LIANXU Getting Started

Connecting people, worlds and untold stories. Follow this tutorial for about 15 minutes and you'll go from a blank page to a small world with characters, relationships, places and a first chapter, and you'll know how to back it up and share it.

For LIANXU v0.2. For every feature in detail, see the LIANXU User Guide.

This tutorial uses the labels of the English interface. To switch languages, use 中文 / English at the bottom of the sidebar.

Contents

• What is LIANXU?
• Before you start: opening LIANXU
• Step 1. Get to know the screen
• Step 2. Create a world
• Step 3. Bring in your characters
• Step 4. Connect relationships
• Step 5. Let kinship grow on its own
• Step 6. Set up factions
• Step 7. Write down the world: places, organizations, items
• Step 8. Write your first chapter
• Step 9. Saving and backups
• Step 10. Share your world
• Handy shortcuts
• What to try next

What is LIANXU?

LIANXU (连叙) is a worldbuilding and story-writing tool. You place characters on an infinite canvas, draw the relationships between them, then add organizations, locations, items, events, maps and chapters bit by bit. When you're ready, you can turn the whole world into a world bible, an e-book, or a prompt for an AI to help you continue.

It's made for:

• Novelists: keep track of relationships, family trees and timelines, and write outlines and text chapter by chapter;
• Game makers: manage NPCs, factions, locations and quest hooks;
• Tabletop RPG game masters: hide clues and secret identities between characters;
• OC creators: build a whole little universe for your original characters.

Three things to remember:

Before you start: opening LIANXU

There are two ways to use LIANXU. Pick either one:

① Use it online (recommended) Open the LIANXU web app on the official website. In Chrome or Edge you can also click the install icon at the right of the address bar (or Install LIANXU at the bottom of the My worlds window) to install it on your computer. It then gets its own window and icon and opens even without a connection. On a phone, use your browser's Add to Home Screen.

② Download it and use it locally Download the offline package from the official website, unzip it and double-click 连叙.html (the LIANXU app file; 连叙 is LIANXU’s Chinese name). It opens in your browser and never needs an internet connection.

Recommended browsers: Chrome or Edge. Safari 16.4+ and Firefox 128+ also work.

⚠️ Important: your work is saved in this browser on this computer. Switching browsers or computers, or clearing your browser data, means you won't see your earlier work. Make a habit of exporting a JSON backup regularly (see Step 9). The online and downloaded versions don't share data either; use a JSON backup to move work between them.

The first time you open LIANXU it creates a sample world, Letters from Fog Harbor, with five characters and their relationships. Feel free to click around and change anything.

Step 1. Get to know the screen

On a computer, LIANXU has a top bar and three columns below it:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Top bar: My worlds › world │ Search │ Check │ Undo/Redo │ Export   │
├────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┬──────────────────┤
│ Sidebar        │ Workspace                    │ Panel            │
│ · six modules  │ (character canvas, World,    │ (edit whatever   │
│ · characters   │  maps, story…)               │  you select)     │
│ · Add character│                              │                  │
└────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────┘

• Top bar: click My worlds on the left to switch or create worlds. Search the whole world (⌘/Ctrl K) finds anything in your world. On the right are Check, Undo / Redo, Versions (the clock button) and Export.
• Sidebar: six modules, Characters, World, Maps, Timeline, Graph and Story, then the character list and the Add character button. At the bottom are Guide and the 中文 / English switch.
• Workspace: the current module. The character canvas is shown by default.
• Panel on the right: click a character, a relationship or an entry and edit it here.

On a phone or a narrow window, the six modules become a tab bar at the bottom, the panel slides in from the right, and Contents opens a drawer on the left.

Step 2. Create a world

1. Click My worlds in the top bar to open your list of worlds.

2. Click New world.

3. Choose a starting point:

   Template	Good for
   Novel	Give every character a past and a path home
   Indie game	Connect NPCs, factions and quest motives
   Tabletop RPG	Hide clues between the characters
   OC world	Your characters, their own little universe
   Blank world	A blank sheet for endless possibilities

4. Type a name under Name your world and click Create my world.

Every template except Blank world includes sample characters and relationships that you can edit or delete.

💡 Want to see what LIANXU can do first? In My worlds, click Try the feature tour. There's also Try the Thunderstorm demo (Chinese): a complete example world based on Cao Yu's play Thunderstorm, with 8 characters, 17 relationships, a family tree, factions, a relationship timeline, a world timeline, a map and two chapters. Its content is in Chinese.

Step 3. Bring in your characters

Add a character

Any of these works:

• Click Add character at the bottom left;
• Press N;
• Double-click an empty spot on the canvas (the character appears where you double-clicked).

A character template picker opens. The first card is a blank character; the others are Protagonist, Supporting character, Antagonist, Mentor, NPC, TRPG character sheet, Historical figure and God / otherworldly being. A template adds default tags and a set of common fields (age, motive, weakness, character arc…) so you don't have to add them one by one.

💡 Just want a quick blank character? Press N, then Enter.

Edit a character

Click a character card on the canvas to open the Character profile on the right:

• Portrait: click Upload portrait to choose an image, then crop and position it;
• Name and Summary;
• Tags: e.g. "protagonist", "villain", "Book 1". You can filter by tag later;
• Color: six colors to tell factions or importance apart;
• More details: add any fields you like (age, occupation, personality…). LIANXU also suggests common fields you can add with one click.

Drag cards anywhere on the canvas. Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag empty space to pan, and press F to bring every character back into view.

Step 4. Connect relationships

Create a relationship

Three ways:

1. Drag: hover over the small dot on the right of a character card, then drag it onto the small dot on the left of another character.
2. Click twice: click one character's connection dot, then the other's.
3. From the panel: select a character and pick someone under Choose a character… in the relationships section of the profile.

