Deckle doesn't have a dedicated POV field or a dedicated revision-stage field. It has Labels, a single flexible system flexible enough to cover both, one at a time, on any chapter or scene.
What You'll Need
- A sense of what you actually want to track: POV character, revision stage, tone, subplot, or something else. Since a document can only carry one label, decide which single dimension matters most before you start.
Step-by-Step
- Open the Metadata Manager: click the pencil icon next to the Status dropdown in the Inspector, then switch to the Labels tab.
- Create one label per value you want to track. For POV tracking, that means one label per POV character (e.g., "POV: Elena," "POV: Marcus"), each with its own color so they're distinguishable at a glance. For revision tracking, it might be "Needs Rewrite," "Revised," "Polished."
- Assign labels scene by scene from the Inspector's Label dropdown, or directly from either Outliner view, whichever you're already working in.
- Switch to the Outliner and filter by label to isolate everything tagged with one value, every Elena-POV scene, or every scene still marked "Needs Rewrite," without scrolling past everything else.
- Sort the Outliner's list view by the Label column if you want an at-a-glance overview of how your labels are distributed across the whole manuscript, rather than filtering down to just one at a time.
Common Mistakes
- Trying to track two things at once with Label alone. A document only holds one label. If you need both POV and revision stage tracked simultaneously, put one on Label and the other on Status, since they're independent fields.
- Expecting a dedicated POV feature to exist somewhere else. It doesn't. Labels is the mechanism, by design, and it's exactly what Deckle's own onboarding tour uses to demonstrate POV tracking.
- Creating near-duplicate labels by accident. The Metadata Manager blocks exact duplicate names, but similar names ("POV Elena" vs "POV: Elena") will still both exist separately. Decide on a naming convention before creating more than a couple.
- Looking for a label filter in Search. It isn't there. Label filtering lives in the Outliner, not the Find/Replace search panel.
FAQ
What's the best way to name POV labels so they're easy to scan?
A consistent prefix like "POV: [Name]" keeps them grouped together alphabetically in the Label list and instantly recognizable wherever they appear.
Can I see all my POV labels' scene counts at once?
The Metadata Manager shows how many documents use each label, giving you a quick count per POV character without opening the Outliner.
If I rename a label later, do all the scenes using it update automatically?
Yes, renaming or recoloring a label in the Metadata Manager updates it everywhere it's used, since every document just references the label by its ID.