Getting Started with Prosewell

Who is Prosewell For?

Prosewell was created specifically for writers of complex fiction, multi-book series, and immersive literary worlds. Whether you are drafting a standalone epic, managing an eight-book fantasy series, or outlining interconnected sci-fi timelines, Prosewell gives you a dedicated environment designed around the realities of long-form narrative craft.

Traditional word processors treat your manuscript as an isolated stream of text, forcing you to scatter worldbuilding notes, plot outlines, and character tracking across separate apps, spreadsheets, or wikis. Prosewell replaces this fragmented workflow with a unified studio where your worldbuilding database, story beat structure, and prose drafting surfaces stay connected in real time.

Compendium

Compendium is the foundational worldbuilding database of your Universe. Out of the box, Prosewell includes default entry types: Characters, Locations, Items, and Subplots.

In your studio settings, you can customize these default entry types, define default fields per type (such as adding Magic Affinity or Historical Faction to Characters), or create completely new custom types tailored to your literary universe.

Outline

Outline provides the structural plot backbone of your literary world. It mirrors your narrative hierarchy from top-level Series down through Books, Parts, Chapters, Scenes, and individual Moments.

Manuscript

Manuscript is the primary writing environment where your story's prose is penned. Organized at the Book level, it mirrors the structural hierarchy of your narrative down through Chapters and Scenes.

Putting It All Together

Inside a Universe, Compendium serves as a shared entity database across all your projects. As you plan and write, individual Compendium entries such as characters, locations, items, and subplots can be seamlessly linked directly to your Outline beats as well as within your Manuscript scenes. Entries can even link to one another for deep cross-referencing, such as referencing an item inside a subplot. While a single Outline spans multiple series and books, individual Manuscripts provide dedicated writing surfaces for each novel in your world: