Importing your work

If you already have writing somewhere else, you don’t have to paste it in piece by piece. The import wizard reads a file (or a stack of files) and turns it into notebook pieces you can keep working on.

Open it from the notebook, or go straight to /manage/import.

What you can bring in

Drop in one file or many at once. The wizard accepts:

• Word (.docx) and OpenDocument (.odt)
• PDF and EPUB
• Markdown, plain text, HTML, and RTF
• CSV, XLSX, Inkbreaker’s own JSON export, and structured worldbuilding JSON exports
• screenplays: Fountain (.fountain) and Final Draft (.fdx)
• an AO3 work: the HTML you download from Archive of Our Own
• exports from other writing tools: yWriter (.yw7) and Plottr (.pltr)
• a ZIP of any of the above

Files can be up to 25 MB each, and everything you drop is parsed together in one job.

Moving from another writing app

If you have been writing somewhere else, bring the project straight over:

• Scrivener. A .scriv project is a folder, so zip it first (right-click the .scriv, “Compress”), then drop the .zip in. We read the binder and import each document as its own piece, in order, skipping the Trash and Research folders.
• yWriter. Your characters, locations, and items come in as World Bible entries, and each chapter comes in as a piece. You can also export a world back out as a .yw7 project (its cast plus its pieces as chapters) from the Export tab.
• Plottr. Characters and places become World Bible entries, scene cards become pieces. A world exports back to a .pltr file too (cast as characters and places, pieces as cards).
• Screenplays (Fountain or Final Draft). A .fountain or .fdx script comes in as a real screenplay piece: scene headings, action, character cues, dialogue, parentheticals, and transitions land as those exact elements, ready to keep writing in screenplay mode. You can export back to either format at any time, so Inkbreaker fits into a screenwriting workflow both ways.
• AO3. On Archive of Our Own, open a work and choose Download › HTML, then drop that file in. The work comes in as a piece with its chapters and tags, and the AO3 header (the “posted originally” notice and the tag table) is left out of your prose. To go the other way, export any piece as AO3-ready HTML from the export menu: it is cleaned to the tags AO3 keeps, so you can paste it straight into the Work Text box.
• Obsidian and other wiki-style notes. Markdown with YAML frontmatter keeps its fields, and [[wikilinks]] between notes become relationships in your world’s relationship web instead of flat text.

From a worldbuilding wiki or any tool with a JSON export

The importer reads a JSON file by its structure, not a specific app’s format, so an export from most worldbuilding wikis and note tools comes in cleanly. When a tool offers more than one export, pick JSON.

• JSON (best). Drop in a JSON file (or a folder of them, zipped). Each record comes in with its real body, the right kind of entry (a person becomes a character, a settlement a location, an organization a faction), its tags, and the links between records as relationships in your world. Bodies written as HTML, BBCode, or Markdown are all converted to formatted prose, and the tool’s own bookkeeping (membership groups, icons, internal ids) is filed away as extra fields instead of cluttering the page.
• CSV. This reads the list of records and their fields, and the type column lands each row as the right kind of entry. CSV leaves the body out, so the prose stays behind. Use JSON when you want the writing too.
• PDF (avoid). A PDF export bakes layout tables and page markers around each record, so its structured data can flatten into the text. Export JSON instead.

Choose the destination world on the World step, so an export files itself into the matching world.

How the wizard works

The wizard walks you through a few short steps:

1. Upload. Drop your files and let the wizard read them.
2. Pieces. It shows you the drafts it found. A book with clear chapter headings comes in as one piece per chapter, and those chapters are gathered into a series so the book stays together in reading order. Review the list and uncheck anything you don’t want.
3. Folder. Choose where the pieces land: your notebook root, an existing folder, or a new folder you name here.
4. World. File the imported pieces under a world, or leave them in your notebook. (Folders and worlds are Pro, so this step is offered to Pro writers.) When the file carries worldbuilding material, this step builds it into World Bible entries: structured files (a character spreadsheet, a world export) come in directly, and for plain prose (a manuscript or screenplay) we scan the text for the recurring characters, places, and groups and offer those as entries you can review.
5. Review. Confirm, and the pieces appear in your notebook, ready to edit.

The prose scan is conservative on purpose: a name has to recur to be suggested, so a one-off mention does not become an entry. The suggestions are starting points, so review them and prune anything off in the World Bible afterwards. Decline the world entirely and only your writing imports.

A few things to know

• Folders are a Pro feature. On the free plan, imported pieces land in your notebook root, and you can organize them later if you upgrade.
• Formatting is preserved where it maps cleanly to the editor. Headings, paragraphs, bold, italics, lists, blockquotes, links, and tables come across from Word, OpenDocument, EPUB, HTML, and Markdown. Exotic page layout, exact fonts, and footnotes simplify.
• The book’s title and author come through too. An EPUB, Word, or OpenDocument file carries that information inside it, so the piece is named from the title rather than the filename.
• Mapping extra columns. When you import a spreadsheet of characters or places into a world, any column we don’t recognize is kept as an extra field so nothing is lost. On the review step you can also map a column (“Allegiance”, say) onto a known field so it becomes filterable across your world. Leave the rest as extras.
• A PDF carries no real markup, only positioned text, so we rebuild the structure we can read from the page. Lines that wrapped mid-sentence are reflowed back into one paragraph instead of breaking; titles set in a larger font become headings; tables are rebuilt when their columns line up clearly on the page; and running page headers, footers, and page numbers are detected by their repetition and removed, so they no longer get folded into the body over and over. Images still do not come across from a PDF, so import from DOCX or EPUB when you want those.
• Nothing is published by importing. Everything arrives as a private draft, not listed in the Library, until you choose to publish it.

Linking characters, places, and family

When you import a character spreadsheet with relationship columns (Spouse, Children, Parents, Siblings), those become real links in your world’s relationship web, and the family ones build your family tree. A link only connects when both names are entries in the world, so list every character as its own row. After an import, the result tells you how many links could not be connected (a name that was not among the entries) and how many rows merged because they shared a title, so you know what to fix and re-import.

If an import does not look right

Most files come in clean, but every export is a little different. If a piece imports garbled, an entry lands as the wrong type, or links are missing, tell us and send the file:

• If the import failed outright, the wizard offers to send the file straight to our team from the error screen.
• If it imported but looks wrong, use the “Report it to support” link on the result, which opens the reporting form in a new tab. Signed in, you can attach the original file so we can reproduce it. Seeing the real file is what lets us fix the importer for your exact source.

Once your work is in, see Organizing your work to sort it into folders, or The editor and notebook to start writing.