ArcWright

ArcWright — World-Building Studio for Fiction Writers

One file. Every character, faction, location, and story beat — organized, connected, and entirely yours.

What is ArcWright?

ArcWright is a complete world-building and character development studio for fiction writers of any genre. It runs entirely in your browser as a single HTML file — no installation, no account, no subscription, no cloud. Everything you create stays on your device and belongs to you.

Whether you're writing a fantasy epic with a cast of forty or a literary novel with three characters and a complicated history, ArcWright gives you a structured, beautiful space to build the world before — and while — you write it.

What's inside

Projects — Create as many projects as you have stories. Each one is a fully isolated world with its own characters, factions, locations, lore, and timeline. Switch between them instantly from the project directory. Nothing bleeds across.

Character Sheets — Deep development built around the questions that actually matter. Wound, want, and need. The lie your character believes and the truth the story asks them to learn. Arc stages with story position. Relationships with reciprocal auto-fill. Power systems, philosophy, internal tensions, symbols, and scars. Multiple sheets per character — "Kai · Pre-Timeskip" and "Kai · Post-War" can live in the same folder.

Factions — Groups with ideology, not just names. Each faction gets a full detail sheet covering its origin, internal hierarchy, methods, aesthetic, public reputation versus internal reality, and fatal flaw. A live member roster links directly to character sheets. The sidebar shows your whole cast grouped by faction at a glance.

Locations — Places with atmosphere, history, and meaning. Each location sheet covers physical description, tone, who controls it and why, its role in your story, and what most of the world doesn't know about it. Link locations to the characters and factions connected to them.

Lore Codex — A structured archive for everything that shapes the world before the story starts. History, religion and belief, politics and law, language and culture, magic and power, technology, creatures and species. Filterable by category, searchable, and linked to your characters and factions.

Story Overview — A horizontal free-form timeline. Drag character thumbnail cards anywhere on the canvas. Add named beat markers and reposition them by dragging. Tag each beat with the characters, factions, and locations active at that story moment. Add theme notes to capture what's happening beneath the surface of the plot. Snap-to-grid toggle for those who want order; free placement for those who don't.

QuickNotes — A collapsible panel that slides in beside the app whenever you need it. A freeform scratch pad for thoughts mid-session, plus a timestamped note log for ideas you want to keep but not lose track of.

How it works

Download the file. Open it in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge. Create a project. Start building.

ArcWright saves automatically as you type. Your data lives in your browser's local storage — it never touches a server. Use the Export Project button to download a JSON backup at any time. Export any individual character sheet as a clean HTML document that opens directly in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

That's it. No accounts. No syncing. No complexity.

What you get

• The complete ArcWright application — all seven modules
• Unlimited projects, characters, factions, locations, and lore entries
• The Ashen Compact sample world — a fully populated original fiction world to explore before building your own
• A printable quick-start card
• Export to Word and Google Docs for any character sheet
• Export and import projects as JSON files for backup and portability
• Works on Mac, Windows, Linux — any modern browser
• Fully offline after download
• All future updates to ArcWright v1

Your work belongs to you

Everything you create in ArcWright — every character, every world, every story — is entirely yours. ArcWright makes no claim over your creative work whatsoever. It is a tool, like a notebook. What you put in it is yours.

Pay what it's worth to you. Minimum $1.

If ArcWright saves you an afternoon of scattered notes across four apps and a notebook you can't find, then we consider it a success. Pay what feels right.

Made for writers who think deeply about their worlds.