A worldbuilding tool that starts from the draft you already have
Paste your chapters and the places, factions, items, and rules come out as linked entries. Add the rest by hand, search any of it from the editor, and share one world across every book in it. Free to start, in the browser.
Get started nowLitMemo's worldbuilding management breaks places, organizations, items, races, and magic rules into categorized entries, each with a rich-text description, all cross-linked to characters, scenes, and timelines. Fantasy and sci-fi works dread nothing more than a world that grows ever bigger and ever leakier — LitMemo gives your worldbuilding a single home, so any setting is one full-text search away, and the moment you add a new rule you know whether it clashes with an old one. That's the difference from setting notes strewn across Word docs and sticky notes.
"Is this city to the east or the west? I think I wrote it somewhere before..."
What fantasy and sci-fi authors fear most is worldbuilding that contradicts itself. The more geography, historical timelines, and magic rules you write, the more holes open up.
The core features of Worldbuilding tool for novelists — free worldbuilding app with AI extraction
Customizable setting types
Common types like places, organizations, and items come built in, but the real power is being able to add types that belong entirely to your own world — magic systems, races, laws, deities, currencies, however you want to divide it. Types can be reordered by dragging, and each type holds any number of setting entries. Without a tool, these settings either cram into one giant Word outline you scroll forever, or scatter across a dozen files in a dozen windows; LitMemo gives your worldbuilding clearly labeled drawers, so whichever category you need is one click away.
- Drag-to-reorder to manage type order
- Manage setting entries under each type independently
- Entry types shared by the whole world
Rich-text descriptions + links
Every setting entry can hold a full rich-text description — bold, bullet lists, links, all fine, never boxed into a tiny spreadsheet cell. More crucially, entries can be cross-linked: connect a place to the events that happened there, the characters who live there, and the related timeline nodes. As you write, the editor sidebar pulls these linked settings up directly — no window-switching, no leaving your manuscript. Settings stop being a dead list and become an interconnected web, and the bigger your world, the more that power shows.
- Write freely in Markdown / rich text
- Build two-way links to characters and scenes
- Full-text search to pinpoint anything fast
World sharing
When one universe spans several books, your worldbuilding lives at the world level and is managed centrally — open a new book and it automatically inherits the whole setting, no copy-pasting and reworking one by one. When one volume's settings need a local change (say, a kingdom that falls in the second book), a per-volume override handles it, touching only that volume without contaminating the others. Compared with copying your worldbuilding into three or four scattered versions and syncing every change several times over, world sharing makes 'the same universe' truly one shared setting — cutting cross-book contradictions off at the root.
- World-level settings sync to every book automatically
- A single book can override parts of the world's settings
- A new book inherits the existing world automatically
Have you run into this too?
「Halfway through your magic system, you find chapter 8's rules contradict chapter 3」
Build each magic rule as its own setting entry, look it up wherever you're writing, and run a full-text search before adding a new rule to instantly see whether it clashes with an old one. With the whole magic logic in one place, you'll never leave the kind of hole readers pounce on — like saying magic can't raise the dead early on, then making an exception later.
「A reader asks 'where is this kingdom on the map,' and you can't answer either」
Place entries can record coordinates, neighboring nations, climate, and terrain, and cross-link to the events and characters tied to that place. The whole world's geography becomes a searchable web — you find the answer in a second when readers ask, and you won't drop an eastern city on the western side when writing scene transitions.
「The sequel wants to reuse the previous book's pantheon, but the settings are spread across three Word files」
The pantheon lives at the world level, so when you open a new book for the sequel, the whole world inherits automatically — the previous book's settings carry over untouched. To adjust one volume's local setting, a per-volume override does it without touching the others. However the previous book set things up, the sequel matches it exactly.
The usual way vs LitMemo
| The usual way | LitMemo | |
|---|---|---|
| Where settings live | Word / sticky notes / your head | Categorized entries + custom types |
| Getting an existing draft in | Re-enter every setting by hand into a wiki | AI extraction pulls entries out of the chapter text |
| Links between settings | All strung together from memory | Place ↔ character ↔ event two-way links |
| Price to start | Subscription per world or per user | Free plan; paid plans raise the caps and the AI allowance |
| Sharing across books | Copy-paste and mis-edit | World inheritance + per-volume override |
Get started in four steps
- 1
Create setting types
Add types like places, organizations, and magic systems, reorderable by dragging
- 2
Add setting entries
Create entries under a type, with full rich-text descriptions
- 3
Build cross-links
Link settings to characters, scenes, and timelines — two-way links generate automatically
- 4
Reference from the sidebar
Pull settings up in the editor sidebar without leaving your manuscript
Frequently asked questions
It comes with common types like places, organizations, and items, and you can also add fully custom types such as magic systems, races, laws, deities, and currencies. Types can be reordered by dragging, and each type holds an unlimited number of setting entries — your whole world becomes a set of neatly labeled drawers, so whichever category you need is one click away.
Yes. Every setting entry can build two-way links to characters, scenes, and timelines — for example, connecting a place to the characters who live there and the events that happened there. As you write, you can reference these linked settings right in the editor side panel, with no window-switching and no leaving your manuscript, so settings stop being a dead list and become an interconnected web.
Those tools are built around the world; LitMemo is built around the manuscript. The editor, the outline, the timeline, and the settings live in one book, so a rule you wrote in the world is one click away while drafting chapter 20, and the AI can read the chapters to extract settings or flag a contradiction. To bring in worldbuilding from Word, Google Docs, or Notion, paste the text into a chapter or the extraction sandbox and run AI extraction; the places, organizations, items, and rules it finds become entries you can edit and link. If your world is the product — a campaign wiki with maps for players — a wiki tool fits better. If the world exists to support a novel, this is the shape for that.
Yes. Worldbuilding in the same world is managed centrally, and a new book inherits the whole set automatically, no copy-pasting and reworking one by one. When one volume's settings need a local change (say, a kingdom that falls in the sequel), a per-volume override handles it, touching only that volume without contaminating the others — cutting cross-book contradictions off at the root.
Better together
Character management
Characters are part of the world too — structured management is a must
Learn moreTimeline management
Historical timelines and event ordering — the time dimension of your world
Learn moreForeshadowing tracking
The foreshadowing woven into your world, from planted to paid off, all in view
Learn moreWherever the pen rests, there is home
Your world
deserves somewhere to live
Start now, and scale up as your world grows