The Atlas, in the World part of the menu, puts your book on a map: a world made for you, a map you drew or bought, or the real Earth. This page covers all three, how places on the map become pages, how long journeys take, and how to follow your story from place to place.
Choose where your story happens
The first time you open the Atlas it asks Where does your story happen? and offers three kinds of map:
- Make a world, for a world of your own. MechaSquid raises the land, lets rain and rivers shape it, and then settles it with countries, towns and roads, each with a made-up name.
- Upload your map, for a map you drew by hand, made in a map maker, or an old historical one.
- Set on Earth, for a book set in a real place, today or in the past.
Every kind holds your book the same way: places are pages, scenes are set in them, and you can see where each character was last seen. A book can have several maps. Once you have one, + Map at the top brings the same choice back, and each map gets a tab.
Make a world
Choose a planet and a size, then a starting point. A small world, the default, is about four tenths of Earth, so one map spans several climates; an Earth-sized one holds a belt or two. A map is Standard (1,600 × 2,400 km), Large or Continent, upright or on its side.
The panel on the right has two ways of working:
- Simple walks you through it. Another land rolls a new shape until you like one, and Settle it adds the peoples, with countries, towns and roads. Each country's names are made up to sound like a language ("German-inspired", "Irish-inspired"); they sound like it, but are not words of it.
- All controls has every control of the map engine: climate, landforms you draw, rivers and lakes, the brush (B), anomalies such as a warm valley, and every setting of the countries.
Everything is saved as you go; the panel says Saved. To rename the map, type over its name at the top of the panel.
Keep the world
When the land is right, choose Keep this world. It asks first, because it cannot be undone: the coasts, mountains, rivers and climate are fixed for good. In return the map opens at once from then on, your AI assistant can read it, and you can make pages from it and set scenes on it. Names, towns, roads and borders stay yours to change after keeping.
Upload your own map
Choose Upload your map, then Choose the picture…: a PNG, JPEG or WebP picture of up to 25 MB. The picture is kept exactly as you uploaded it. While MechaSquid gets it ready to zoom into, it shows as it is; then you can zoom in as far as the picture goes.
Each place you put on the map is a pin, and each pin is a place page:
- + (or N, or a double-click on the spot) puts a place there, offering the place pages you already have first.
- In the book, not on this map yet lists your place pages that have no pin, the ones used in most scenes first. Drag one onto the map, or click it and then its spot.
- Drag a pin to move it. Click it for its card: open its page, choose its mark and colour, its legs, Take off this map.
- ⌘Z on a Mac, Ctrl+Z on Windows and Linux, undoes the last pin you put on, moved or took off.
The map of beside the map's name makes it the map of a place: a city plan, a castle, a ship. That place's pin on your other maps then opens this one.
Read the places lettered on your map
When you upload, Read the places on this map is ticked: MechaSquid reads the names lettered on the picture. You can also start it later from the Places panel. It uses part of your monthly AI allowance.
The list it makes is grouped by kind, with names you already have a page for first. Countries, cities and towns start ticked. Type over a name it read wrong, then Make pages: each ticked name becomes a place page pinned where it is written. A name that matches a page you have is pinned, never made twice. Names with no page stay on the map as faint labels; click one to make its page there.
Set the scale
Without a scale, your own map can say where things are but not how far apart. In the Places panel, choose Set the scale, click two points on the picture, and say how far apart they are. From then on the map has a scale bar, the ruler (M) measures, and journeys get distances and days.
Pin your map to Earth
If your map shows a real place, Pin to Earth lays it over the real land. Click the same spot on both maps (a church, a bridge, a river mouth) until they agree; from three points it lies over Earth, and the Earth tab shows it under Your maps on Earth, where you can show or hide it and set how much land shows through. Places pinned on your map can then go on Earth too, and the other way round.
Set your book on Earth
Choose Set on Earth for a book in a real place. The default look, Timeless, shows land, water and relief and nothing modern, so it suits any century. Today's map lays as much of today's names, borders, towns and roads over it as you want. Today is a quiet modern map instead.
A place's spot on Earth belongs to its page, so it is the same wherever it shows.
