A home for your fantasy world, and the book that lives in it

Fantasy readers will accept a strange world. They are less forgiving of a world that breaks its own rules. Brandon Sanderson's First Law is the best-known statement of this: an author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic. A hard magic system, with its costs and limits on the page, can resolve a climax. A soft one, kept mysterious, creates wonder and problems, but it shouldn't rescue the hero at the last minute.

The same discipline applies to everything you invent: names, titles, currencies, calendars, the ride from the capital to the border. A city spelled two ways, a duke who becomes a count by chapter twenty, a river that changes direction between books: attentive readers notice. Naming conventions help here. If one culture's names share sounds and another's don't, the reader knows where someone comes from before being told.

Fantasy also tends to run long and to come in series, so the notes you make for book one become the reference for book three. They have to live somewhere you will actually open while you write.

1. Start in the Research workspace. Tell Robin about the salt-mages of your coast. Robin asks questions back and proposes cards: a Story World entry for what the magic costs, a Places card for the harbour city, Glossary entries for each new term. You edit each card and choose Save; nothing enters Story Hub until you do.
2. Draft in the editor with Story Hub beside you. Add your invented names to the personal dictionary in proofreading settings, so the spelling check stops flagging Aelmarch and keeps flagging real typos.
3. After a long drafting stretch, run Draft from Book. Robin reads the book and proposes Story Hub updates — a new character, a changed title — and you review them before anything is applied.
4. Before the climax, ask Robin: "Every time salt-magic has been used so far, what did it cost?" Robin searches your chapters and tells you where to look. Whether the finale plays fair with that cost is your decision.
5. When book one is finished, on Pro create a series, write the series description Robin reads when you work on later books, and set the number of books you plan.

• There are no map-drawing tools. You upload a finished map image to Maps and pin your Places on it.
• It is not an automatic consistency checker. Robin answers the questions you ask about your world; it does not promise to catch every contradiction.
• Ideas you discuss with Robin stay in chat or in cards you choose to save. Robin never changes your manuscript on its own. In Edit Mode it can suggest changes, and nothing lands unless you keep it.
• Series tools, including creating a series and omnibus export, need Pro.