Quick Start
Get writing in five steps.
1
Create your manuscript
Click + New manuscript on the dashboard, then either fill in a title to start from scratch, or use Import a .docx in the dialog's corner to bring in an existing file. Give it a title and you are in.
2
Add your first chapter
In the editor, open Chapters from the icon rail down the left edge and click + Add chapter. Type a title, then start writing in the body. Add more chapters the same way.
3
Build your story notes
Open Story Bible from the icon rail down the left edge for a directory of your Characters, Locations, Timeline, Notes and, on Premium, Plot Threads and Storylines. Pick one to open its panel, then use the buttons at the top of that panel to add an item or a group. The Planning Board has its own rail icon, and can import from, or add straight into, your notes; see the Planning Board section for how the two connect.
4
Organise as you go
Add chapter descriptions to keep track of how your story grows. Set writing goals to keep momentum. Hide the left side panel or use Focus mode when you need to concentrate. The tools are there when you want them and out of the way when you do not.
5
Export when you are ready
Open Tools from the icon rail and choose Export. Pick Word, PDF, or EPUB.
The Editor
The editor is the centre of Draftory Studio. Everything else supports it.
Title page
The first item in the Chapters panel is Title page. Click it to edit the book title, subtitle, and author name.
Below the card in the Chapters pane is Front & back matter: dedication, copyright page, about the author, and an also-by list, all optional. A button on the copyright field inserts standard copyright wording you can edit freely. Front and back matter carry through to your Word, PDF and EPUB exports, each with its own on/off switch in the export options; leave a field blank to leave that page out.
Chapters
Each manuscript is divided into chapters. Move between them with the ‹ and › arrows at the top of the editor, or pick one from the chapter dropdown between them. Open Chapters on the icon rail for the full list.
To add a chapter, click + Add chapter at the top of the Chapters panel. To delete a chapter, hover over it in the Chapters pane and click the bin icon. Deleted chapters cannot be recovered. To rename a chapter, click the pencil icon in the pane, or edit the title field at the top of the editor. To reorder, use the arrows in the pane or drag by the grip handle.
Subheaders, bold and italic
The formatting bar sits above the page and stays there while you write. It carries Bold, Italic, Highlight, Quote and Scene break, a paragraph menu with H1, H2 and Body, alignment, and the font, size and line spacing for the whole manuscript. Click the chevron at its end to fold it away when you want a clear page; it stays folded until you bring it back.
H1 and H2 turn the whole line into a subheader, at two sizes, and Body turns it back into normal text. Use them to break a long chapter into titled sections. Bold, Italic and Highlight apply to just the words you selected, for emphasis, a character's thoughts, or a title; you can also use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+B and Ctrl+I (Cmd on a Mac). Subheaders, bold and italic carry through to your Word, PDF and EPUB exports and to the clean reading view your beta readers see. Highlights are private to you and are left out of both (see Highlighting text below).
Subheaders always affect a whole line, so to make a few words stand out mid-sentence use bold or italic rather than a subheader. The font, size and line spacing at the left of the formatting bar apply to the whole manuscript, not just the line you are on.
Quotes and verse
To set a passage apart, a poem, an epigraph, song lyrics, a letter, or a block quotation, select the lines and click Quote in the formatting bar. The block becomes a centered, narrower column with its line breaks kept, exactly what verse needs. Click Quote again on a set-apart block to turn it back into normal prose. Like subheaders, it carries through to your Word, PDF and EPUB exports and to the clean reading view your beta readers see.
Chapter descriptions
Each chapter has an optional description field. In the Chapters pane, click the menu icon on any chapter to expand it. Use it for a beat outline, a note to yourself, or a short scene summary. Descriptions do not appear in exports.
Chapter statuses
Each chapter card in the Chapters pane has a small status badge. When no status is set it appears as a subtle Β· dot next to the chapter title. Click it to cycle through Draft, Revised, and Final, then back to unset. Use it to track where each chapter is in your writing process at a glance.
Word count and reading time
The Chapters pane shows a live word count and estimated reading time for the whole manuscript at the top, and per-chapter word counts next to each entry.
Writing insights
Open Tools on the icon rail and choose Insights, or run Manuscript insights from the command palette (Ctrl + K), to open a text analysis of your manuscript. It opens with a Manuscript overview (words, chapters, pages, minutes to read) and a Story notes count (characters, locations, timeline events, plot threads, storylines), a quick project overview at a glance. Below that is the text analysis: your most-used words (with common words filtered out), filler words that are easy to overuse, adverbs, and a bar chart of chapter lengths, alongside unique words, average sentence length, and vocabulary variety. Vocabulary variety is the share of your words that are unique; longer manuscripts naturally score lower, so watch how it changes over time rather than aiming for a set number. This is raw text analysis and is free on every plan. Common and filler words are filtered in fourteen languages (English, Estonian, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Turkish); the language is auto-detected, or set it yourself on the manuscript. Other languages show raw word counts. Adverb detection currently covers English (-ly) and Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (-mente).
Manuscript settings
Click Settings at the foot of the icon rail, or run Manuscript settings from the command palette (Ctrl + K), for the manuscript's own options. It carries the manuscript's language (used by the AI, Writing insights, and Smart quotes), its project word goal, the total length you are aiming for in this manuscript, which is free on every plan and also shown on your dashboard and Goals page, your scene-break style, and, on Premium and up, your writing goal: one number plus whether it is daily, weekly or monthly. That goal is about how much you write on this manuscript: each project carries its own, so a book you have set aside is not counted against the one you are writing.
Focus mode
Click Focus mode in the top bar to hide all panels. Press Exit focus or Esc to return.
Read aloud
On Premium and above, click the speaker icon in the formatting bar to have the current chapter read back to you. Hearing your prose is one of the best ways to catch clunky sentences, repeated words and missing beats that your eye skips over. A small bar appears with pause, stop, a speed control, and a voice picker; it defaults to a voice matching your manuscript's language where one is available. It uses your browser's built-in speech, so there is nothing to install and no daily limit. Formatting markers and scene breaks are skipped, so you hear clean prose.
The voices come from your device and browser, not from Draftory Studio, so which languages are available varies. Mac and iOS include voices for many languages; Windows ships only a few by default and lets you add more under Time & Language → Speech. Some smaller languages (Estonian, for example) may have no desktop voice at all. If your manuscript's language has no voice installed, read-aloud falls back to the default voice and tells you so.
Paper
In the Dark and Sepia themes, Settings on the icon rail offers a paper choice: keep the theme’s page colour, or switch to a plain white page, which in Dark mode gives a bright sheet against dark surroundings. Font, size, line spacing, alignment and paragraph style are on the formatting bar above the page. All are saved per device.
Auto-save
Draftory Studio saves your manuscript automatically as you write. After you stop typing, the editor waits a few seconds and then saves in the background. A small status indicator at the top of the editor shows the state, amber while saving and green once saved; hover it to see the exact time of the last save. There is no Save button to press and no need to save manually before closing the tab or navigating away.
Undo and redo
Press Ctrl+Z to undo and Ctrl+Y to redo (Cmd on a Mac). There are no undo and redo buttons in the editor: the shortcuts are what everyone reaches for, and leaving them out keeps the top of the page quiet.
