Chapter 33 · The Project
Collections
The binder holds your book in one order: the order it will be read in. Revision needs other orders at the same time. Every scene with Mara in it. Everything in act two. The chapters you have promised yourself you will fix. A collection is one of those other orders, laid over the same documents, and a document can sit in as many of them as you like while staying in exactly one place in the binder.
What a collection is
There are two kinds, and the difference matters more than anything else in this chapter.
| Kind | Labelled | Who decides what is in it |
|---|---|---|
| A list | List | You. You add documents one at a time and they stay until you remove them. |
| A saved search | Search | The search. Storskarvia works out the members fresh every time the project page loads, so a scene joins the moment it starts matching and leaves the moment it stops. |
Neither kind holds copies. A collection is a set of pointers into the binder, so editing a document from inside a collection edits the one and only document, and nothing you do to a collection moves, renames or deletes anything in the binder.
Finding them
Collections live on the project page, in step 2, Draft, directly under the binder and above the field for starting a new folder. The heading is Collections. With none made yet, the section says "No collections yet."
They are on the project page only. The editor does not show them, and because the project page belongs to the project's owner, a reviewer or editor you have shared a document with never sees your collections. Share Links, Reviewers, and Editors covers what a shared document does show.
Making one
The form under the heading has two text fields and an Add button. What you fill in decides the kind:
| You fill in | You get |
|---|---|
| The name field only | An empty list with that name. |
| The search field only | A saved search, named after the search itself. |
| Both | A saved search with the name you gave it. |
| Neither | Nothing. The form says "Give it a name, or something to search for". |
Anything typed in the search field makes a saved search, even if you meant to make a list and typed in the wrong box. Check which field you are in before pressing Add, because the kind is fixed once the collection exists.
A new collection appears at the bottom of the section, already open, and the form clears itself and says "Saved". A name can be up to 120 characters and a search up to 200; anything longer is cut off rather than refused. A project holds up to 100 collections. The 101st is refused with "A project holds 100 collections."
Lists: adding and removing
A new list reads "Empty. Add documents to it from the list above." At its foot is a menu that starts at Add a document… and lists every document in the binder by title. Choose one and it joins the list. Adding a document that is already there does nothing, which is harmless.
Documents appear in the order you added them. There is no way to drag them into a different order, so if order matters to a list, add its documents in that order.
Each document in a list has a Remove button. It takes the document out of the list and touches nothing else.
The menu is built when the page loads. A document you create afterwards will not be in it until you reload the project page.
Saved searches and how they match
A saved search reads each document's title and its text. The rules are short:
| You type | It means |
|---|---|
Mara | The document contains "mara" somewhere, in any capitalisation. |
Mara harbour | The document contains both words. Every word is required. |
"the night ferry" | That exact phrase, words in that order. |
Mara -flashback | Mara, and the word "flashback" nowhere in the document. |
-"first draft" | Any document that does not contain that phrase. |
There is no OR. A search for Mara Jonas finds scenes with both of them, never
scenes with either. For "either", make two collections.
Matching is on the letters, not on whole words, so Mara also finds
Marathon and Maraschino. If a short name catches too much, exclude the word
it keeps colliding with, as in Mara -marathon, or search for a phrase she appears in,
such as "Mara said". Spaces at the start or end of a quoted phrase are dropped, so
"Mara " searches for plain Mara.
A search needs at least one real word or phrase. A lone - or an empty pair of
quotes is refused with "A saved search needs something to search for."
A search takes up to 12 terms, counting excluded ones. More than that is refused with "A search takes up to 12 terms." rather than quietly ignoring the extras.
Reading a collection
Each collection is a row you click to open or close. The row shows its kind, its name, and a count such as 4 documents. Storskarvia remembers which collections you left open, per project, in this browser. A different browser starts with them all closed.
Inside, each document is a link to open it in the editor, followed by its folder name when it has one. A saved search shows the search under the heading, after the word Matching, and under each result a short passage from the text around the first match, so you can tell four scenes apart without opening them. The results come in binder order, not ranked by how often they match.
When it does not do what you expected
| What you see | Why, and what to do |
|---|---|
| "Nothing matches that yet." | No document contains every word you asked for. Try fewer words. Remember a phrase in quotes must match exactly. |
| A warning under the section that some documents keep no text on the server | Those documents have zero retention turned on, so Storskarvia purges its copy of their text after each sync and a saved search has nothing to read but the title. Such a document turns up only when its title matches, marked "Matched by title only". A search made only of excluded words leaves it out. To group them by what they say, put them in a list instead. Where Your Work Lives explains zero retention. |
| A document vanished from a collection | If it was deleted from the binder, it leaves every collection with it. If the collection is a search, the document stopped matching, most often because you rewrote the passage that matched. |
| "Could not add that", "Could not remove that" or "Could not delete that" | The request did not get through, usually a dropped connection. Nothing changed. Reload the page and try again. |
| "Could not load collections" | The section could not fetch your collections. They are not lost. Reload the page. |
Changing and deleting
Every collection has an Edit button at its foot. Press it and the foot turns into a small form: a list shows its name, and a saved search shows its name and its search. Change what you want and press Save, or Enter. Cancel or Esc closes the form and leaves the collection as it was.
A saved search re-answers its question as soon as you save, so the documents under it change with the search. A blank name is refused with "Give it a name", and a blank search with "A saved search needs something to search for." The kind cannot change: a list stays a list and a search stays a search. To swap one for the other, make a new collection and delete the old one.
Delete collection sits at the foot of every collection. It asks you to confirm, and reminds you that "The documents in it are not touched." That is true: deleting a collection removes the grouping and nothing else.
Collections belong to the project and live only in Storskarvia. They are not part of the documents saved to your own storage, so deleting the project deletes its collections with it, as Leaving, and Taking Everything With You lists. For pulling a whole project into one manuscript in binder order, see Compiling a Whole Project, next.
Updated 2026-10-05 · Full contents · Something wrong or missing?