Moodboard and visual board: giving the story a face

A moodboard (or visual board) is the set of visual references for a story: faces, places, objects, moods. It helps an editor verify that the descriptions are coherent, and an author keep the vision unified while writing. This guide explains the method and how ChronoEditor applies it. It complements narrative analysis and plot editor and timeline.

What a narrative moodboard is for

A manuscript lives on visual details: what a house looks like, what face a character has, what light a scene has. If these details change between chapters, the reader perceives it as an inconsistency. The moodboard makes those details explicit and consultable, instead of leaving them scattered in memory.

• Characters: faces, ages, recurring clothing.
• Places: interior and exterior settings, lights, seasons.
• Objects: elements that return in the plot.
• Mood: the overall visual tone of the story.

Real or generated images

In ChronoEditor: the Images pane offers two routes. The random mode draws real photos from several sources (for variety and creative licence); the prompt mode generates images with the AI by describing subject and style. Images are reduced to a single lightweight version (up to 1600 px), so the board stays fast.

Captions, notes, tags and stickers

Images are of no use if they are not read. Every tile has a caption and a note always visible and editable, plus tags for retrieval. The text stickers (coloured notes) group the references by theme: «PROTAGONISTS», «SETTINGS», «OBJECTS». Wheel zoom centres the point under the cursor and the tiles are arranged freely, with a stacking order.

Rule of thumb: if a detail influences a scene, it must have a tile or a caption. Otherwise it remains an impression.

Several moodboards for one project

A project can have several boards (e.g. one per setting, one for the characters) with distinct names and quick switching. Each board has its own images, its own stickers and its own overall caption.

AI story from the moodboard

The most interesting step: ChronoEditor can read the images and build a chapter story from the board. The process runs in stages: visual reading of every image (one call per image, so that texts and subjects are not confused), analysis of the material (mood, genres, themes, cast with motivated relationships) and then chapter prose (one call per chapter, with continuity). The cost is the story item (30 credits by default). From the preview you can create a new file in the project with the story, ready for analysis.

The method in practice

1. Gather 8–15 meaningful images, not too many.
2. Annotate every tile with a caption and a note; use the tags by category.
3. Group with the stickers (protagonists, settings, objects, mood).
4. Compare the board with the text: do the details match?
5. For designing → AI story from the board, then analysis of the generated file.

Common mistakes

• Board too full: it loses its function; relevance counts, not quantity.
• Images without a caption: useless at the moment of revision.
• Trusting the generated face: it is a reference, not a constraint; verify it against the text.
• Ignoring the licence: real photos have different licences; check the source.
• Treating the AI story as definitive: it is a base to be reworked.

In summary

The moodboard is the visual memory of the story: images with captions, notes and stickers, on one or more boards. ChronoEditor adds visual reading and the AI story to it, turning the references into a narrative draft to be analysed.