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Getting started

Install Fabrication, make your first project, and find your way around.

Install

Download the installer for your Mac from the download page — Apple silicon or Intel.
Open the .dmg and drag Fabrication into Applications.
Open Fabrication. The first time, your Mac asks whether to open an app downloaded from the internet: choose Open.

From then on Fabrication keeps itself up to date (see updates and troubleshooting).

Your first project

Fabrication opens on your projects. Choose + New Project, and a short setup takes you through three screens. Every answer can be changed later.

Set up your project. Its title; its location — the folder its file goes in (Choose… opens your Mac's own folder window; Documents › Fabrication to start); whether it's a novel or a screenplay; its target length and lines per page, which set how pages are counted; and whether it's told in the first person.
What's in your world? Which kinds of element the project starts with, from your template library — characters and settings, and others like places, factions or props. See World.
Who's in it? Your main characters, by name. You can add more any time.

Leaving the first screen — with Next or Skip — creates the project and its file straight away, so it's on your Mac from its very first moment.

Finding your way around

Across the top of the window are the project's views. Each shows the same story another way, and a change in one shows in all of them.

Narrative	The manuscript, scene after scene, with each scene's card beside it.
Outline	Every scene as a row: summary, pages, settings, characters.
Timeline & Canvas	Scene cards on a corkboard, over a timeline of the story's pages.
World	Your characters, settings and other elements — as cards, or on a graph.
Situations	Draft scenes by putting characters in a setting.

To the right are Undo, Redo, Copy and Paste; Notes; Projects, to switch project or start another; and Settings.

Where your work is saved

Everything you do is saved as you go — there's no Save button to remember. Your project's file, and the folders beside it, catch up each time you save a revision (Project › Save Revision… in the top bar). See Projects, files & revisions.

Tip: save a revision whenever you reach a point you'd like to be able to come back to. Each one is kept, as a PDF too.