Build your story’s world on Mac
The World page is your story’s cover: its key art and title, its premise, how its pictures look, and its characters, locations and props, most important first. It also holds the standing instructions every AI suggestion in the story follows. Select World at the top of the sidebar to open it. A new story opens on it.
Every text on the page is edited where it is: click it and type. Nothing needs saving.
In a new story, with nothing on the page yet, the Agent window opens beside it and offers to build the world with you: it asks how the story should look, then writes the page. A field the agent wrote is marked Written by the agent; click Undo to put back what was there, and Redo to bring the agent’s text back again. Edit > Undo (⌘Z) and Edit > Redo (⇧⌘Z) in the story window do the same for everything the agent wrote at once. The mark goes once you edit the field or leave the page. See Build a world with the agent.
The cover
The top of the page shows the story’s key art, with the title over it. Before there is key art, it shows a gradient of the story’s palette. Over the title, a line names the genre (when the style guide begins like one of Merrimo’s genre descriptions) and the story’s visual style; under it, how many chapters, characters, locations and props the story has.
- To rename the story, click the title and type.
- Click Render Key Art at the top right to draw key art from the premise, in the story’s visual style. Once there is some, the button reads New Key Art and draws another. It needs a premise.
- To have your characters in the key art looking like themselves, ask the agent (⇧⌘A): for example, “Make key art of Skyler and Luis on the beach.” It draws them from their pictures, with Qwen 2.1 from references on your ComfyUI or with your cloud image model, and puts the result here. A character with no picture is drawn from their name only.
- To use a picture you already have, drag it onto the key art: an image file from the Finder, or a picture from inside Merrimo, such as a character’s card on the shelves below. The banner shows Use as Key Art while you drag over it. The picture becomes the story’s key art; a file is uploaded first.
Premise
The premise says what the story is about: who is in it, what they want, what stands in their way. The AI reads it whenever it writes, and key art is drawn from it.
The look
The Look section sets how the story’s pictures look.
- Visual style. The card shows the story’s style: a sample picture, its name, its kind, and how many of the story’s pictures use it. Every new picture, panel and key art starts in this style; a panel can still pick its own. Click Change Style… to choose another in the Style Browser (see Choose and create art styles). Until the story has a style, the card offers six to start from; click one, or click Browse All….
- Style guide. The voice, tone, look and genre of the story, threaded into every suggestion. To begin from something, ask the agent to write it (see Build a world with the agent).
- Palette. Five colors that tint the cover and the cards that have no picture yet. With Use AI on, they are read from the style guide whenever you change it. Click a color to change it, or to name it; an empty circle adds one. Once you have picked a color yourself, changing the style guide leaves the palette alone.
When you pick a new visual style with Use AI on, the page offers to rewrite the style guide’s look for it. Click Rewrite to have the AI redo the part of the style guide about pictures, keeping the part about the writing, and read the palette again from it. Click Not Now to keep the style guide as it is.
Characters, locations and props
Each has a shelf: a row of cards, the most important first. Once the story has panels, a card’s place comes from the panels it is in, then the chapters; before that, from the chapters and how often the writing names it. Each card says why, such as “31 panels · 3 chapters”. The two most important characters are marked MAIN. A card with no picture yet shows the character’s initials, or a symbol for a location or prop, on one of the palette’s colors.
- To see more of a shelf, swipe sideways on the trackpad, hold Shift as you scroll, or point at the shelf and click the arrow at either end.
- Click a card to open that character, location or prop. Click See All to open the whole group.
- Drag a card’s picture to use it elsewhere: drop it on the canvas, in this window or the story’s canvas in another window, to place it there. On a panel it becomes the panel’s picture, on a balloon it fills the balloon, and anywhere else on the page it is placed as a picture of its own. Drag it out of Merrimo to save it as a file.
- Click Render 4 Pictures (the number is how many are missing) in a shelf’s header to draw every one of its cards that has no picture, in the story’s visual style. Each is drawn as its Entity tab draws it: a character as a full-body reference with the framing, pose and studio set there, a location or prop from its description. One whose appearance or description isn’t written yet is drawn from its story notes instead, a character full length.
- In a story with none yet, click Add a Character, Add a Location or Add a Prop to make the first.
References, avoid and author notes
- References: authors, works or styles to echo for tone, never copied. Click Add for another; click the minus to remove one.
- Avoid: names, tropes or patterns the AI should steer away from.
- Author Notes: standing instructions for the AI, such as voice constraints.
Pictures
The sidebar counts the story’s characters, locations, props and other entries. With the World page open, the inspector shows Pictures: how many of them have a picture, counting the key art. Click Render Missing Pictures to draw the key art and every character, location and prop without a picture, in the story’s visual style, the way the shelves’ buttons do. The note under it names what is missing. The key art needs a premise.
