Build your first character and place pages

1Step 1: Create a character or location page

InkSpine keeps your story bible inside the same project folder as your manuscript, organised into four entry kinds: Characters, Locations, Lore, and Factions (in Memoir and Non-fiction projects, this section is called Knowledge). You can create an entry either from the Worldbuilding screen or without leaving the sentence you are writing:

1. From inside a chapter: Highlight a character or place name you just typed. In the formatting bubble that appears above the selection, click Add to Worldbuilding ▾ and choose Add as Character, Add as Location, Add as Lore, or Add as Faction. InkSpine creates the entry immediately and underlines the name in your paragraph.
2. From the Worldbuilding screen: Click Worldbuilding in the left rail (⌘5 on macOS, Ctrl+5 on Windows and Linux), choose the Characters or Locations tab, and click + New.

2Step 2: Fill in details, aliases, relationships, and notes

Open an entry to edit its Details tab. Every field is stored as plain JSON and Markdown on disk and is never included when you export your manuscript for readers:

1. Summary and role: Give an entry a name, a short Description and tags. A character also has a free-text Role (for example protagonist or mentor), and characters and factions get a colour and a portrait or crest you can upload.
2. Aliases: Add any nicknames, titles, surnames, or maiden names a character or faction goes by in dialogue and narration. When a character is named Eleanor Vance and has the alias Nora, InkSpine recognises both Eleanor Vance and Nora across every chapter.
3. Relationships and memberships: Link characters to one another with a name and a relationship type (ally, rival, family), and connect them to factions.
4. Private notes and Media: Write private background notes in the Notes area of the Details tab, and use the Media tab to attach reference images from your drive. Media stays on this computer and is kept outside your saved versions.

3Step 3: Mention and open entries while you write

You do not need to insert special markup for InkSpine to track your cast and settings:

1. Automatic mentions: Simply type an entry's name or alias in your prose. InkSpine marks known names with a subtle underline as you write. If a character is referred to by a new nickname in a scene, select that word in the editor and click Link to entry in the selection bubble to add it to the character's Aliases list in one click.
2. Explicit @slug links: If you want a reference that updates its text automatically when you rename the entry later, type @ in the editor to open the autocomplete menu and pick the entry.
3. Peek without losing your place: Hover any underlined mention to see a compact preview card with the entry's type, name, the first line of its description, and how many chapters it appears in, or ⌘-click (Ctrl-click on Windows and Linux) to open the full entry card over your manuscript.

4Step 4: Track chapter appearances and what readers know

Because mentions are indexed across the whole project, each entry automatically builds a map of where it is used:

1. In the manuscript editor, open the right-hand inspector's References tab (⌥⌘3 on macOS, Ctrl+Alt+3 on Windows and Linux) to see every character, location, lore item, and faction mentioned in the open chapter. If a scene revolves around a character who is never named aloud, click + Link entry to attach them manually.
2. On any entry's page, switch to the Appears in tab to see every chapter across your book or series where that entry appears, with each chapter's status dot, number and title, and click any row to jump straight to that chapter.
3. Under What readers know, InkSpine lists the continuity facts you have marked as being about that entry in a chapter inspector's Continuity tab (⌥⌘2 → + About an entry), in story order so you can check what readers have already been told.

For more on organising a series bible, see our Worldbuilding template, InkSpine vs Plottr, and the feature overview.

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