Search and replace
Click the magnifier in the formatting bar, or press Ctrl+F while the editor is focused, to open the Find & Replace overlay. Type to find matches across all chapters and use ‹ › to navigate between them. Click ⇆ to reveal the replace row, then use Replace to swap the current match or All to replace every occurrence in the manuscript. Press Esc or click ✕ to close.
Highlighting text
Select any text and click the yellow swatch in the formatting bar to highlight it. That button is for adding a highlight only: once your selection is already highlighted, it disappears, since removing one is always done with the Γ described below rather than by reselecting the exact same text. Highlights are saved with your manuscript and stay put across sessions, but they are private: they never appear in your Word, PDF or EPUB exports, nor in the reading view your beta readers see.
Annotating highlights
Click on any highlighted span (without dragging to select) to open a small note popover. This is the only place to add or edit a comment. Annotated highlights show a dotted underline to distinguish them from plain yellow highlights; hover to preview the note as a tooltip. The Γ next to the Note label removes the highlight entirely, comment included. Notes are private to yourself: they are saved with your manuscript but never appear in exports or the reader view.
Highlights pane
Tools → Highlights on the icon rail lists every highlight in your manuscript as a card, grouped by chapter, with its comment shown underneath when it has one. It is a read-only overview: click a card to jump straight to that highlight in the editor (where you can add or edit its comment), or click the Γ to remove the highlight, comment included, without leaving the pane.
Themes
Choose between Classic, Dark, Sepia and Sky in Account settings, under Colour theme. The theme applies across the whole app, editor and dashboard alike, on every device you sign in on.
Manuscript language
Set the language your manuscript is written in from the manuscript card menu (⋮) on the dashboard, or from Settings at the foot of the editorβs icon rail. It drives three features: the AI analyses and responds in that language, Writing insights uses it to filter out common and filler words (supported in fourteen languages, including English, Spanish, French, German and Estonian), and Smart quotes picks the right quotation marks as you type: Estonian and German style ββ¦β, French style Β«β¦Β», English style ββ¦β everywhere else. Leave it on Auto-detect and the AI and Writing insights infer the language from your prose; Smart quotes uses the English style until a language is set. You can choose from 74 languages; AI features are fully supported in 18, see which languages are fully supported.
Version snapshots
A version snapshot is a saved copy of your entire manuscript at one moment in time. Think of them as your safety net and your milestones: take one before a big revision or a risky cut and you can always return to exactly what you had, and label the end of a draft so you can find it later. Snapshots are also how you share a stable version with beta readers, so your draft can keep changing without shifting under them (see Beta Readers).
Open Tools on the icon rail and choose Version Snapshots. From here you can:
- Save a snapshot of your current manuscript with an optional label, for example "End of chapter 3 draft". Up to 10 snapshots are stored per manuscript; saving an eleventh removes the oldest, unless a beta reader link is pinned to it.
- Restore a snapshot to roll the entire manuscript back to that saved state. You are asked to confirm before anything is overwritten. Restoring does not delete the snapshot. Tip: save a fresh snapshot of your current text first, so you can also come forward again.
- Delete a snapshot you no longer need. A snapshot that a share link is pinned to cannot be deleted until you revoke those links or switch that manuscript back to sharing live.
A snapshot is also saved automatically before a Replace All operation, labelled with the search term, so you can recover from accidental bulk replacements.
Scenes & Scene Breaks
Within a chapter you can mark scene breaks, the points where time, place, or viewpoint shifts. Your prose stays one continuous flow; a scene break is simply a divider line in the text, so the way you write does not change. Scene breaks are entirely optional: use them in every chapter, a few, or none at all.
Adding a scene break
Put your cursor where you want the break and click the scene break icon in the formatting bar above the page. A centred divider appears in the text. To remove a break, click its divider line in the editor; a tooltip confirms “Click to remove this scene break”.
Marker style
Open Settings on the icon rail and pick a scene-break style: * * *, a dash, or Blank. It sets what the scene-break button inserts and becomes the default scene-break style in the Export dialog. Blank is an export choice rather than an editor one: the editor always draws a visible divider so you can still see where your scenes end, and the break appears as blank space only in the exported file. Whichever you choose, the break is stored the same canonical way, so Word, PDF and EPUB exports and the reading view all render it correctly, and switching style later re-renders every existing break.
The scene list
In the Chapters pane, each chapter card holds its own scenes. Unfold a chapter, using the fold toggle beside its number, to see them listed in reading order; fold it again and they go with it, so a long book stays a list of chapters rather than a list of every scene in it. Click a scene's number to jump straight to that point in the editor.
Scene names
Each scene has a name box, like a chapter description but one level down. Use it for a one-line note on what the scene does, for example “first time they meet” or “the betrayal”. Names are written by you, save automatically, and never appear in exports.
A name belongs to its scene, not to its position. Reorder your chapters, or add a break above it, and the name stays with the prose it was written for. If that scene is on the Planning Board, the card's title is its name here, so renaming it in either place renames it in both.
Putting a scene on the Planning Board
Beside each scene's name is a round button. A + means this scene is not on the board yet: press it and you are asked which scene it is, choosing from the scenes planned for that chapter that nothing has been written for, or Add as a new scene if it was never planned. A marked ring means it is already on the board, and pressing it opens that card.
Under the list, n planned, not written yet counts the cards for that chapter with no prose behind them and takes you to the board. Nothing is ever matched by guesswork: a card holds a scene because you said so.
Scenes and AI
AI analysis works at the chapter level, not the scene level. The “Generate chapter descriptions” tool and the other AI features treat each chapter as a whole and read scene breaks inside it as structure, never as separate chapters. Scene descriptions are always your own notes.
Word count
Scene-break markers do not count as words, so adding breaks never changes your word count or reading time.
Left Rail Navigation
The icon rail down the left edge of the editor is how you get everywhere. Each icon is a destination; hover one to see its name. What it opens appears in a panel beside your manuscript, so your prose stays on screen.
The destinations
- Chapters. The chapter list, the title page, and front & back matter.
- Story Bible. A directory of Characters, Locations, Timeline and Notes, plus Plot Threads and Storylines on Premium, and the Visual Story Bible.
- Planning Board. Your scenes, chapter by chapter or as a map of the whole book, planned before you write them or read back from what you have already written.
- Style, Series, Summary, To-dos and Writing Coach. Each opens its own panel.
- Tools. Insights, Version Snapshots, Highlights and Export, the things you reach for occasionally.
- Settings. This manuscript’s own options.
- Help, the ? at the foot of the rail, opens this guide.
Your AI allowance sits in the top bar. Themes and your account details are in Account settings, reached from the dashboard.
Working in a panel
All cards load in compact, folded view. Click the fold toggle (▸) on any card to expand it. The buttons at the top of the panel add a new item or a new group without leaving it.
Use the breadcrumb at the top of the panel to go back up a level, for example from Characters to the Story Bible directory. The expand button beside it widens the panel to the full page when you want more room; the arrow beside that returns you to your manuscript.
