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Lesson 2 of 9

Your first manuscript

Start a book, add chapters and scenes, and write your first words.

A manuscript is one book or story in your world: a novel, a novella or a short story. It's made of chapters, and chapters are made of scenes, which is where the writing happens. In this lesson you'll start a book, give it a chapter and write your first scene.

What you'll do

  • Start a manuscript.
  • Add a chapter and a scene.
  • Write, format and track a scene's status.

1. Start a manuscript

  1. In your world, open Manuscripts.
  2. Tap + (New manuscript).
  3. Give it a Title and choose its Form: novel, novella or short story.
  4. Leave Series empty for now. You can group books into a series later.
The New manuscript sheet, with a title

Your books are listed on the Manuscripts tab, grouped by series:

The Manuscripts tab, listing books with their covers and word counts

2. Add a chapter

Open your manuscript and tap Add the first chapter (or + Chapter once it has some).

  • Kind: leave it at Chapter for now. You'll meet prologues, interludes and epilogues in Shape your book.
  • Title: optional. Chapters are numbered for you by their place in the book, so a title is only for the name you'd like after the number: Chapter 1: The Salt Road.
  • Synopsis: optional. A line or two about what happens, for when you plan.
The New chapter sheet: kind, title, synopsis, goes after and act

Tap Add. The new chapter gets an empty scene, which opens in the editor straight away.

3. Write your first scene

Give the scene a title at the top, then write. There's no save button: Mythforge saves as you type, so closing the app or switching scenes never loses anything.

A scene in the editor: its chapter above, title, status and prose
The editor stays quiet: your words, a title and a toolbar.

The toolbar above the keyboard has bold, italics, dialogue quotes, an em dash and more. Formatting is saved as markdown, so this:

"We walk at dawn," she said. **No one** follows the Choir's road _twice_.

is exactly what's stored for a line with a bold "No one" and an italic "twice".

On a laptop, the book's outline sits beside the editor, so you can move from scene to scene without losing your place. The open scene is a tab, and the button at the top right opens a second document beside it:

A scene on a wide window, with the manuscript's outline beside it

4. Set the scene's status

Every scene has a status, shown as a coloured dot wherever the scene is listed:

Status Use it for
Outline Planned, with a synopsis or notes but no prose.
Draft Written, first pass.
Revised Reworked at least once.
Final Done.

Tap … (Scene details) to change it. The same sheet has the scene's word count, its planning fields, snapshots, comments and more, which you'll use later in the course.

Scene details: status, word count, synopsis, point of view, location and when

5. Add more scenes

Back on the manuscript, open a chapter and tap Add scene. Short scenes are easier to move around later, so it's worth starting a new one whenever the place, time or point of view changes.

Try it

Next

Your story needs people and places. Next: Sketch your lorebook.

Go deeper: Writing a manuscript · The editor · Focus and typewriter modes · Import a manuscript