Your First Project
Everything in Scriptorium happens inside a project — one project per book, series, or piece of work.
Create a project
Section titled “Create a project”- On the home screen, click New Project.
- Give it a name. You can rename it at any time.
- The project opens with two default folders ready to go: Manuscript (your actual writing) and Plot/Bible (your world-building material).
The workspace at a glance
Section titled “The workspace at a glance”A project window has three main areas:
- Sidebar (left) — the tree of everything in your project. Create, rename, reorder, and nest items here.
- Editor (center) — whatever you have open: a manuscript, a note, a character sheet, a timeline…
- Tools panel (right) — utilities like Version History, Goals, the Pomodoro timer, and Trash.
What can live in a project
Section titled “What can live in a project”The sidebar holds different kinds of items — Scriptorium calls them attachments:
| Type | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Folder | Grouping and organizing anything else |
| Manuscript | Your actual prose — chapters, scenes, articles |
| Entity | A story element: character, location, event, item… |
| Notes | Free-form notes with cross-references to anything else |
| Table | A spreadsheet-style view of your entities (also viewable as Kanban cards) |
| Mindmap | A visual canvas for connecting ideas |
| Timeline | Events and entities on a zoomable time axis |
| Map | A custom map image with interactive pins |
| File | Any external file you want to keep with the project |
You can nest items up to four levels deep — for example Manuscript → Act → Chapter → Scene.
Narrative levels
Section titled “Narrative levels”Each project has configurable narrative settings: how deep your manuscript hierarchy goes and what each level is called. A novelist might use Act / Chapter / Scene, while an academic might prefer Part / Section. Change these in Project Settings → Narrative.
Organizing the sidebar
Section titled “Organizing the sidebar”- Drag and drop items to reorder or move them into folders.
- Recently opened items appear in a Recents list so you can jump back to where you were.
- Right-click (or use the item’s action menu) to rename, export, or delete.
Project settings
Section titled “Project settings”Open Project Settings to configure:
- Narrative — hierarchy depth and level names
- Bible — your entity templates (character, location, event…)
- Relationships — relationship types between items
- Calendar — the calendar system your story uses, including custom fantasy calendars
- AI Plugins — optional on-device AI tools
- Language — used for grammar checking and export hyphenation
Next steps
Section titled “Next steps”- Start writing in the manuscript editor
- Set up characters and locations
- Understand where your data lives