Resizing the panel
Hover over the panel’s right edge until the cursor changes to a resize arrow, then drag to make it wider or narrower.
Reordering
Every card in the Chapters, Characters, Locations, Timeline, Notes, and Plot Threads panels has a grip handle (⠯) in the top-left corner of the card header. Hover the card to reveal the handle, then drag it to a new position. Section and group cards can be dragged the same way.
AI tab availability
The AI tab is only visible when you are viewing a full category. It is not shown when you have drilled into a group or a single item. Use the breadcrumb to return to the full category view and access the AI tab.
Characters
The Characters pane is your cast list and character bible in one place.
Adding characters
Click + Add character at the top or bottom of the pane, or add a character card from the Planning Board. Fill in the name, choose a role, and add as much or as little as you like. Fields autosave as you type.
Character roles
Roles help you sort and find characters quickly: Protagonist, Deuteragonist, Antagonist, Supporting, Background. The role also controls the default sort order.
Profile fields
Each card holds: Aliases, Physical description, Personality, Motivation, and Arc. These are free-text fields. Use them however makes sense for your story.
Aliases and nicknames
The Aliases field lets you list the other names a character goes by, separated by commas, for example Liz, Lizzy for a character named Elizabeth. Aliases are recognised anywhere a character is mentioned: a Timeline event, a location's characters field, an import, the Story Bible cross-links and visuals, or a Planning Board card. When you write a nickname, the app quietly treats it as that character, so it links and imports correctly. Your text is left exactly as you wrote it, the nickname is never rewritten to the full name.
AI character extraction respects aliases too. If the AI finds a character by a nickname you have already listed as an alias, it merges the details into that existing character instead of creating a duplicate.
Adding unknown names to the cast
Whenever a character field mentions a name that is not in your cast and is not a known alias, a small + Add to cast button appears next to it. Click it to create that character instantly, or dismiss the prompt with the β if the name is not really a character, such as a crowd or a group. This works the same whether the names were typed by you or filled in by the AI. It is an easy way to catch everyone who turns up in your Timeline or notes without leaving the pane you are in.
Relationships
Inside each character card, click + Add relationship to link two characters with a short description. This feeds into the relationship map.
Relationship map
Click Visual at the top of the pane to open an interactive relationship diagram. Every character is a node; every relationship is a line. Drag nodes to arrange the layout. The map is read-only; edit relationships from the card.
Groups
Click + Group at the top of the Characters panel to add a group, then type the group name in the heading it creates. Drag groups in the panel to reorder them. Use groups to separate your cast by faction, act, POV, or any other organising principle.
Each character card shows a full-width group badge below the role selector. Click the badge to open a dropdown and move that character to a different group instantly. When groups exist, a filter bar appears above the card list. Click any group pill to show only that group's characters. Click All to return to the full list.
To put several cards in a group at once, click Assign to group in the panel toolbar. Every card grows a tick box, and a bar at the foot of the list shows how many you have chosen; pick the group once and they all move, keeping the order they were already in. No group in that same menu takes them back out of a group. Cancel leaves everything as it was.
Adding a character follows the same filter: click + Add character while a group pill is selected and the new character joins that group. With All selected and any groups present, you are asked which group to add it to.
Groups can also have subgroups. Click the Β§ button on a group's own heading to add one, then name it in the chip that appears; a group can hold as many subgroups as you like. Subgroups are colour-tagged automatically, no need to pick a colour yourself. Once a group has subgroups, every character card inside it shows a small dropdown to assign it to one.
Locations
The Locations pane tracks every setting in your story.
Each card holds a name, time period, associated characters, a description, and a notes field. The time period field is especially useful for historical fiction or stories that revisit the same place in different eras.
Locations visual
Click Visual to see a diagram connecting each location to the characters associated with it. Useful for tracking who is where in complex scenes.
Groups
Click + Group at the top of the Locations panel to add a group, then type its name. Use groups to organise locations by region, country, time period, or any other category.
Each location card shows a full-width group badge below the title. Click it to move that location to a different group. When groups exist, a filter bar appears above the card list so you can focus on one area at a time.
To put several cards in a group at once, click Assign to group in the panel toolbar. Every card grows a tick box, and a bar at the foot of the list shows how many you have chosen; pick the group once and they all move, keeping the order they were already in. No group in that same menu takes them back out of a group. Cancel leaves everything as it was.
Adding a location follows the same filter: click + Add location while a group pill is selected and the new location joins that group. With All selected and any groups present, you are asked which group to add it to.
Groups can also have subgroups. Click the Β§ button on a group's own heading to add one, then name it in the chip that appears. Subgroups are colour-tagged automatically. Once a group has subgroups, every location card inside it shows a small dropdown to assign it to one.
Timeline
The Timeline pane is a chronological log of events in your story.
Each entry has an Event description, a Date / Phase (a narrative-time label such as "Three days later" or "Act II", not a chapter reference), Characters and Locations involved, and a Chapter reference. None of these fields are mandatory.
The Chapter field is free text: write it however makes sense to you, for example "Chapter 3", "Ch. 3", "3", or the chapter's exact title. It does not have to match a real chapter. Where it can be matched to one of your actual chapters, the Story Bible's Chapters Chronology groups that event under it. Where it cannot, perhaps because you are planning ahead of a chapter you have not written yet, the event still gets its own column there instead of disappearing.
Groups
Click + Group at the top of the Timeline panel to add a group, then type its name. Use groups to divide events by act, chapter, or time period.
Each timeline card shows a full-width group badge below the title. Click it to move that event to a different group without dragging.
To put several cards in a group at once, click Assign to group in the panel toolbar. Every card grows a tick box, and a bar at the foot of the list shows how many you have chosen; pick the group once and they all move, keeping the order they were already in. No group in that same menu takes them back out of a group. Cancel leaves everything as it was.
Adding an event works the same way: click + Add event, and if any groups exist, you are asked which group the new event should join.
Update chapters from the board appears next to it whenever an event's Chapter disagrees with the scene card it came from on the planning board, which happens when you move a scene to another chapter there. Events are matched to cards by title, only the ones that really disagree are touched, and it tells you how many before it changes anything. An event the board knows nothing about is left alone.
If your manuscript has chapters, Group by chapter builds the groups for you: one group per chapter, in chapter order, with each event in the chapter its Chapter field names. Chapters with nothing in them yet still get a group, so there is somewhere to drag events into, and events with no chapter stay above the groups. They are ordinary groups afterwards, so rename them, drag events between them, or drag a whole group elsewhere. It replaces the groups you had, and asks first; Undo, restore my groups appears next to it and puts them back for as long as the panel stays open.
Groups can also have subgroups. Click the Β§ button on a group's own heading to add one, then name it in the chip that appears. Subgroups are colour-tagged automatically. Once a group has subgroups, every event card inside it shows a small dropdown to assign it to one.
Visual timeline
Click Visual to open a horizontal timeline view. Events are in columns; section headers span the events they group. Useful for spotting pacing gaps and act breaks at a glance.
