Optional world notes, connected to canon
Maps, factions, histories, and rules get a place in Asten, and none of them has to exist before you write.
In short
Asten’s world tools are an optional wall (loose cards for scraps), an atlas (a rough map for pinning places), and a dossier (entries grouped by kind). Entries can be places, cultures, systems, creatures, items, questions, or fragments, and move from spark to sketched to settled. Settling an entry can mint a confirmed fact.
The wall
Pin a scrap, a question, a fragment of dialogue. Loose cards, no filing required.
The atlas
A rough map for pinning places. Good enough to remember that Veld is east of the reef.
The dossier
Everything grouped by kind: places, cultures, systems, creatures, items, questions, fragments.
Spark → sketched → settled
Ideas mature at your pace. Only settled entries become canon.
Example: world entries by status
Below the sand
The atlas
Veld sits east of the reef, two days’ sail from the capital. Pinned on a rough map.
Do I have to build the world first?
No. George R. R. Martin has described two kinds of writers: architects, who plan the house before building, and gardeners, who plant and see what grows. Asten doesn’t rank them. An architect can fill the dossier before chapter one. A gardener can write twenty chapters and settle the harbor at Veld afterwards.
There is a real risk on the architect side: the world can become a beautiful way to avoid writing the book. That’s why every world tool in Asten is optional and lives one click away from the page, not in front of it. More in Do you need a story bible?
How does the world connect to canon?
A world entry starts as a spark. You sketch it as it grows. When you settle it, Asten can mint a confirmed fact, and from then on the canon checks treat it as true. Sparks and sketches never raise errors; they’re allowed to be wrong.
About world
Is Asten a worldbuilding app?
Does Asten’s atlas check travel times?
Keep reading
Try the pre-alpha
Open the workbench in your browser on a sample novel, or download release 0.0.1b for Windows or Linux.