# Story Bible and Worldbuilding Canvas for Novelists - Feldar > Keep characters, places, items, factions and plot beats as linked cards beside your manuscript. A story bible and character tracker Feldar's AI draws on. - URL: https://feldar.com/features/canvas - Site: [Home](https://feldar.com/) · [About](https://feldar.com/about) · [Blog](https://feldar.com/blog) · [Careers](https://feldar.com/careers) · [Pricing](https://feldar.com/pricing) · [Download](https://feldar.com/download) · [Changelog](https://feldar.com/changelog) - Machine index: [llms.txt](https://feldar.com/llms.txt) · [full site content](https://feldar.com/llms-full.txt) --- - [Home](https://feldar.com/) - [Features](https://feldar.com/features) - Canvas ### A story bible for novelists, on a Canvas beside the manuscript The Canvas is Feldar's worldbuilding board. Your characters, places, objects, factions, plot beats and notes sit on it as cards, joined by links that say how they relate. It lives in the same project as your chapters, and when Feldar helps you write, it reads from it. [Start writing free](https://feldar.com/login) [See all features](https://feldar.com/features) Building and arranging cards never uses credits. Free to start, no credit card. #### Why story bibles go stale, and how this one doesn't Most story bibles start well. A document of character sheets, a spreadsheet of dates, a wiki for the magic system. Then the drafting starts, the book changes under you, and the bible stops matching the manuscript. By chapter twenty you are searching your own draft to find out what colour a minor character's eyes were. The Canvas sits one click from the page you are writing, so updating a card is part of the work, not a chore for the weekend. And because Feldar draws on the cards whenever it suggests lines, plans scenes or answers in Chat, a current Canvas pays you back every day: the suggestions get the names, the places and the history right. #### Six kinds of card Add cards from the tray and drag them where they make sense to you: a family in one corner, the city in another, the plot running down the middle. Character ##### The people What they want, what they fear, how they talk, what they are hiding. A character tracker that stays next to the draft. Location ##### The places Rooms, towns, coastlines, ships. What it smells like, who goes there, what happened there before the book began. Plot ##### The beats The turns of the story, from inciting incident to the last reversal, linked so you can see what causes what. Item ##### The objects The letter, the ring, the stolen ledger. Things that change hands and carry meaning. Faction ##### The groups Families, guilds, courts, gangs, committees. Who belongs, who leads, what they want from the hero. Note ##### Everything else Rules of the world, a calendar, a glossary, the way magic costs something, the thing you must not forget in Part Three. #### Links that say how things relate Select a card, choose Connect, pick the other card and the kind of link. The link appears on the board with its label, so the shape of your world is visible at a glance. Link Use it for Example Related to Family, friendship, any tie that matters Nell Orrin is related to Kit Orrin, her brother Part of Membership, belonging, a room in a house Edwin Vasey is part of the Drainage Board Causes Cause and effect between beats and things The short weight causes Nell to open the old ledgers Opposes Rivals, enemies, competing interests The Drainage Board opposes the Wash Fen commoners The four relation types Connect offers. #### Grow the board with Branch and Develop ##### Branch: one new card that knows where it came from Select a card and choose Branch to create one context-aware card next to it: - Related character - Related location - Related item - Related faction - Next plot beat - Supporting note Branch from your detective for the sister she stopped calling, or from a plot beat for what it sets in motion. The new card is a starting point. Rewrite it, or delete it if it is wrong for your book. ##### Develop one card Deepen details adds specific, usable detail. Add pressure gives the card a conflict, cost or consequence that fits the board. Check continuity reviews it against the other cards so names, places and dates agree. Or type a custom instruction. ##### Develop several at once Select a group of cards for Synthesize, Find contradictions or Summarize set. Each writes one new note: a summary of the group, or a list of the places where your world disagrees with itself. #### Change the Canvas by talking about it Sometimes the world changes while you are drafting: a character gets a new name, a minor figure turns out to matter. You don't have to stop and find the card. Tell Chat, beside the page: "Add a card for the ferryman in chapter four" or "Kit is two years older than Nell, not younger." Chat answers with a proposed card, or a proposed update to an existing one, and nothing changes until you press Save card. Dismiss it and the Canvas stays as it was. #### How the Canvas feeds what Feldar writes When you use Continue from here, a rewrite, Generate scenes, Draft Page or Chat, Feldar gathers context from your project, and the Canvas is part of it. If a card says the Weighing House door sticks in wet weather, a suggested line can have Nell put her shoulder to it. Feldar picks what is relevant to each request. It is not a promise that every card is read every time, and it does not replace your own judgement about continuity. What it does mean is simple: the more of your world is on the Canvas, the less often you