Start Writing with Plot Factory in Under 30 Minutes

The Detailed Look at Getting Started w/Plot Factory

Hello! So you want a little more detailed guidance through Plot Factory. What a great thing! I'm here to oblige.

Let's look at each of the five modules on the main Plot Factory dashboard.

First you'll see the "Recent" module. This is the quickest way to jump back into your most recents projects. This will show Universes and Stories that you most recently opened and edited. The Universes are represented by a globe icon while the stories are represented with a book icon.

The "Statistics" module tracks your daily and total word counts on a graph. The "x-axis" along the bottom shows the dates. The "y-axis" along the left side shows the word count. So by tracking the graph you can see how many words you contributed on any given day, week, or month.

The Forums module includes several semi-active forums for all kinds of helpful topics on writing craft and industry. If you are brave enough to try it out, Plot Factory also has a Discord group where you will find a much more active and immediate community for asking questions. The link to the Discord group can be found in the lefthand column of the main dashboard. (More on that in a coming video.)

"The Blog" module is one more place to find insight and education for all things writing. You will also find the most important Plot Factory announcements here.

Finally, the "Feedback" module allows for direct feedback to the Plot Factory team. If you find bugs or want to suggest new features, use this form to report them!

Account Settings and Notifications

On the top right of the main dashboard you'll see a few icons. The first is for upgrading your subscription plan. The "bell" is for notifications. The "megaphone" is for announcements. Back over on the lefthand column, you should find your username just below the Plot Factory logo. Click on your username to access your account information and settings. Preferences includes the ability to turn on "dark mode" which will change the overall appearance of Plot Factory on your screen. You can also sync Plot Factory with Drop Box in order to create automatic backups.

The Security tab allows you to reset your password. The Billing tab allows you to add or change your billing information. The Delete tab allows you to delete your account! The Plot Factory Icon in the top left of the screen will always take you back to your dashboard.

Structural Organization and Navigation by Universe and Story

This is super important! When creating content in Plot Factory, you are going to want to include all of your stories in a "Universe." I recommend you start by creating a "Universe" even if you need to call it "working universe" for now. To do this, click on the "Universes" tab in the lefthand column and then click the "Create Universe" button. This will take you to a screen where you can type in as much or as little information about your universe as you want.

When creating properties inside your Universe, you have two options: text property and list property. Select one and click on the plus to add it. Each property has a title field and a description field. These are all editable by you! Either use the suggested properties or create your own properties to describe your universe. You can also select genres to describe your Universe (if you like), and you can designate a cover image by clicking on the grey letter box.

For purposes of navigating around Plot Factory, you will need to get comfortable with the hierarchical organization of Universes and then Stories. When you create a universe, you should notice that the lefthand column generates a second tab/menu. Now you should have "Main Menu" and "Universe." The main menu will be unchanged. It is still the main menu you first saw when landing on the Plot Factory dashboard. The "Universe" menu allows you to navigate between the stories, characters, and other elements of your universe.

If you have multiple universes, this universe menu will only show you the stuff in the particular universe you selected from the "Main Menu." If you need to switch universes, click back over to the main menu and then select "Universes."

To start your actual story, you will want to make sure you are on the "Universe" menu (so you are creating your story inside the proper universe). Click on "Stories" and then click the "Create Story" button. Unlike when creating a Universe, when creating a story you will jump directly to the Story Editor. Here you can add a story title, a first chapter title, and jump straight into the narrative if you so choose.

Once you create or click into a specific story, your "Universe" menu tab will morph into a "Story" menu tab. The "Main Menu" tab remains unchanged. Within the "Story" menu you now have access to the meta data, characters, elements, outlines, plots, etc. for the specific story you are in. So for example, the "Characters" tab will now show you only the characters within the specific story (rather than characters within the Universe who are not attached to the current story). All of this should make perfect sense once you get a chance to click around the menus a bit.

Use the Characters, Places, and Elements tabs to generate your world-building cards.