Two-way link with the Planning Board
The Timeline and the Planning Board feed each other, though not continuously. Promote a scene card to a new Timeline event with one click, or import Timeline events and their characters onto the board. See Where the cards come from in the Planning Board section for exactly how much, and how little, they stay in sync afterward.
Autosave
Timeline changes autosave two seconds after you stop typing. Click Save at any time for a manual save.
Notes
Notes are one of the entries in the Story Bible directory on the icon rail. Notes are organised by topic, not by chapter, which makes them the right place for research, a running to-do list, worldbuilding rules, or anything else that does not belong to a single chapter.
Groups
Click + Group at the top of the Notes panel to add a group heading. Use groups to divide notes by topic, project area, or however makes sense for you. Each note shows a group badge below its title; click it to move that note to a different group instantly. When groups exist, a filter bar appears above the list so you can focus on one topic at a time. Cards with no group are listed after every group, at the bottom, in all of these panels. Adding a group never sweeps them into it, and the up and down arrows will not carry a card in or out of a group; use the group badge on the card for that. Drag any note or group by its grip (β Ώ) to reorder it; dragging a note past a group heading moves it into that group.
Adding a note follows the same filter: click + Add note while a group pill is selected and the new note joins that group. With All selected and any groups present, you are asked which group to add it to.
Autosave
Notes autosave shortly after you stop typing. Click Save at any time for a manual save.
Plot Threads & Storylines
Plot Threads
Track the open questions and unresolved tensions in your manuscript. Each thread has a title, a status, associated characters, and notes.
Plot thread status
Each plot thread card has a status badge in the top-right corner of its header. When no status is set it shows as a subtle Β· dot. Click it to cycle through Open, Resolved, and Dropped, then back to unset. It works the same way as chapter status and saves automatically on each click.
Storylines
Map character arcs and subplots. Each storyline has a title, associated characters, and notes. Use storylines to track the emotional journey of each major character alongside the main plot.
Both panels feed into the Story Bible. On Max, AI extraction tools can read your existing text and suggest entries for either, useful if you never took notes as you wrote and want to catch up in bulk rather than re-reading and retyping everything by hand. You choose what to apply, and can always go back and edit your notes afterward.
Planning Board
The board works two ways round, and nothing asks you to pick one. Plan first: start with an empty board and build the story on it, adding scene cards before a word of them is written. Or take stock of what you already have: every scene you have written appears on the board by itself, so it is a picture of the draft as it stands rather than a plan you have to keep in step by hand.
Both ways in arrive at the same place, which is the point of it. Whichever end you started from, one board tells you how the draft is following the plan, where a thread has gone quiet, and which scenes are still waiting to be written. You can plan a little, write a little, and swap between the two as often as the book needs.
There are two views, and the pills across the top of the board switch between them: Scenes, a chapter-by-chapter list you arrange, and the Story Map, the whole manuscript at once. Characters and locations have no view of their own. They belong to the scenes they appear in, so you attach them from a scene card or from a chapter's own margin on the Story Map, and their full entries stay in the Story Bible.
Planning Board vs. Notes
Your story notes, meaning Characters, Locations, Timeline, Notes, Plot Threads and Storylines, is what your Story Bible is built from. The Planning Board is a separate workspace for brainstorming and visualising structure before, or alongside, committing it to Notes. Use the board to test different orderings and see the shape of your story; use Notes as the actual record the Story Bible reflects. See Where the cards come from below for exactly how the two connect, and how much they do, and do not, stay in sync automatically.
How each chapter is doing
Under every chapter heading, on both views, is a line of up to three counts. A part that is zero is left out, and a chapter you have not started yet says nothing at all.
- n written. Scenes in that chapter of the manuscript with words in them. It is counted from the manuscript rather than from the board, so it is right even if you have never put a card on the board at all.
- n to write. Cards in that chapter with no prose behind them yet. This is the number you act on.
- n not on the board. Written scenes that no card holds. It only appears where there is a plan for it to be out of step with.
The Scenes view
Each chapter is its own section, with a + Add card scoped to that chapter, and a Not yet in a chapter section for anything you have not placed. Move to chapter puts a card where it belongs, since a scene belongs to exactly one. Drag a card by its grip (⟿) to reorder it within its section; that never moves it to a different chapter, only its position among the others already there.
A card stays quiet until you reach for it. At rest it shows a dot that reads Not written yet until there are words behind it and then gives its word count, its title and notes, small coloured dots for the plot threads and storylines running through it, and lettered dots for the characters and locations in it. The grip, the colour, the delete and the chapter picker appear when you hover the card or reach it with the keyboard. On a touch screen they are always there, since there is no hovering to do.
Cast on a scene card is where you say who and where is in it: tick a character or location already in that chapter, or type a name to create one. Whatever you tick becomes the lettered dots on the card, and the same dots on the Story Map. Each dot carries the first letter of that name and is coloured by its kind, one shade for a character and another for a place. Hover a dot, or hold it on a touch screen, and it says which name it stands for.
Threads are set on the Story Map rather than here, but a scene's thread dots show on this card too, so you can watch the balance of your threads while you are arranging the scenes.
Plan, Written, or Both
A switch at the top of the Scenes view decides what is on screen. Both, which is where it starts, shows your plan and your draft together. Plan shows only the cards you put on the board. Written shows only what has words behind it. It filters the one list rather than building a second, so the chapter counts do not move with it: they always describe the whole chapter. Your choice is remembered for that book.
Scenes you have already written
A written scene that no card holds still appears in its chapter, drawn as an outline and marked in the manuscript, with its word count. Nothing is created to show it and nothing is written to your book: it is the manuscript, read where it stands, so a writer who never plans still opens a full board. Click its title to open it in the manuscript, or + Add to plan to give it a card you can plan with. The prose stays exactly where it is either way.
Scenes hold their own text
Expand a scene card and you can write the scene itself there, and not a copy of it: the words go straight into the chapter, in the place that card holds, and the same words are in the editor. The card's Brief, folded above the text, is what you meant to write; the text is what you wrote. A card holding no prose yet offers Write this scene, and a small dot on the card says at a glance whether its scene exists, with the word count beside it.
Keeping the board and the manuscript in step
Scenes come from one of two places, and Import asks which: Timeline events, a reconciling import, or The manuscript, which gives a card to every scene you have already written that no card holds. A scene with a name of its own arrives under that name; one without arrives under the words it opens on, which is a name to improve rather than a name to keep.
Your answer is remembered for this book. Choose the manuscript and the board keeps up with it on its own: split a chapter into more scenes and they are there the next time you open the board. It only ever adds. Delete a scene break and the card that held that scene stays, saying its scene is gone, rather than disappearing with work you may want back.
Above the chapters, n scenes in the manuscript are not on the board counts what the board does not account for, and offers to bring it all in at once. Its mirror is in the Chapters pane, which counts the scenes planned but not written, so neither view hides what the other knows.
Rearranging, then applying
Because a card holds its scene, moving cards between chapters, or reordering them within one, is a statement about where that prose belongs. It is not applied as you drag. The board shows Apply n moves to the manuscript whenever the book and the board disagree, and one click does the lot. A version snapshot is taken first, so the whole rearrangement is a single step back, and only the chapters a scene leaves or arrives in are rewritten.