have to correct a suggestion that got it wrong. [More about how Feldar's AI works](https://feldar.com/ai-for-novelists). #### What to put on your Canvas first You don't need the whole world before you write. Start with eight cards: the person the book follows, the person who wants something from her, the place the book keeps returning to, the wider place around it, the object that carries the secret, the group with power, the first real turn of the plot, and one rule of the world. Add the rest as the draft asks for it. Here is that first Canvas for an invented novel, The Weighing House. It is 1911 in Hollin Staithe, a market town on the edge of the fens. Nell Orrin keeps the town's public scales after her father's stroke. The Drainage Board wants to cut a new channel through Wash Fen, the common land where the poorest families dig peat and set eel traps. And for years, someone has been weighing the commoners' loads short. Character Nell Orrin. Twenty. Has kept the scales since her father's stroke in March. Reads a beam to the quarter ounce. Wants the Weighing House to stay in the family. Afraid of what the old ledgers say. Says "near enough" when she means the opposite. Character Edwin Vasey. Drainage Board commissioner, fifty-two. Sincere about drainage: his younger brother died of the ague at six. Buys Wash Fen grazing rights one family at a time. Never raises his voice. Writes everything down. Location The Weighing House. One brick room on the staithe. The beam scale hangs from an oak crossbar; the ledgers live in a press by the stove. Smells of tar and wet sacking. The door sticks in damp weather, and everyone in town knows the shoulder-shove. Location Wash Fen. Common fen east of the town. Peat cuttings, eel traps, a drove road along the bank. Floods most winters. If the Board's cut goes through, it will be dry farmland within five years. Item The short half-hundredweight. A brass weight stamped with the crown. Four ounces light: the base has been filed and polished over. Used on every load the Board's clerk brings in. Faction The Drainage Board. Three commissioners, an engineer from Lincoln and a clerk, Mr Pryor, who smiles too early. Holds the key to the sluice at Denny's Gote. Plot Nell finds the weight is light. Testing it against the ironmonger's sealed pound weights, she finds it four ounces short, and the oldest entries for the Board's loads are in her father's hand. Note The town bell. One stroke for market. Two for the sluice at Denny's Gote opening. Three for a death. Nobody rings two by accident. Then link them. Edwin Vasey is part of the Drainage Board. The short half-hundredweight is part of the Weighing House and causes Nell's discovery. Wash Fen is related to the town bell. By the end of Part One, Nell opposes the Board. Eight cards and a handful of links give Feldar's suggestions something real to work from: two strokes of the bell mean water on the fen, Pryor is the one who brings the loads, and Nell never says "near enough" and means it. The same novel's seventh chapter is planned scene by scene on [the Scenes page](https://feldar.com/features/scenes). #### When another worldbuilding tool fits better The Canvas is built for a novel in progress: a board of cards next to the draft. It is not a map maker, a timeline or a public wiki. If you are building a world for a tabletop campaign, want to publish your setting for readers, or need drawn maps, a dedicated worldbuilding app such as World Anvil or LegendKeeper is made for that. If your plot lives on a visual timeline, look at [Plottr](https://feldar.com/compare/plottr). You can keep a deep world in one of those and put on the Canvas the parts the current book needs. #### Questions about the Canvas What is a story bible? A story bible is the reference you keep for your own book: who the characters are, where things happen, the rules of the world, what has already occurred. It keeps a long draft consistent. On the Canvas, each of those facts is a card, linked to the others. Can I use the Canvas as a character tracker? Yes. Give each character a card with what you need to remember, link family and rivals with Related to and Opposes, and update the card when the draft changes them. Develop's Check continuity can review a character card against the rest of the board. Does Feldar's AI read my Canvas? Yes. When Feldar writes or answers in Chat, it gathers context from your project, including relevant Canvas cards. Feldar does not train AI models on your cards or your manuscript. Does the Canvas use credits? Adding, writing, moving and linking cards never uses credits. Branch, Develop and Canvas changes from Chat use the AI, so they do. Can I bring in a story bible I already have? There is no direct import into cards. You can attach your document in Chat and ask it to propose cards from it. Each one arrives as a proposal you save or dismiss, so you stay in charge of what goes on the board. Is the Canvas good for fantasy and science fiction worldbuilding? For the parts a novel needs, yes: factions, places, objects, rules of magic or technology as Note cards. For maps, deep histories and settings you share with players, use a dedicated worldbuilding app alongside it. #### Keep reading [Feature Plan your novel scene by scene Outline a chapter, then write it or draft it.](https://feldar.com/features/scenes) [Free tool Character name generator Find a name, then give it a card.](https://feldar.com/tools/character-name-generator) [Product Novel writing software How Feldar keeps the whole book in view.](https://feldar.com/novel-writing-software)