For world building purposes, you'll find tabs in the lefthand column for "Characters, Places, Objects, Elements, and Notes. I think the plan is for "Objects" to be phased out and replaced by "Elements" which was just recently added. Each of these work similarly. Click on "Characters" and then on "Create Character" to create a new character. Use a Character template (found on the "Main Menu") if you have any templates to choose from, or simply create a new character from the default template. Fill out the fields or add new properties and fill those out! You should also notice at this point that when creating a character (or place or element), there is the ability to "Import Character from Universe." This means that if you are the type of writer who enjoys building out your universe first, you don't have to create characters more than once. If you created characters in your universe, you can import that character cards into one or more specific worlds as well.

The Notes tab works slightly differently from the others in that "Notes" are specific to the story or Universe. This means that any notes you create for a specific story will not show up in your "Notes" tab when you are looking at the larger universe and vice versa. So broad universe notes will not show up in your story notes. (No need to bog those notes down!)

Outlining and Plot Planning

Plot Factory currently has three (count them) ways to outline your story: Outlines, Plots, and Beats Mode. It is my understanding that these three methods will be simplified/combined down to two methods in the coming months. So I will keep that in mind here.

Outlines are readily available from the lefthand column. Click "Outlines" and then click the button, "Create Outline" to get started (unless this has recently been fixed so that you see a fresh/empty outline without having to click the create button). This outline feature allows for simple, basic outlines (and allows some rich text options like bold, italics, etc.). There is also a template option for starting with a sample outline.

The "Plots" tab will allow you to create a plot or several subplots. This planning feature is visualized differently than "Outlines" by showing a chapter box/bucket and then scene boxes/buckets. It's my personal opinion that neither of these planning options are optimal as is and that some sort of combination needs to be created that will allow for a sort of "cork-board" plot planning mode. This would allow a user to track subplots and characters throughout the narrative. We shall see!

My preferred method of planning within Plot Factory, "Beats Mode," is a bit less obvious and can be found from the tools icon in the story editor itself (so we'll address that in a moment).

On that note, let's click on the "Write" tab in the left navigation column in order to open up the story editor.

Using the Story Editor

Once in the "Write" mode of Plot Factory, you'll notice a righthand column that contains chapter and scene navigation for quickly moving about within the narrative of your story. Click the plus sign in the righthand column or beneath each scene in order to add a new scene or chapter. You will also see a POV character icon just to the left of each scene. Clicking this icon allows you to select a POV character for each scene, so that you can visually track the back and forth if you have multiple POV characters.

If at first you don't see any ability to use rich text options, don't panic! The third version of Plot Factory removed the redundant and a bit clunky text bar from the top of the editor and replaced it with a highlight ability. This means you'll only be able to bold, underline, or italicize text when you first highlight it using the cursor. I personally love this change. The highlight function also allows you to justify, change text color, and use the audio narration ability. This audio narration ability (great for catching mistakes and flow issues) is also available at the bottom of each scene.

I mentioned "Beats Mode" earlier. Click on the tools icon on the bottom right of the story editor and click "Beats Mode" from the menu in order to open up Plot Factory's third (and coolest) option for planning/outlining. In Beats Mode, you'll see all your current chapters and scenes (or you'll be able to create all the chapters and scenes) in a quick "beat by beat" method. Plan your chapters and scenes with quick summary sentences in "Beats Mode," and then jump right back into the story editor to fill out these scenes with narrative content. The main benefit of using Beats Mode is that you don't need to create chapters and scenes in your outline and then create them again in the story editor. Once you create a scene in beats mode, that scene appears in the story editor as well (empty of narrative content). The beats mode even has the ability for you to expand the narrative that is present within each beat while you are looking at the planning notes.

The tools menu also includes the ability to export in multiple file formats, a simple search and replace ability, a name generator, draft/version navigation, and the ability to set a session goal. Word counts are readily visible inside the story editor. Chapter and project counts are on the bottom left. Scene word counts can be found beneath each scene.

Some nice settings for your writing experience can be found by clicking the gear icon at the bottom right of the story editor. Turn indents on or off. Add extra space after paragraphs. Choose the size of your font. And opt for type-writer mode if you so choose (keeps your active typing space nearer the middle of the screen so you don't end up looking at the bottom or your screen all the time).

Now that you've gotten you hands dirty a bit, jump on in there and get to work! Happy writing!