Getting Started

Getting started

A first walk through Vellerune — your first world, your first character, your first scene.

Welcome

Vellerune organizes everything you write inside a world. A world is the home for your characters, locations, magic systems, storylines, glossary, and notes — and for any number of books that share them.

This guide walks you from a blank slate to your first scene in just a few minutes.

Create your first world

From the dashboard, click New World in the top-right and give it a name.

On macOS: Vellerune supports iCloud Drive, so the same worlds can stay in sync across your Macs. Turn it on from Settings → iCloud when you’re ready.

Add a character

Click your new world to open it. In the world sidebar, choose Characters, then click the + at the top of the panel to add one.

The default character template gives you seven fields to start with: Portrait, Aliases, Role, Appearance, Personality, Backstory, and Motivations & Goals. Every field is optional.

If your story wants a different shape, you can reshape the template:

• Add a field — scroll to the bottom and click Add Field.
• Edit or change a field’s type — click the pencil icon next to a field’s label.
• Reorder — use the up and down arrow buttons next to a field.

When the layout looks right, click Save as Template at the bottom. Every new character after that will start from your template.

Start your first book

From the world sidebar, choose Books, then click New Book in the top-right. Give it a title — subtitle, series, volume, genre, and summary can all be filled in later.

A new book comes with Draft 1, a first chapter, and a first scene already in place. Click into the scene and start writing — Vellerune saves as you go.

When you want more structure, add chapters and scenes from the tree on the left. Acts can be added above chapters as dividers, if you like to mark them.

Drafts let you keep the version you submitted to an agent or beta reader preserved while you continue revising. When you’re ready, you can spin up a new draft as an empty slate or as a copy of an existing one — and switch between them at any time from the dropdown above the chapter tree.

Shortcuts you’ll use first

Focus mode (the distraction-free fullscreen view) is entered from the focus icon in the editor toolbar; press Esc to leave it.