Getting started

Story Builder is where you plan a world and write the story set in it, in one place, so the notes and the manuscript never drift apart.

This page is the shortest path from an empty account to a chapter you are actually writing.

The shape of things

Two things, and it is worth knowing which is which before you start:

• A project is a book, a series or a world — whatever you would think of as one body of work. Everything you create lives inside a project, and a project belongs to whoever created it.
• Modules are the parts of a project: chapters, characters, maps, a timeline, and so on. You turn on the ones you need and the rest stay out of your way.

One account can hold two projects. Anyone you invite works inside a project you own, and what they write there stays with the project — which is the part worth knowing before you share one.

Your first half hour

1. Make a project. Give it a name and pick the modules you expect to use. Nothing is permanent — turning a module on later brings it back with whatever was in it.
2. Write something before you plan anything. Open the Chapters module and start a chapter. The editor saves as you type; there is no save button to look for.
3. Let the world grow out of the writing. When you name a character in a paragraph, add them in the Characters module. A record you created because you needed it is worth ten you created because a form existed.
4. Connect two things. Open a character and add a relation to another character or a place. Relations are what turn a list of records into a world you can navigate.

Where to go next

• Chapters — the editor, drafts and revisions.
• Modules — what each one is for, and how to turn them on.
• Characters — the record type most projects lean on hardest.

If you are joining somebody else's project rather than starting your own, read permissions first — it explains what your role lets you do, and who owns what you write there.