Frequently Asked Questions

Chaptered is a novel writing app that combines a distraction-free rich text editor with story planning tools — corkboard, outline, timeline, and plot grid — plus character, location, and lore tracking, all in one place.

Yes. The free plan includes one project, the full rich text editor, the manuscript binder, autosave, and DOCX export. Paid plans unlock story planning views, unlimited projects, additional export formats, and collaboration features.

Yes. Chaptered exports to DOCX on every plan, and to EPUB and PDF on paid plans, with customisable presets and a preview before you export.

Autosave works online on every plan. On Craft and above, offline edits are queued locally and synced automatically once you're back online, with a visual indicator showing sync status.

Yes. You can invite collaborators to a project by email and assign them viewer or editor access. Changes sync in real time across everyone's devices.

You can download a full project backup as a ZIP archive at any time and restore it later from the dashboard. Cloud backups in project settings use the same format, so your manuscript is never locked in.

Yes. You can publish chapters publicly or gate them behind Patreon membership tiers, with a dedicated reading page, content advisories, and genre tags to help readers find your work.

No. Your content is never used to train AI models — see our privacy policy for full details on what data we collect and how it's used.

The app interface is available in English, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, French and German. Grammar and spell checking supports multiple languages independently of the interface language.

You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your subscription at any time from account settings. See our refund policy for details on eligibility.

Chaptered autosaves as you type — watch the sync status indicator near the editor toolbar for a cloud icon confirming your changes have been saved. Your manuscript binder lists every chapter and scene so you can jump between them, and the main canvas is where you draft your prose.

Open the notes panel for a scene and start typing — use @ to mention a character or location and # to tag a note by topic, so it's easy to find later. Once you've addressed a note, check it off with the resolve checkbox to keep your notes list focused on what's still outstanding. You can add notes from the scene notes tab, the project notes panel, or directly in the margin next to your text.

Open the timeline view and drag scene cards from the tray onto the canvas to place them chronologically. Switch on lane mode to separate storylines or character arcs into their own rows, use the zoom controls to see anywhere from a single day to your whole manuscript at once, and turn on the story beat overlay to check your pacing against a structure template.

Add a lore entry from the Lore list and give it a category — like magic system, history, or culture — so related entries are easy to browse. Inside an entry, add aliases for alternate names, jot notes, and check the backlinks section to see every scene and character connected to it.

Open the character list from the reference drawer to see everyone in your story at a glance. Add a new character with the add button, and click a character's summary card to see which scenes they appear in or open their full profile for details like appearance, backstory, and relationships.

Add a location from the Locations list in the reference drawer. Inside a location's entry, record aliases for alternate names, keep notes on its details, and use the backlinks section to see every scene and character connected to it.

Select the text you want to flag in the editor and use the bubble menu to mark it as foreshadowing. Each entry gets a status pill showing whether it's still planted or has paid off, and you can adjust how confident you are that a clue reads clearly with the confidence toggle. Use the filter bar in the Foreshadowing list to focus on what's still unresolved.

Open the writing stats popover to run a grammar and style check on your manuscript. It flags issues like passive voice, repeated words, and grammar mistakes so you can review and fix them without leaving the editor. This is available on Craft plans and above.

Set a target word count and completion date for your project — a daily target is calculated automatically from what's left and adjusts around any days you mark as non-writing days. The goals page also tracks your writing streak and lets you run timed writing sprints.

Canvas is a freeform visual board alongside Corkboard, Outline, and Timeline. Add cards linked to your characters, locations, scenes, or lore, plus sticky notes with @-mentions and #tags, and organise them with colour-coded flair tags. Turn it on from editor preferences under "Advanced interface".

Corkboard shows your scenes as cards you can drag to reorder, each with a synopsis, POV, status, and word count. Outline shows the same scenes as a configurable list — add columns for word count, POV, status, story date, or tags, and click a title to open it in the editor.

Create named plotlines with colours from the Plotline Manager, then assign scenes to them on the Plot Grid — a matrix of plotlines against chapters, with a pacing strip showing scene density and gaps per plotline. Apply structure overlays like Three-Act, Save the Cat, or the Hero's Journey directly on the binder and timeline, and use the beat sheet view to assign scenes to specific beats.

Yes. Use the dashboard's Import backup wizard to bring in a Scrivener project (a .scriv package, zipped first on Windows). Binder folders, documents, manuscript text, synopses, labels, statuses, keywords, and snapshot history all carry over; non-text research files and screenplay-specific formatting don't transfer yet.

A snapshot is a point-in-time save of your whole project that you can restore or compare against the current version to see exactly what changed. A backup is a downloadable ZIP of the entire project for moving or archiving it elsewhere — snapshots stay inside the app for quick version history.

Readers create a lightweight account at /read/join with just an email and password — no separate authoring UI required. Signed-in readers can heart and comment on scenes, follow authors to get notified about new chapters, and connect their own Patreon account to verify tier memberships across every author they support.

As an author, you can publish a folder for free or gate it behind one of your Patreon membership tiers. Readers who aren't patrons of that tier see a locked-content prompt with a link to support you on Patreon, and can re-check their access once they've joined.

Published scenes can carry content advisories — like graphic violence, sexual content, or major character death — shown as a warning readers must acknowledge before continuing. Anyone can report published content, or an individual comment, for missing advisories, incorrect tags, spam, or other issues.

