Quill&Steel OS
Character Relationship Map & Chart Maker for Fantasy Writers
Quill&Steel OS draws your character relationship map for you, out of the connections you've already set on your characters. Marriages, factions, mentors, locations, religions, all on one canvas.
Try Quill&Steel OS free for 14 days
Watch the demo
See the character relationship chart maker in action
Set a rivalry on one character's page, filter the map down to your cast, and drag the web apart to see who sits at the middle of the story.
Everything you need
A character relationship web that draws itself
No boxes to drag into place and no arrows to redraw when the story changes. Set the relationship once on the character, and the map keeps up.
Drawn from your own pages
Name a character's parents, marry them off, put them in a guild or give them a home town, and the line appears on the map. There's no second diagram to keep up to date.
Every link reads right from both ends
Set one character as another's mentor and the other reads as the student. Guardian and ward, master and apprentice, parent and child, all of them say the right thing from either side.
More than characters
Locations, organizations, cultures, species, religions, deities, magic systems, artifacts, creatures and historical events sit on the same web, each in its own color.
Filter down to the story you're chasing
Switch off everything except characters and organizations and the political map appears. Bring the places back when you want to see who lives where.
Portraits, and the full picture on click
Faces sit on the nodes, so you recognize your cast at a glance. Click one to read its details and every connection running in and out of it.
Pull it apart and look closer
Drag a node to untangle a cluster, zoom into one corner, or go fullscreen when the cast outgrows the window.
All in one place
Your relationship map is part of the rest of your world
The web is drawn from the same characters who appear on your family tree, your maps, your timeline, your cultures and your factions.
Click any node and you're reading that character's full page. Change a relationship there and the map has already changed.
Made for writers and game masters
See the shape of your cast
Use it to untangle an ensemble, to work out which houses are circling which throne, or to find the character who has drifted loose from the plot.
The map is also the fastest way back into your own notes: every node opens the page behind it.
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Big casts
See who actually connects to whom (or what).
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Politics & factions
Patrons, rivals and allegiances, with everything else filtered out.
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D&D & TTRPG campaigns
Keep track of who owes what to whom between games.
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Revision
Spot the character nobody is connected to before a reader does.
Start today
Start mapping your characters
Try the character relationship map free for 14 days inside Quill&Steel OS.
14-day free trial. No card required.
FAQ
What is a character relationship map?
It's a chart of how the people in your story are connected: who is married to whom, who trained whom, who owes a debt and who wants someone dead. Seeing it laid out tends to show you which characters carry the story and which are barely holding on to it.
How do I make a character relationship chart?
Start your free trial and add your characters. On each character's page, set the relationships they have: a spouse, a sibling, a mentor, a rival, the organization they belong to, the place they live. Then open the Relationship Web and the chart is already drawn.
Do I have to draw it myself?
No. This isn't a blank canvas with a box tool. The map is built from the links already on your characters and places, so it's right the day you make it and still right a hundred pages later. You only move things to arrange them.
What kinds of relationships can I set?
Spouse or partner, sibling, cousin, parent and child, love interest, ex-lover, ally, rival, enemy, colleague, mentor and student, master and apprentice, guardian and ward, ancestor and descendant. Each one names both sides, so you set it once from either character.
Does it show more than characters?
Yes. Locations, organizations, cultures, species, religions, deities, magic systems, artifacts, creatures and dated events all appear, colored by what they are. Filter them off when you want the cast alone, or leave them on to see a character standing inside their whole world.
Why is one of my characters missing from the map?
The web only draws things that connect to something. A character with no relationships, no faction and no home town has nothing to attach to yet. Give them one link and they appear, which makes the map a decent way to find the people you've left stranded.
How is this different from the family tree?
The family tree is about blood: generations in rows, marriages, children beneath their parents. The relationship map is about everything else as well, so a rivalry, a debt or a guild membership shows up there and never would on a tree. Most writers use both.
Can I download the character map as an image?
Not yet. You can go fullscreen, arrange it how you like and take a screenshot. Your characters and their relationships are also included in the full world export as Markdown files.
Is the Quill&Steel OS character relationship map free?
You can try it free for 14 days, with no card required. After that, the relationship map is included on every Quill&Steel OS plan. See pricing.