How Novelle works.

Getting started

Everything starts on your shelf. Type a title into Name your next work…, press Begin writing, and you have a work with a blank Chapter 1 waiting. Already have a draft somewhere? Choose Import instead and bring in a .docx, .md, .txt, or .html file. There is more on that in Importing a manuscript.

Each card on the shelf shows how many chapters you have, how big the cast is, and how many words you have written. Give any chapter a word goal and a progress bar shows up on the card. Once you have a few works, a search box and a couple of filters appear above the grid so you can find things quickly.

The trash icon on a card deletes that work, chapters, lore, notes, map and all. There is no undo, so please read the confirmation before you click through it.

The editor

Chapters

Your chapters sit in the rail on the left. The + button adds a new one at the end, and you can drag the grip handle to put them in whatever order you like. To rename a chapter, just edit the big title at the top of the page. Press Enter or the down arrow when you are done and your cursor drops into the body.

Chapters with more than one scene list them underneath in the rail. Click a scene to jump to it. Drag one to change the order, or drop it on another chapter to move it there; the text goes with it. Scenes are named after their first words until you give them a title: double-click one, or use the pencil that appears on hover. Titled scenes show their name above the break in the manuscript.

To rename the work itself, click its title in the top bar. Enter saves, Esc backs out.

Autosave

Novelle saves about a second after you stop typing, and right away if you press ⌘S. Watch the status bar: it says Saving…, then Saved just now. If a save ever fails you will see Save failed — retry; click it and we try again. That said, please keep your own copies of anything you would be sad to lose. Autosave keeps you from losing an afternoon, but it is not a backup.

Formatting

The toolbar has the usual suspects: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, three heading sizes, lists, blockquotes, and links. For a scene break, put *** on a line by itself or use the asterisk button. For a page break, put --- on a line by itself; whatever follows starts at the top of the next page, on screen and in print.

The Style popover is for how the page looks while you write: the typeface, the text size, the shape of the page. Those settings live in your browser and never touch the text itself, so change them as often as your mood does.

Word counts and goals

The status bar keeps a running word count for the chapter, the number of pages at your chosen page size, and a rough reading time. If the number is stressing you out, the eye icon hides it for that chapter. Set goal gives a chapter a target, and the shelf adds those targets up into the progress bar on the card.

Focus mode

Press ⌘. or click Focus and everything but the page gets out of the way. The highlighter control goes one step further and dims every paragraph except the one you are in. Esc brings it all back.

Living lore

Lore is where your people, places, factions, and anything else with a name live. Add an entry with the + next to Lore in the left rail. Each one gets a name, a type, a description, and a portrait if you want one.

Mentions

Type @ in the manuscript and pick a lore entry or a chapter. The mention shows up as a quietly underlined name in your prose. Hover it for a quick card, click it to open the whole entry, or use Unlink on the card if you want the words back without the link. You can also highlight some text you have already written, right-click, and choose Link to lore.

Relationships

Inside an entry, Relationships ties it to other entries with a little label, something like knows, fears, or member of. Those ties are the threads the Constellation draws.

Portraits

Save the entry first, then drop a PNG, JPEG, WebP, or GIF onto the portrait area or press Upload. Anything up to 8 MB is fine, and you can drag the image around to fix the crop. Generate asks the AI to paint a portrait from the description. It replaces whatever image is there, so upload after generating if you change your mind.

Facts and contradictions

After you edit a chapter, Novelle quietly reads it in the background and jots down what it learned about each entry under Auto-noticed in your chapters. When two chapters disagree about something, the pair shows up under Possible contradictions with a note about why. Fiction is full of contradictions on purpose, so if a flag is wrong or intentional, dismiss it with the X and it stays dismissed. This background reading needs AI on your plan, and it can take a few minutes to catch up after a burst of writing.

The Margin

The Margin is the editor who sits beside your draft. Open it with the Margin button in the toolbar. You hand it a passage or a question, it answers in the panel, and that is as far as it goes: it never changes a word of your manuscript on its own.