Switch between light, dark, and system theme from settings, and pick separate accent colours for light and dark mode. There's also a choice of gray tones — sand or taupe — for a warmer or cooler feel.

Free accounts get one project, not counting the built-in example project. Craft and Author plans are unlimited. At the limit, the dashboard hides the "new project" and "import" actions until you delete a project or upgrade.

Click the split-screen toggle in the editor toolbar to open a second pane, or press Ctrl+Shift+\ (⌘+Shift+\ on Mac). Load any scene into the secondary pane, switch between side-by-side and stacked layouts, and jump between panes with Ctrl+Shift+1 and Ctrl+Shift+2. Split view is available on the Craft and Author plans.

Toggle Composition mode from the editor toolbar to hide the binder, panels, and toolbars, leaving just your page. Choose a background texture for it in Preferences if you'd like something less stark. Composition mode is available on the Craft and Author plans — toggle it again to return to the normal layout.

Yes. Open Preferences → Editor and choose from five fonts (Lora, Merriweather, Source Serif 4, Instrument Sans, Courier Prime), adjust font size and line spacing, and toggle smart quotes. Typewriter scrolling keeps your current line centred on the screen as you type, instead of letting the page scroll past it.

These planning surfaces are hidden until you switch on "Advanced interface" in Preferences. On the Free plan they stay hidden either way — Timeline, Locations, and Lore need a Craft or Author subscription. Characters and Foreshadowing are the world-building panels available on every plan, with or without Advanced interface.

Open a scene and check the Characters, Locations, or Lore panel in the reference drawer — add entities manually, or let Chaptered detect mentions in your scene text automatically. Auto-detected matches can be excluded individually if they don't actually belong to that scene.

Flair tags are coloured labels you create and assign to cards on the Canvas board, useful for marking themes, story threads, or anything else you want to spot at a glance. Manage them from the flair picker on any card, and see your full set of tags in the Canvas legend.

Open a character's profile and add a relationship from the Relationships section — pick the other character and a label like "Mentor" or "Rival" from each character's perspective. Relationships show up on that character's profile and can be edited or removed at any time.

Each collaborator editing with you shows up as a coloured cursor with their name attached, so you can see where everyone is working in real time. If two of you edit the same spot, the changes merge automatically — there's nothing you need to do.

No. Margin comments are only visible to the project's author and to collaborators with editor access — anyone you've given viewer-only access can't see them, even though they can still read the manuscript itself.

Yes. When you export, use the scene-selection step to choose exactly which scenes or chapters to include, then pick a format and customise options like title page and chapter numbering. Save your selection as a preset if you want to reuse the same subset later.

Restoring a backup (from your backup settings) creates a brand-new project from that ZIP — your current project is untouched. Restoring a snapshot replaces the current project's contents with that snapshot's state; Chaptered automatically takes a "before restore" snapshot first so you can undo it. Snapshot restore isn't available on projects with collaborative scenes — restore individual scene versions from the editor instead.

Snapshot retention depends on your plan: Craft keeps scene versions for 60 days and project snapshots for 30 days; Author keeps scene versions for 180 days and project snapshots for 90 days. If a paid subscription lapses, Craft snapshots get a 30-day grace period and Author snapshots get 60 days before they're removed; downgrading to Free gives you a 7-day grace period to reactivate before older snapshots go.

Free gives you one project with the core editor and local backups. Craft adds unlimited projects, planning views (Corkboard, Outline, Timeline, Plot Grid), world-building panels, split view, Composition mode, grammar checks, goals and streaks, snapshots, and offline sync. Author adds everything in Craft plus publishing to the Hub, Patreon-gated tiers, real-time collaboration, and cloud backups.

From your account's billing settings, choose "Manage subscription." This opens your Paddle billing portal, where you can update your card, view invoices, and change or cancel your plan.

Yes. In your account preferences, you can toggle streak digest emails (a summary of your writing activity), product updates, follow notifications (when a reader follows you), and a follow-activity digest, independently of each other.

Every published chapter gets a share kit with a direct link plus one-click buttons to share on X and Bluesky, with preview text already filled in. Find it on your publication dashboard once you've published a chapter.

The first time you publish, you'll set a pen name, bio, and avatar — your pen name becomes the URL slug for your public author page. You can update any of these later from your publication dashboard.

Yes. From your publication dashboard you can turn comments off for a chapter, hide an individual comment, or block a specific reader from commenting on any of your published work.

Press Ctrl+K (⌘+K on Mac) from anywhere in the editor to open search. With split view on, Ctrl+Shift+\ toggles it, and Ctrl+Shift+1 / Ctrl+Shift+2 jump between the primary and secondary panes. Press Ctrl+Alt+Y (⌘+⌥+Y on Mac) with the cursor in a word, or use the Synonyms button on a selected word, to look up synonyms. Scenes in the Corkboard and binder can also be reordered by dragging.

Click the "?" icon in the corner to search the help FAQ — type a question or topic and matching answers appear as you type. If an answer is tied to a guided tour, a "Show me" button next to it replays that tour so you can walk through the feature step by step.

Chaptered works in a mobile browser and stays in sync across devices, but the editor is built for larger screens — panels like split view and the reference drawer get cramped on a phone. For serious writing sessions, a tablet or desktop gives the best experience.