Card colour
Click the small circle in a card's top corner to open its colour picker. This manual colour is separate from the Story Map's automatic per-thread colouring described below; it is just a way to mark or group cards visually however you like. The same picker, with the same saved palette, is also available on your manuscript cards from the dashboard: open a manuscript's card menu (⋮) and choose Card colour.
The top row is a fixed set of preset colours, the same four on both manuscript and planning cards. Click any swatch, preset or one of your own saved colours, to apply it; click again on None (✕) to clear it. To add your own colour, click the dashed + circle at the end of the preset row: it opens your browser's own colour picker, and whatever you choose is added straight to your saved palette in the next open slot. Picking a colour there only saves it to your palette. It does not change the card. Selecting a colour for the card is always the separate, explicit step of clicking a swatch. To remove a saved colour, hover it and click the small × badge that appears in its corner; hovering anywhere else on the swatch and clicking still selects it. Your saved palette holds up to eighteen colours and is shared across every manuscript and planning card.
The Story Map
The Story Map lays out your whole manuscript at once, built around what actually happens: each chapter is a row, and that chapter's scenes sit in it in reading order, left to right, in whatever order you drag them to. Every scene is coloured by the plot thread or storyline it advances, so a thread is a colour running through your scenes rather than a column of its own, and the board stays clean no matter how many threads you have. A scene on more than one thread takes the first one's colour, and every thread it is on shows as a dot, the same dots the Scenes view uses.
Characters and locations sit in the row's margin on the left, each with a coloured dot for its kind. Beside each name is one small dot per scene in that chapter, filled in where that character or place appears. Read left to right, it gives the shape of a presence across the chapter: who carries the opening, who disappears in the middle. Each dot is also the control, so clicking one puts that name into that scene or takes it out, and that scene's own card picks up the name's letter straight away.
The colour legend at the top is also a filter: click a thread to isolate just its scenes, and every chapter it skips reads as a visible gap, so you can trace one thread and spot where it goes quiet. Click again to bring everything back; click several to compare.
Each chip carries the number of scenes that advance that thread, and a final No thread chip counts the scenes on none, so you can see at a glance which threads are carrying the book and which have gone quiet. The chevron at the right of the key folds it away when you want the screen for the board; it stays folded until you open it again.
Each thread is given a colour automatically. To choose your own, click the colour dot on its legend chip and pick from your shared saved palette or the wheel, the same picker your cards use; every scene that thread colours updates to match, and None hands it back to the automatic colour.
Every chapter row has its own + add scene, and every row margin has + character / + location, all the same recognise-or-create box used everywhere else on the board. A scene card here carries two pickers: Threads (tick a thread to colour the scene by it and, if it does not exist yet, create it on the spot; a scene can advance more than one) and Chapter (move it to another chapter). Who is in a scene is set from the presence dots in the margin beside it, or from that scene's own card on the Scenes view. Between these, a whole plot can be built from nothing directly on the map.
Hover any card and it offers the places it can take you. A character, location, plot thread or storyline has one: the arrow, to its full entry in the left panel. A scene has two, because it lives in two places: the arrow goes to its timeline event in the Story Bible, and the page icon in the opposite corner opens the scene’s own text in the manuscript. The page icon appears only once that scene has been written, so a board built from what you have already drafted can be read either way round. Reopen the board and it returns to the view, and the place in it, you last had open.
Where the cards come from
Character and location cards linked to your cast stay in sync with the Characters and Locations panels. Create one from a scene's Cast picker, or from + character / + location in a row margin on the Story Map, and type a name. A name your notes already know is recognised and simply placed on the board.
A name they have never heard of is a question, not an assumption. The board asks whether to Add to characters, which writes a real entry in your notes as well as putting the card on the board, or keep it Just on the board, which puts nothing in your notes at all. Dismiss the question and nothing is created either way. The board is a place to think, so it does not add anyone to your cast without being asked.
A card kept on the board alone is not stranded there. Its chip on the Story Map carries + Add to characters or + Add to locations, which creates the entry whenever you are ready, and says so rather than making a second one if the name has since been added by hand. Plot threads and storylines are not asked about: they exist to colour scenes and have no life outside the board, so a scene's Threads picker creates them directly.
Starting on the board instead of in Notes? A scene card with no matching Timeline event yet offers + Add to timeline, which creates the entry right away, so it counts toward your Story Bible immediately.
Taking a name off the board
Hover a character or location chip in a chapter's margin on the Story Map and a × appears. It removes that card from that chapter, and with it the links saying which scenes the name was in. It does not touch your notes: the entry in Characters or Locations is not the board's to delete, the same way deleting a scene card never touches the prose.
The other direction does clean up after itself. Delete a character in the Characters panel, or a location in Locations, and its cards leave the board with it, so the Story Map does not go on showing a name whose entry is gone.
Import, on the Scenes view, goes the other way: it brings entries from your notes onto the board, each placed under whichever chapter its linked Timeline events put it in. It first asks where scenes should come from, your Timeline or the manuscript, as described above; imported from the Timeline, a scene brings its cast along when that is already known. Use it the first time to fill the board in from your existing notes, and again any time afterward to catch the board up: it reconciles rather than duplicates, adding anything new, removing cards for anything no longer in your notes, and moving a card if its chapter changed there.
None of this runs continuously in the background. A card only moves between the board and Notes at the moment you click Import or + Add to timeline. Moving a scene card to a different chapter on the board, for example, does not move its linked Timeline event: the event keeps whatever chapter is set on the Timeline event card itself, and that is what your Story Bible follows. To change where an event sits in the Story Bible, update its Chapter field on the Timeline event directly.
Summary & Style
Summary
A freeform panel for capturing your premise, central conflict, resolution direction, themes, and notes that do not fit elsewhere. Think of it as a scratchpad for the big picture. On Max, AI can also read your manuscript and suggest a summary for you to review and apply.
Style
Record your style guide: POV, tense, tone, voice, genre, audience, and influences. This is a reference for yourself, not a setting that affects the editor.
On Max, the AI can analyse your manuscript and fill these fields in for you, plus you get AI spell check and word repetition flagging in this pane.
Style Check
Scans your manuscript for weak verbs, filler words, clichΓ©s, and passive voice, line by line, with no daily limit. It is available on every plan.
This is not AI: it checks your text against a fixed list of words and patterns for each language, the same way a find-and-replace would, so there's no waiting and no usage limit. It won't catch everything a careful read (or the AI-powered Style Improvement coach tool) would, and it can occasionally flag a word that reads fine in context, but it is instant and free for a reason to skim your prose before you dig deeper.
It only works for English and Spanish manuscripts, since each language's word lists and grammar patterns are built by hand.
Story Bible
Click Story Bible on the icon rail, then Visual Story Bible, to open an interactive encyclopedia of your manuscript. Every character, location, timeline event, plot thread, storyline, and note becomes a clickable entry. Each entry shows its full details and everything connected to it, all cross-linked.
Use the Story Bible to answer questions like: which characters are connected to this plot thread? Which timeline events involve this location? Which storylines does this character appear in? Everything links to everything else, so you can follow threads across your notes without switching between panes.
