Guide
Getting started
Your first project in Plotra, and a tour of the screen.
This guide is for people who write in Plotra. If you want to run your own copy, see Self-hosting.
Workspaces and projects
- A workspace is you, or you and your team. Its members can open and edit every project in it.
- A project is one story or one world: a novel, a series, a campaign.
When you sign up you create a workspace. Then create a project and pick its type (novel, web serial, tabletop RPG, screenplay and so on). The type decides which tools are switched on to begin with and what a new scene looks like. You can change all of it later in the project settings.
The screen
From left to right:
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| Ribbon | A strip of icons. Each one opens a view: graph, codex, outline, plot grid and so on. |
| Binder | The tree of everything in the project. See The vault and the binder. |
| Panes | The middle. Notes and views open here as tabs. You can split a pane right or down and drag tabs between panes. |
| Inspector | The right sidebar, about the note that is open: Outline, Properties, Links, Story, Comments, History. |
| Status bar | Word counts for the note and the project, whether your changes are saved, and who else is here. |
Write your first scene
- In the binder, create a folder or a chapter, then a scene inside it.
- Click the scene. It opens in the editor.
- Type. There is no save button: changes are saved as you write, and the status bar says so.
- Type
/on an empty line for the block menu (headings, lists, tables, callouts, images). Select text for the formatting toolbar.
Find anything
| Keys | What it does |
|---|---|
⌘O | Quick switcher: jump to a note by name |
⌘P | Command palette: every command, searchable |
⌘/ | The list of keyboard shortcuts, where you can change them |
⌘\ | Show or hide the binder |
⌘⇧\ | Show or hide the inspector |
On Windows and Linux, use Ctrl where this guide says ⌘.
Changed shortcuts are stored in your browser, so they don't follow you to another computer.