Adding High-Level Ideas
Before diving into structure, Writan lets you capture the foundational ideas that will shape your work — premise, themes, tone, and core tensions.
How It Works
High-level ideas are stored as data blocks on your top-level nodes (Book or Series level). These blocks can be:
- Freeform blocks — open-ended text with a custom label (e.g. “Premise”, “Theme”, “Central Question”)
- Typed blocks — structured entries for Characters, Locations, and Objects with dedicated fields
Adding Data Blocks
- Select a node in the document tree
- Open the Library panel (left sidebar, Data tab)
- Click the + button next to Characters, Locations, or Objects to add a typed block
- Fill in the fields — all text fields use bullet-point formatting for consistency
Alternatively, click a character, location, or object in the Library to open its detail modal for a fuller editing experience with tabs for Details, Notes, and Relations.
Block Types
| Type | Fields |
|---|---|
| Character | Name, role, description, motivation, secret, fear, aliases, relations |
| Location | Name, description, atmosphere, aliases, tags, relations |
| Object | Name, description, significance, aliases, tags, relations |
| Freeform | Label, content, tags |
Entity Relations
Typed blocks can be linked to each other via relations. For example, a character can have relations to other characters (“mentor”, “rival”) or locations (“lives at”, “avoids”). These connections build a network of information that provides richer context for AI generation.
Why This Matters
These high-level data blocks are not just notes — they feed into AI generation. When Writan generates or analyses content at lower levels of the tree, it composites data from parent nodes to understand the full context of your story.