The Story Bible also has a Chapters Chronology view, which groups your Timeline events by the Chapter field on each one, so you can see what happens in every chapter at a glance.
Each character, location, and timeline event entry also shows its group and subgroup, if it has one, right alongside its other details, so you can see how your cast, locations, and timeline are organised without leaving the Story Bible.
Click the download button in the Story Bible's header to export everything as a Word document: every section (Characters, Locations, Timeline Events, Plot Threads, Storylines, Notes) with its groups and subgroups laid out the same way they're organised on screen.
Series & Collections
A collection groups multiple manuscripts in reading order. Create one from the dashboard using New series in the sidebar, then assign manuscripts to it from their card menu.
Inside any manuscript that belongs to a collection, the Series tab gives you an overview of all books: word counts, character lists, and notes at a glance.
Copy notes between books
In the Series tab, use Copy notes to copy Characters, Locations, Timeline entries, Summary, Style, Plot Threads, or Storylines from one book to another. Only new items are added; nothing already in the target book is overwritten.
Appears in
On character and location cards, tick which books in the series each entry appears in. This keeps your series bible accurate as the cast and world grow across books.
AI Features
AI features are available on Max. The extraction and analysis tools live in the AI tab at the top of the relevant panel. The AI tab is only visible when you are viewing a full category, not a single item or a group; click the category name in the breadcrumb to go back to it. The Writing Coach is different: it has its own Writing Coach icon on the left rail rather than a tab inside another panel. A daily usage counter in the header shows how many of your 50 credits you have used.
All AI features respect the manuscript language you have set from the manuscript card menu (⋮) on the dashboard. Leave it on Auto-detect and the AI will infer the language from your prose. AI features are fully supported in 18 languages; see the FAQ for the full list.
AI Tools Max
Extract characters
Choose a scope (full manuscript, current chapter, or a selection), then run. The AI finds every named character it can, including minor and background characters, and shows you the results to review. Choose to apply them and existing characters get their notes filled in, while anyone not already listed gets a new character card, all editable afterwards.
Extract locations
Identifies every significant setting and shows you the results to review. Choose to apply them and existing locations get their notes filled in, while anyone not already listed gets a new location card with a description, time period, and associated characters.
Extract timeline
Finds a timeline entry for every distinct scene: where and when it takes place, what happens, and who is present. On full-text scope the AI works through each chapter separately and stamps the chapter label automatically. Review the results and click to add them to your Timeline, nothing is created until you do.
Generate summary
In the Summary pane, generate a structured premise from your manuscript: premise, central conflict, resolution direction, themes, and notes. Useful for retroactively documenting a draft.
Chapter descriptions
Two ways to generate one: in the Chapters pane's AI tab, Generate chapter descriptions defaults to the current chapter, or switch its scope to Full text to draft one for every chapter at once. Or open a chapter card's own description box, switch its Manual/AI toggle to AI, and click Generate description to draft one for just that chapter, regardless of which chapter is open in the editor. Either way, review the draft and click to apply it before it is saved to that chapter's description.
Spell check
Select Current chapter or a highlighted selection, then run. Checks spelling and grammar with an understanding of fiction: skips character names, invented words, and stylistic choices. Does not run on full-manuscript scope.
Style and prose analysis
Analyses POV, tense, tone, voice, genre, target audience, and dialogue ratio. Available for full manuscript, current chapter, or a selection.
Word repetition flagging
Identifies overused words and repetitive phrases, with suggested alternatives for each.
Plot thread identification
Maps every major plot thread, tagging each as Open, Developing, or Resolved. Useful for surfacing threads you have forgotten and checking that nothing is left dangling.
Storyline mapping
Identifies character arcs and subplots, listing the characters involved and how each storyline progresses. A fast way to build out your Storylines panel from an existing draft.
Series continuity analysis
In the Series tab, choose two to five books from the series and run. You get one report on them together, in five parts: continuity issues, character consistency, timeline gaps, thematic threads and series notes, with each point naming the book it comes from. From each book it reads the first 60,000 characters (roughly the first 10,000 words), so a long book is compared on its opening chapters.
AI Writing Coach Max
Eight targeted tools for improving your prose at the chapter or passage level. Select a chapter or highlight a passage, then choose a tool. Results are saved in the AI log.
Show, don't tell
Flags tell-heavy passages and suggests rewrites using action, dialogue, or sensory detail.
Dialogue improvement
Spots unnatural lines, characters who sound too similar, and filler that could be cut.
Pacing and rhythm
Flags sentence and paragraph patterns that work against the scene's emotional tempo.
Sensory details
Highlights scenes where adding sensory detail would pull the reader deeper.
POV consistency
Flags point-of-view slips within scenes and shows how to fix them.
Style improvement
Concrete suggestions for sentence variety, word choice, clarity, and voice consistency.
Character name consistency
Catches the same character referred to by different spellings or names. Grammatical inflections are not flagged. This check reads your cast from the Story Bible, so add your characters there first: it compares what your prose says against the names and aliases you have declared, and with an empty cast it has nothing to measure against.
Continuation prompts
Generates five grounded scene prompts when you are stuck, rooted in your existing characters, setting, and plot.
AI daily allowance
Max has a single pool of 50 credits a day, shared across every AI feature: extractions, analysis, spell check and the Writing Coach all draw on the same allowance, so you can spend it wherever you actually need it.
A scan costs one credit per 5,000 words, always rounded up and never split: a 2,500-word chapter and a 5,000-word one both cost one credit, and 5,001 words costs two. A full-manuscript scan reads up to the first 300,000 characters, roughly 50,000 words of typical prose, and is charged only for what it reads. Scanning each chapter as you finish it costs less than re-scanning the whole manuscript every time. Series continuity is charged the same way, on the text it reads from the books you choose. The allowance resets at midnight UTC.
Export
Open Tools on the icon rail and choose Export. Three formats are available:
- Word (.docx). Exports the full manuscript with chapter titles and body text.
- PDF
- EPUB. Ready for e-readers and self-publishing platforms.
Chapter subheaders and inline formatting (bold and italic) carry through to all three formats, along with your chosen scene-break style. Highlights and their comments are private and are left out of exports.
Exports contain your prose only. Left-panel notes (characters, locations, timeline, etc.) are not included.
Writing Goals
Set a writing goal in Settings on the editorβs icon rail, or on a projectβs Goals and progress page from the dashboard. Both write the same setting, so you can use whichever you are nearer. A goal is one number plus the period it applies to, daily, weekly or monthly, and it belongs to that project: each one is tracked against its own goal. Your progress appears as a chip at the top of the editor. Daily goals also show a streak counter tracking how many consecutive days you have hit your target.
Writing sprints
On Premium and above, click the timer icon in the formatting bar to run a timed focus session. Pick a length (15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes, or your own) and an optional word target, then start writing. A small bar shows the time remaining and the words you have written so far, with pause and stop controls. When the timer ends, or you stop early, you get a summary: words written, your words per minute, and whether you reached your target. Each finished sprint is saved, so it is a simple way to build momentum and a daily writing habit.