Relationships have a direction: dragging from A to B reads as "A is B's …".

Set up the relationship

Click a line (or the label on it) to open Relationship in the panel:

• Type: Friend, Enemy, Family, Lover, Ally or Custom;
• Subtype: open the details under the type to be more specific, e.g. Secret admirer, Ex or Fiancée under Lover; Father, Daughter, Elder brother or Wife under Family;
• Direction: One-way (source → target) or Two-way (each sees the other this way). Reverse direction swaps the two ends;
• Relationship notes: the story between them.

To remove a relationship, select it and press Delete, or click Delete relationship at the bottom of the panel.

Step 5. Let kinship grow on its own

This is one of LIANXU's favorite tricks: you only mark the most direct family ties, and LIANXU works out the rest.

Try it:

1. Create three characters: a father, Henry, and two sons, Arthur and Ben;
2. Draw a relationship from Henry to Arthur, set the type to Family and the subtype to Father (read as "Henry is Arthur's father");
3. Do the same from Henry to Ben, also Father.

A purple dashed line appears on the canvas between Arthur and Ben, labeled "Brothers".

Open ⌁ Kinship calculator in the toolbar to pick any two people and see how they're related and how the term was worked out, step by step: uncles, aunts, first cousins once removed, great-aunts, in-laws… The Kinship term finder lets you build a chain without picking characters, like "my father's elder brother's wife" → "aunt".

Gender and birth order come only from what you've marked explicitly (like "Elder brother" or "Daughter"); LIANXU never guesses. The dashed lines on the canvas show only close family and spouses; more distant relatives by marriage appear in the calculator. (In the Chinese interface, the calculator uses Chinese kinship terms, which distinguish paternal and maternal relatives.)

Step 6. Set up factions

Characters often belong to a family, a sect, a company or a side.

1. Click ◉ Factions & roles in the toolbar;
2. Click New faction, give it a name and, if needed, choose a Parent faction (e.g. "Royal Court › Inner Council");
3. Under Choose members, tick characters, choose Public identity or Secret identity, and tick Mark as true allegiance if needed;
4. Click Apply identity.

The canvas then marks members of the same faction with a color: with more than 3 members it draws a light area around them; with fewer, it draws a dashed ring around each member's card. One person can belong to several factions. Secret identities use dotted lines; the true allegiance is marked with ★ (one per person).

💡 With many characters, use ⌑ Lasso select in the toolbar to circle a group on the canvas and add them all to a faction at once.

Step 7. Write down the world: places, organizations, items

Characters need a world to live in. Click World in the sidebar:

• The first row is the World profile: write a tagline, choose genre tags (e.g. "Jazz Age", "Mystery") and add profile sections (Core concept, World rules, Power system, Historical eras…);
• Below it are four kinds of entries: organizations, locations, items and concepts. Create one with the matching New … button, optionally starting from a template (for locations: City, Mansion, Ruins…).

Entries can be nested (country › city › mansion › room) and linked to characters. In a character's profile, link a location and call the link "Residence"; or link an item to its "Holder".

Events live in the Timeline module: create an event, give it a time, link the characters involved and the place it happened, and it takes its place on the world timeline.

Step 8. Write your first chapter

Click Story in the sidebar:

1. Click New chapter;
2. On the Outline & cast tab, fill in the title and outline, add the Cast (with a role for each: POV / Appears / Mentioned), the locations and events, and set the progress (Idea / Draft / Done);
3. Switch to the Text tab and write the chapter. The word count updates live. Focus mode fills the window for distraction-free writing; press Esc to leave.

If your text mentions a character or location that isn't in the chapter yet, LIANXU offers to add it. With no chapter selected you see the Story overview: chapter count, progress, and a Cast chart showing who appears in which chapter.

Step 9. Saving and backups

• Automatic saving: every change is saved in your browser. Nothing to do.
• Undo / Redo: ⌘/Ctrl Z and ⌘/Ctrl Shift Z, up to 80 steps.
• Versions: the clock button next to Undo / Redo. LIANXU saves a version automatically about every 10 minutes, and you can Save a version yourself with a name (like "Book 1 final"). Compare, view or restore any version.
• Export a JSON backup (the most important one): click Export → JSON backup to download a .lianxu.json file containing everything in this world, images included. Keep it in cloud storage or somewhere else safe.

To restore, or to move to another computer, click Import JSON backup at the bottom of My worlds and choose that file.

⚠️ Versions also live only in this browser, so they don't replace a JSON backup. If you haven't backed up for more than 7 days, the top bar reminds you ("N days without backup").

Step 10. Share your world

Click Export at the top right:

💡 LIANXU doesn't connect to the internet and has no built-in AI. Export for AI writes a prompt with all the context for you; copy it into any AI chat, then paste the reply back. LIANXU shows you a preview, and nothing is imported until you confirm.

Handy shortcuts

(⌘ on Mac, Ctrl on Windows.)

What to try next

You can now do most of your creative work in LIANXU. To go further, try:

• Review view: switch to Review view at the top right of the canvas to see who's connected to whom as round portraits; click someone to focus on their web of relationships;
• Relationship timeline: ◷ Timeline in the toolbar records how relationships change between "thirty years ago" and "now";
• Graph: see characters, organizations, places and events together in one map of connections;
• Drawn maps: draw the places where your story happens in the Maps module;
• World check: Check in the top bar finds kinship conflicts, timeline contradictions, duplicate characters and isolated characters;
• Ask AI: click Ask AI next to a character, chapter or entry to have an AI fill in details, write a biography or continue to the next chapter.

All of these are explained in the LIANXU User Guide.

Have fun writing. Every stroke makes your world more complete.