page and out of every check. Delivery readiness notes it if the prologue is not first or the epilogue is not last. It does not block the export. ## Parts If your book is divided into larger sections, add a **Part** to group the chapters under it. Drag chapters into a part's band and they belong to it; collapse the part in the sidebar to tidy the list while you work on something else. Parts get their own pages when the book prints and appear in the table of contents. Your chapter numbers keep counting straight through them, so Part Two doesn't restart at Chapter One. 💡 A part is really just a special chapter with a `type` of "part". That's why it lives in the same list and drags around the same way. You don't need to know that to use it, but it explains why there's no separate "parts" screen to hunt for. ## Synopses: a one-line reminder per chapter You can pin a single line to any chapter, a note to yourself about what happens in it ("Renn finds the letter; the tide turns"). It's just for you and never appears in the book. It's there so you can glance down the list and remember the shape of the whole thing without opening every chapter. Add or edit it from the chapter's menu. ## Stages: how finished a chapter is Every chapter carries a stage chip. Click it to move it along as the work matures: **Draft / Revised / Final** This isn't decoration. Your [dashboard](https://usegalley.com/docs/your-first-book) reads these chips across the whole book and draws a progress bar from them, so you can see at a glance how close the manuscript is to done. A book that's all **Final** chips is a book ready to export. ## Front & back matter Every book has a handful of pages that aren't the story: the title and copyright pages at the front, the "about the author" and acknowledgements at the back. Galley calls these *front and back matter*. You manage them under **Metadata** → **Front & back matter**. Add or remove them whenever; Galley drops each into the spot where it conventionally belongs. Several build themselves: - The **table of contents** fills itself in from your chapters and parts. - The **copyright page** can write its own standard wording from the book's details. See [Publishing](https://usegalley.com/docs/publishing). - The **glossary** and **references** pages assemble from the terms you mark as you write. See [the story bible](https://usegalley.com/docs/the-story-bible). ## The bin Deleting a chapter doesn't destroy it. It drops into the **bin** at the bottom of the sidebar and waits there for **30 days**, so a mis-click is a two-second undo, not a disaster. Restore it with any time inside that window; after 30 days it's cleared for good. The same net covers deleted *books* from the dashboard. 🧭 You won't find a separate "outline" feature with headings and sub-headings, and that's on purpose. In a novel the chapters *are* the outline. Everything you'd cram into an outline lives in the chapter list, the one-line synopses, and the [story bible](https://usegalley.com/docs/the-story-bible) instead. [PreviousThe editor](https://usegalley.com/docs/the-editor) [NextShortcuts & the palette](https://usegalley.com/docs/shortcuts)