Writing stats
On Premium and above, open Writing stats from the dashboard sidebar for a bird's-eye view of your writing over time: a calendar heatmap of the words you wrote each day over the past year, your current and longest streaks, total words, days written, your recent pace, and a summary of your writing sprints. It is a nice way to watch momentum build across weeks and months.
Weekly progress email
On Premium and above, Draftory Studio can send you a short weekly summary of what you wrote and how you tracked against your goals. It is optional: turn it on or off under Account → Email notifications in your dashboard, and every email carries a one-click unsubscribe link. If you have not set any goals, the email simply reports your word count for the week.
Workflows
Starting a novel from scratch
There is no single right place to begin. Some writers start in the editor and let the prose lead; others build their story notes first; plotters go straight to the Planning Board to lay out the structure before writing a word. All three approaches work, so pick the one that suits how you think.
- Create a new manuscript and give it a working title.
- If you like to plan: open the Planning Board and add a scene card under each chapter you already know the shape of, or leave them in "Not yet in a chapter" until you do, saying who is in each one from the card's Cast picker. Or open Story Bible on the icon rail to add Characters, a Timeline, and a Summary before you start drafting.
- If you prefer to write first: add your first chapter and start. Fill in your story notes as you go.
- Either way, a short entry in the Summary tab is worth doing early: what is the story about, and what is at stake? It does not need to be good. It just needs to exist.
Everything in your story notes can be updated as the story evolves. It is not a contract.
Importing a draft you have already written
- Click + New manuscript on the dashboard, then Import a .docx in the dialog's corner. If your Word file has Heading 1 styles on chapter titles, chapters are detected automatically.
- If no chapters are detected, a warning appears with guidance on formatting. You can also add chapter breaks manually after import.
- Once chapters are loaded, run the AI extraction tools (Max) to populate Characters, Locations, and Timeline from your existing prose. A retroactive story bible without retyping anything.
- Review the extracted entries and correct anything the AI misread. Character names are occasionally confused when a character is referred to by title or nickname only.
Each manuscript can hold up to 500,000 words, and an uploaded Word file must be under 3MB. If your draft is longer, split it into parts (by book, act, or volume) and upload each as its own manuscript.
Planning before drafting (plotter workflow)
- Create your manuscript and write a premise in the Summary tab.
- Add your characters before writing any prose. Give each one a role, a motivation, and an arc direction.
- Build your Timeline with the major story beats, using sections to divide by act.
- Open the Planning Board. Add a Scene card for each major beat, placed under the chapter it belongs to once you know which one, or left in "Not yet in a chapter" while you are still figuring out the order.
- On the Story Map, use each scene's Threads picker to colour-code it by the plot thread or storyline it belongs to, creating threads on the spot as you go, so gaps in a thread become visible at a glance.
- When the structure feels solid, start writing chapter by chapter. The board already shows every chapter at once, so there is nothing to switch: keep placing and refining cards under the same board as you draft.
Managing a series
- Create each book as a separate manuscript on the dashboard.
- Create a collection and add all books in reading order.
- Open the first book, go to the Series tab, and tick "Appears in" for each character and location.
- When starting a new book, use Copy notes in the Series tab to bring across relevant characters, locations, and timeline entries. Only new items are added.
- Before each new instalment, run AI series continuity analysis (Max) to check for anything that contradicts a previous book.
Getting unstuck with AI
If you are stuck, the Continuation prompts tool (Max) generates five grounded scene ideas based on what you have written.
On Max, there are still useful approaches:
- Run Extract timeline on the current chapter. Reading the AI summary of events so far often clarifies what needs to happen next.
- Run Style analysis on a recent chapter. Identifying what is weak in the prose often reveals why a scene is not landing.
- Open the Story Bible and read the full entry for your protagonist. Their profile, arc, and connections sometimes surface an obvious next beat.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Press Ctrl + K (Cmd + K on Mac) to open the command palette: a searchable launcher to jump to any chapter or panel and run actions like focus mode, version snapshots and export. Type to filter, move with the arrow keys, and press Enter.
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|
| Command palette | Ctrl + K (Cmd on Mac) |
| Find & Replace | Ctrl + F (Cmd on Mac) |
| Undo | Ctrl + Z (Cmd on Mac) |
| Redo | Ctrl + Y (Cmd on Mac) |
Beta Readers
Share your manuscript with readers and collect their feedback, all without leaving Draftory Studio. There are two ways to share, and you can use both at the same time.
Two ways to share
Public link. Create a link that anyone can open in their browser. No account is needed. Reviewers type their name to leave feedback. Good for friends, a beta group, or anyone outside Draftory Studio.
Beta reader network. Share with readers inside Draftory Studio who are matched to your genre and language. Their feedback is signed with their username automatically. You need to join the network to use this.
Both options collect per-chapter notes and an overall comment.
Joining the beta reader network
Open Beta Readers in your dashboard sidebar and select the Network Profile tab, the first tab in the row. Turn on Network membership, then choose whether you want to share your writing, read for others, or both. You can add an optional profile pitch, and an Instagram handle if you are 18 or over, from the same tab. Joining lets you share your work with matched readers, invite specific readers, appear in the member directory, and, if you choose to read, discover manuscripts from other writers. Your profile is visible only to other logged-in members and is never public on the web. Leave any time from the same tab, or with the Leave the network button in the Network directory. Without joining you can still create public links.
Creating a public link
Go to Beta Readers in your dashboard sidebar and open Share your work. Select a manuscript using the tab bar at the top. Under step 3, enter an optional label (for example, beta round 1) so you can tell your links apart, then click Create link. The link is copied to your clipboard automatically. To share only specific chapters, set the scope under step 2 first.
Finding readers in the network
In step 3 of Share your work, the beta reader network panel gives you two options. Turn on Open to all matching readers to list the manuscript in Discover for every reader whose genre and language match, who can then start reading on their own. Or use invite specific readers to send a direct invitation to a chosen reader. Set the manuscript genre under step 1 so the network can match you.
Reading for other writers
First turn on Read for others in the Network Profile tab and choose the genres and languages you read in. Then open the Read for others tab under Beta Readers: the Discover tab lists manuscripts open to the network that match your preferences, the Invitations tab shows direct invitations you can accept or decline, and Reading history tracks what you are reading along with your reading and reviewed counts.
The Network directory
The Network tab under Beta Readers lists other members so you can discover writers and readers by role, genre, language, and name. It is visible only to members who have joined. Reader cards include an Invite to read button so you can invite them to one of your manuscripts.
What readers see
The link opens a clean reading view with the manuscript text only and no editor controls. A Leave a note button stays in the lower-right corner so readers can add a note on the chapter they are reading, and an Overall thoughts box at the end collects a general comment. Network readers are signed in automatically. Public readers are asked for their name before they can start reading at all.
Live manuscript or a fixed version
Under step 2, What readers see, you choose whether links share your live manuscript or a fixed version:
- Live manuscript (the default): readers always see your latest text, including edits you make after sending the link. Good for an ongoing look while you write.
