Started worldbuilding in a different platform or medium and want to move your world to World Anvil? If you have a large world, the task can seem overwhelming; so here are some steps to guide you through the process!
- Categories: Start with the categories! This is a way to structure your world by topics. If you already had a similar folder structure, you can just copy it over. Otherwise, now's the perfect moment to decide! Check our tips to create category trees.
- Articles: Start copy-pasting your world information into articles. To avoid losing your place, go in the order your previous notes are organized in, and mark which ones you've already missed. Check the guide to articles if you need more help with this.
- Your notes might not be as organized as your World Anvil world will be, but that's ok! Just make sure you aren't creating an article twice. You can always consolidate duplicate information later on if you need to.
- If your previous notes were handwritten, using speech-to-text software is a great way quickly move notes to a digital format.
- Autolinker: The autolinker looks through an article and automatically adds links to your other articles! After you've moved all your articles, run it through each article to make sure your world is properly inter-connected. Check the guide to the autolinker for details.
- Maps: If you have a map, set it up now! Since you've already created all of your articles, you can also add interactive map pins that are links to your location articles. Check the guide to maps for more information.
- Timelines: Your history worldbuilding might be all over the place, especially if you didn't use a dedicated worldbuilding or timeline software before. So now's the time to gather all those scattered notes and pull them together into a cohesive timeline. You can also go through your articles and see which ones mention events that you might want to add to the timeline. Check the guide to timelines.
- Other features: Depending on the needs of your world, use family trees, diplomacy webs, content trees, chronicles, and more to finish moving all your previous notes!
World Anvil doesn't have an automated importer (although, if you're a Grandmaster with coding skills, you could make your own importer with the API), but hopefully these steps will help you have a clearer picture of the process.
