User GuidesAdding High-Level Ideas

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 a Freeform Block

  1. Select your Book node in the document tree
  2. Open the Properties panel (right sidebar)
  3. Navigate to the Data tab
  4. Click + Freeform to add a new block
  5. Give it a label (e.g. “Premise”) and write your content

Block Types

TypeFields
CharacterName, role, description, motivation, secret, fear
LocationName, description, atmosphere
ObjectName, description, significance
FreeformLabel, content, tags

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.