- A fixed version: readers see a snapshot frozen at the moment you chose it, so you can keep revising without the text shifting under them mid-read. Choose A fixed version, then pick an existing version snapshot from the list or click Save current draft as a version to freeze the current text.
The choice applies to new links and invitations. Links you already created keep the version they were made with, so you can give one group a fixed "round 1" version and later share a newer version with a second group without disturbing the first.
Reading the feedback you receive
All feedback appears together under step 4, Feedback, of Share your work, with each entry tagged as a public link or a beta reader. The summary at the top shows total views and notes, and how many readers are currently reading, finished, or did not finish.
Managing links and access
Use Edit access on any link or invited reader to change which chapters they see, or switch them between the live manuscript and a fixed version, without creating a new link or losing the notes they already left. Use Copy link to copy a public URL again at any time. Use Revoke to cut off access immediately; the link stays in your list so you keep the notes left by readers. Delete removes a link permanently along with every reader note and view record attached to it, and cannot be undone.
Turning feedback into to-dos
Next to any piece of feedback under step 4, Feedback, turn on Actionable and add a short note about what you plan to do with it. The item then appears in a new To-dos section inside the manuscript editor, so you can see everything you are acting on without leaving the page you are writing in.
- Click the status on a to-do to cycle it through To-do, In progress, and Done as you work through it.
- Turning a piece of feedback back off removes it from the To-dos list, but keeps your note and status, so marking it actionable again brings them both back.
Keeping shared manuscripts secure
Before anyone can read a shared manuscript, whether through a public link or the beta reader network, they must agree not to copy, redistribute, or publish it without your permission. This appears the first time they open the link, before any of the text itself is shown.
Every page they read afterward also carries a quiet watermark with their name. It stays out of the way of reading, but if a copy ever surfaces somewhere it shouldn't, it points back to whoever's copy it came from.
FAQ
Does the app autosave?
Yes, in all panels. The editor autosaves after every pause in typing. Timeline and Locations autosave two seconds after you stop typing. Characters, Plot Threads, and Storylines autosave field by field. The Save button in each panel is there for a manual save if you prefer to be certain.
What is included in each plan?
Basic (free): unlimited manuscripts, with the full editor (unlimited chapters and scene breaks), a story bible of 10 characters, 10 locations, 20 timeline events and 15 notes per book, Summary, Style guide and style detection, writing insights, version snapshots, sharing with beta readers one live link at a time, and Word export.
Premium (€4.99/month or €49/year): everything in Basic with no limits on the story bible or on live reading links, plus the visual Story Bible, the Planning Board and Story Map, Plot Threads, Storylines, Series and collections, word goals with finish dates and a suggested pace, streaks and sprints, turning beta reader feedback into tracked to-dos, and PDF and EPUB export. No AI.
Max (€12.99/month or €129/year): everything in Premium, plus every AI feature: extract characters, locations, timeline, summaries and chapter descriptions from your own text; AI spell check and word repetition; prose style analysis; plot thread and storyline analysis; series continuity checks; and the AI Writing Coach (eight tools). 50 shared AI credits a day.
What happens to my work if I cancel my subscription?
Your manuscripts are never deleted. Your account reverts to free Basic at the end of your billing period, and you keep full read and export access to every manuscript you have created. A story bible larger than Basic holds keeps every entry in it: you can still read, edit, group and prune all of them, you simply cannot add new ones until you re-subscribe. Word export is available on every plan; PDF and EPUB export come with Premium and Max.
Can I import from Scrivener?
Not directly. Export your Scrivener project to a Word file first, then upload that to Draftory Studio. Most structure carries over cleanly if you use Word Heading styles for chapter titles.
How does the daily AI allowance work?
Max has a single pool of 50 credits a day, shared by every AI feature: extractions, analysis, spell check and the Writing Coach all draw on the same allowance.
A scan costs one credit per 5,000 words of the text it reads, always rounded up and never split: a 2,500-word chapter and a 5,000-word one both cost one credit, and 5,001 words costs two. A full-manuscript scan reads up to the first 300,000 characters, roughly 50,000 words of typical prose. Series continuity is charged the same way, on the text it reads from the books you choose. The allowance resets at midnight UTC.
The AI extracted the wrong character name. Can I fix it?
Yes. Every extracted entry is fully editable. The AI is good at finding characters but occasionally confuses names for characters referred to by title, nickname, or pronoun only. Just edit the card directly.
Which languages are supported?
You can set your manuscript language to any of 74 languages from the card menu (⋮) on your dashboard, or from Settings at the foot of the editorβs icon rail. Three features use that language, with different coverage:
Writing insights filters common and filler words in 14 languages: English, Estonian, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Turkish. Adverb detection covers English (-ly) plus Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (-mente). Other languages still get insights, but with raw word counts and no filler or adverb list.
The AI is fully supported in 18 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Korean, Estonian, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Polish and Turkish. It analyses and responds in your manuscript's language; for other languages it will still try to help, but quality may vary.
Smart quotes automatically inserts the right quotation marks as you type: Estonian and German use ββ¦β, French uses Β«β¦Β», and every other language (including Auto-detect) uses the standard ββ¦β style.
What happens when I delete a share link?
Deleting a link is permanent. It removes the link itself, every reader note left on it, and the full view history. Readers who try to open the link afterwards will see an error. If you only want to stop new readers from accessing the link while keeping your notes, use Revoke instead.
Can I share my manuscript with beta readers?
Yes. Open Beta Readers in your dashboard sidebar, select a manuscript, and click Create link. You can share the full manuscript or specific chapters. Readers open a clean reading view in their browser and can leave per-chapter notes and an overall comment. No account is needed on their end. See the Beta Readers guide for full details.
What is the beta reader network and how do I join?
The beta reader network is a community of writers and readers inside Draftory Studio. As a member you can share your work with readers matched to your genre and language, read and review other writers' work, and appear in a member directory that other members can browse by role, genre, and language. To join, open Beta Readers and select the Network Profile tab, the first tab in the row. Turn on Network membership and choose whether to share your writing, read for others, or both, so you decide exactly what you are signing up for. Your profile is shown only to other logged-in members and is never public on the web. You can leave at any time, and you can still create public share links without joining. See the Beta Readers guide for how matching, invitations, and the directory work.
If I change my reading genres, do I keep what I am already reading?
Yes. Changing your genres only affects what the Discover tab suggests next. Anything you have already started stays in your Reading history with your notes intact, and any invitations you have received remain. Discover updates to your new genres the next time you open it.
Can I use Draftory Studio on mobile?
The app works in mobile browsers but is optimised for desktop. We recommend a laptop or desktop for longer writing sessions.
Is my writing stored securely?
Yes. All manuscripts are stored in a managed PostgreSQL database hosted by DigitalOcean. Data is encrypted at rest with LUKS and in transit with SSL. We do not read your content. See our Privacy Policy for full details.
Can multiple people work on the same manuscript?
Not currently. Draftory Studio is designed for solo writers. Collaboration is on the long-term roadmap.
Is there a word count limit per manuscript?
No. Write as long as you need. Very long manuscripts (roughly over 60,000 words) may be processed in sections by the AI extraction tools; any truncation is noted in the results.
Pride and Prejudice demo