Modes

• Free is just a conversation about the book.
• Critique gives you blunt editorial notes on a passage. The Use selection, Recent writing, and Current chapter buttons drop text straight into the prompt so you do not have to paste.
• Brainstorm hands back a handful of options, from the safe choice to the strange one.
• Lore helps you draft entries. Under a reply, Update lore entry shows what a merged description would look like. Nothing is saved until you press Confirm update.
• Fact check holds a passage up against your lore and your earlier chapters.

For a quick note without opening the panel, highlight some text, right-click, and choose Critique selection, or run Critique selection with AI from the command palette. The critique appears just below the page.

What it knows

Every reply can see the project title, the synopsis, your style notes, and your lore entries, plus whatever you paste or insert. Fact check also reads the manuscript. Project notes come along only when their settings allow it, and a reply that leaned on them says Used N notes. The conversation itself stays in your browser; Clear wipes it.

Learn style

Learn style reads your chapters and writes a short profile of your voice. From then on that profile rides along with every prompt, so suggestions sound like you rather than like a model.

Notes, timeline, and map

Notes

Notes is a board for ideas, open questions, continuity reminders, research, and the revisions you keep promising yourself. A note can link to chapters, lore, and timeline beats, carry tags, and be pinned to the top. The Include in AI when relevant checkbox decides whether the Margin is allowed to read it, and the gear icon sets how freely notes get pulled in: Off, Conservative, Balanced, or Broad. If you are mid-chapter and just want to jot something down, the Margin's Notes tab adds a quick note for the chapter you are in.

Timeline

Timeline lays your beats out along a spine, grouped by chapter. Each beat has a title, a moment, a description, a tone, a tension level, a chapter, and the cast involved. The line running across the top is the tension of the book, rising and falling as you go.

Constellation

Constellation draws your lore as stars and their relationships as threads between them. Drag the stars around until the picture makes sense to you; the layout is saved. Click one to light up its connections, or double-click to open the entry. Connect starts a new thread: click the first star, then the second, then say what the thread means.

Story map

The Map toggle on the Constellation page lets you upload an image of your world, up to 10 MB. Drag lore entries from the side list onto it to pin them, and double-click anywhere to leave a note. Swapping in a new image keeps your pins and notes. Removing the map deletes them.

Importing a manuscript

From the shelf, choose Import and drop in a .docx, .md, .txt, or .html file up to 10 MB. Novelle looks for chapter breaks the sensible way first, in Word headings, then in lines like Chapter Three or Prologue. If neither turns anything up it may ask the AI for help, or simply treat the whole file as one chapter you can split later.

Nothing is saved until you say so. Rename chapters, skip the ones you do not want, or merge a chapter into the one before it, then press Import N chapters. The import is all or nothing and lands as a new work on your shelf.

Imported chapters are not read by the background analyzer until you edit them, so facts and contradictions fill in gradually as you work your way through the draft.

AI, plans, and limits

The AI features need a plan that includes them. If yours does not, you will get a plain message saying so rather than a mysterious failure. Occasionally we may pause AI for everyone while we deal with cost or abuse; when that happens the message says so too.

To keep things fair, every account has limits per minute, hour, and month on AI calls, image uploads, portrait generation, and imports. If you run into one you will see Too many requests. Make a cup of tea and try again in a bit.

Treat anything the AI writes as a draft, not a fact. It can be wrong, repeat itself, or drift close to something the model has read before. Read what you keep. The Privacy & AI page spells out exactly what each feature sends to the model providers.

Account and appearance

Your avatar in the top bar opens your account, where you can change your email, your password, and any connected sign-ins. Log out is right next to it.

The palette icon opens Appearance: light or dark mode, ten accent colors, and four backdrops. Those choices are stored in your browser, and you can flip them from the command palette too.

To delete a work, use the trash icon on its shelf card. To delete your whole account, email support@writenovelle.app from the address on the account and we will take care of it.

Keyboard shortcuts

On Windows and Linux, read Ctrl wherever you see ⌘.

Getting help

The Help button in the corner of every page opens a short form that comes straight to us. Tell us what you were doing and what you expected to happen; a screenshot never hurts. You can also email support@writenovelle.app. We answer by email, usually within a day or two.

For how we handle your writing, see Privacy & AI. For the rules of the road, see the Terms of Service.