Basics
Getting started
What PenPick is, and the pieces a canvas is made of, all in one look.
PenPick is a canvas for plotting stories. Every work has one canvas. You lay out the characters and events in your head, and how they tangle together, and see it all at a glance.
What's on the canvas
| What it is | In Pride and Prejudice | |
|---|---|---|
| Memos and tags | Write one thing from your story on one memo. A tag says whether it's a character, a place or an event. | Elizabeth, Pemberley, The Entail, The Proposal at Rosings |
| Relationships | Connect memos to each other. Connect two characters and you get a relationship. Connect a character to an event and it means they appear in that scene. | Elizabeth and Jane are “sisters” |
| Chapters and plot | Put events in order in each chapter to build its plot. The order of the chapters is the plot of the whole work. | Chapter 2, “Wickham and Collins,” holds Collins's Proposal and Wickham's Grievance |
| By chapter (memo) | The same character is in a different place, with a different heart, in each chapter. The memo stays one memo, and you write what it is in each chapter separately. Relationship names can change by chapter too. | Her relationship with Darcy goes from “sworn foes” to “rejected suitor” to “lovers” |
Once it's written down like this, pressing a character is enough to show who they're tangled with, which scenes they appear in, and how they change from chapter to chapter. Pressing and drag and drop are collected in Using the canvas.
Writing with AI
- Connect your AI: Connect the AI you already use, like Claude or ChatGPT, to your PenPick canvas. Works on the Free plan too.
Where to start
The first time you sign in, your library has a classic in it as an example. It's a fully laid-out canvas, so press its characters and events and you'll quickly get a feel for how PenPick works. Every example in these docs comes from the Pride and Prejudice canvas too.
Then make a new work and start by writing one character who comes to mind as a memo. Works and the library are covered in Works.