Find your places on Earth
- Find them on Earth… looks up every place in your book by its name. The ones it is sure of are ticked; check the rest, and they go on the map together. Places you invented simply stay off.
- Find a place, at the top, searches by name as you type, or by address when you press Enter. Go there, then add it to the book as a new place page, or put one of your pages there.
- A place page has Find on Earth too.
Distances on Earth are real: the ruler (M) measures along the curve of the Earth.
Look at the past and old maps
With Timeless, The past takes a year (a minus sign for BC) and shows borders, towns and roads as they were, from OpenHistoricalMap. Volunteers map it, so parts of the world may be empty for a year, and the map says so. The year belongs to the map only: your scenes keep no dates.
Old maps of this area lists old maps from libraries that cover what is on screen. Click one to lay it over the land, and set how much shows through. They are shown in the Atlas only, credited, and never exported.
See what's here
Press I and click a spot, or choose What's here on a pin's card. It lists Wikipedia articles about things nearby and pictures taken nearby on Wikimedia Commons, with Capture an idea here for an idea tied to that spot.
Make pages from the map
On a kept world, click a town, a river, a range or any name for its card: what it is and what it is like there. Then:
- Make a page turns it into a place page, with what the map knows as its first paragraph, "located in" relationships to its province and country, and a small map on the page.
- Use your page appears when the book already has a page of that name; Use a page you have… lets you pick another. Your page is put there instead of a new one.
Renaming the page renames the place on the map, and the other way round. Type over a name on the map to make it yours; until then it is only a suggestion. In your scenes lists names from the map your text already uses that have no page yet, and No longer on the map lists pages whose place a later change took away.
The card also has Capture an idea, which opens the idea box with the map around that spot, and Mood pictures, which finds photographs and paintings of real places like it.
Legs between places
A leg is a way from one place to another. On a place's card, choose A leg to…, pick the other place, and say how long it takes or how far it is: either is enough. You can add what is Underfoot, that it is Part of a named road, that it goes One way only, and a Note ("through the swamp, closed in winter"). What follows shows the time by every way of travelling. Two places can have several legs, by land and by sea. Legs are drawn as lines between pins on your own maps and on Earth.
Distances and ways of travelling
Travel and distances, in Settings, sets your book's unit and its ways of travelling. The unit is kilometres, miles, leagues, or your own word. Switching between kilometres, miles and leagues offers to convert every distance you gave; legs you gave as a time stay as they are. New books started in the US or the UK start in miles.
Ways of travelling lists how people get about (on foot, on horseback, by ship) with how far each goes in a day. A day is a day of steady travel on a good road. A one-off, such as a dragon, needs no row: name it on the leg itself.
Distances come from the legs you stated first. Otherwise they come from the map where it knows: along the roads on a made world, or from the scale on your own map and from Earth, shown as "about". Days are always advice, never a rule.
Follow your story on the map
Story, beside Simple and All controls (and on your own maps and Earth), walks through your scenes in story time or reading order. Move the slider or choose Play to see the scenes so far and where each character was last seen. Follow traces one character's way from place to place, with the distance and days between stops.
Where they happen lists scenes not set anywhere yet whose text links a place on the map. Untick any that are wrong and set the rest at once. Set on the map sets one scene: click the place where it happens.
Layers (L) has a Your book section: badges on the map for the scenes, characters, groups, things, events and ideas tied to each place. Click a badge to see them.
Small maps on pages
A place page made from the map, or pinned on one, shows a small map with its spot and a link that opens the Atlas there. A place on Earth shows On Earth with a small map of its surroundings.
Draw and measure
The bar on the map has the tools: pan (P), inspect (I), the ruler in straight lines (M) or along the roads (R), Layers (L) and zoom (+ and −). On a kept world, A picture of this map…, at the foot of the panel, saves a picture sized for a paperback or an ebook page, on the map's own page. The ebook and paperback wizards on the Publish page can put it before the story, under Front and back (the publishing guide).
Remove a map
Remove this map, at the foot of the panel, asks first. On a made world the pages made from it stay in the wiki. On your own map it removes the tab, the map's page and its picture; the places' pages stay. On Earth each place keeps its spot, so setting the book on Earth again brings them all back.