About NovelContinuity
What is NovelContinuity?
NovelContinuity is a manuscript continuity tracker and structural mirror for writers. You upload your chapters, run an AI scan to identify story elements, and build a searchable, cross-referenced record of every character, location, event, and detail. The Insight layer also shows your manuscript's shape — pacing, dialogue trends, character presence, narrative voice, and emotional beats. It tracks and reflects; it does not write, edit, or suggest changes to your prose.
Who is NovelContinuity for?
Writers — across every form. Novels, novellas, short stories, memoir, biography, non-fiction. Anyone tracking characters, places, events, timelines, and threads in their work. The tool helps you keep details straight, see your manuscript's shape, and plan the next chapter with context.
Does NovelContinuity work for memoir, non-fiction, and biography?
Yes. Six genre templates ship with the product: General Fiction, Mystery / Thriller, Fantasy / Sci-Fi, Non-Fiction, Memoir, and Biography. Each one seeds your project with sensible starting element types and terminology that fits the form. Memoir tracks "People" and "Places" instead of "Character" and "Location." Biography uses "Figures." Non-Fiction adds Sources and Topics.
Can I use it mid-manuscript?
Yes. Many writers start using NovelContinuity partway through a draft. Add chapters at any stage, scan them when ready, and build your continuity map incrementally. The tool is designed to work alongside your writing process, not require you to wait until a draft is complete.
Cost & Plans
How much does NovelContinuity cost?
Two plans:
Simple at $20/month includes every feature with 15 AI scan credits per month.
Advanced at $30/month adds AI character profile generation, AI chapter summaries, AI publishing synopsis, Narrative Voice AI detection, Emotional Beat Classification, and 50 scan credits per month.
See full pricing.
What is the difference between Simple and Advanced?
Both plans give you the complete toolset — every feature, no walls. The difference is whether the AI does the heavy lifting. On Simple, you fill in character profiles yourself, write chapter summaries yourself, and set POV and tense manually. On Advanced, AI drafts profiles, generates summaries, produces a publishing synopsis, detects narrative voice with paragraph-level deviation flagging, and classifies each chapter's emotional beat. Timeline and Plot Lines work the same way on both plans — manual, no credits, fully unlimited. Advanced doesn't unlock features; it automates them.
What is a scan credit?
One scan credit covers the AI scan of one chapter. Simple includes 15 credits per month; Advanced includes 50. A typical novel of 30 chapters takes 30 credits to scan from scratch. Monthly plan credits do not roll over — they reset each billing cycle. If you need more, top-up packs are available: $5.99 for 20 credits or $9.99 for 40 credits. Top-up credits never expire.
Getting Started
How do I get started?
NovelContinuity is currently in private beta.
Apply for access through the contact page. Once you're approved and create an account, you'll set up a project, pick a genre template, and import your chapters. The whole onboarding takes a few minutes; the value compounds from there as your manuscript grows.
I just signed up — where do I begin?
When you sign in for the first time, a guided popup walks you through the steps to get started. You'll create a project, pick a genre template, and import your chapters — importing chapters is the first required step before the tool can do its work. Once your first chapters are uploaded, that popup changes to a Tips panel with helpful guidance for what to do next. You can turn the Tips on or off from the dashboard at any time.
What writing apps and file formats does it work with?
NovelContinuity accepts .txt and .docx files, so it works with anything that exports those formats — Scrivener, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Vellum, Atticus, plain text editors, anything. Whole-manuscript import auto-detects chapter breaks from Scrivener's compile output, Word heading styles, Vellum/Atticus separators, "Chapter" keyword formats, and several other patterns. Or highlight your own separator in a live file preview.
If I re-import my manuscript, will I lose my work?
Not unless you choose to. When chapters already exist in your project, you'll see Skip or Replace options. Skip leaves a chapter untouched. Replace overwrites the chapter and permanently removes that chapter's tags and scan results. You can update some chapters without disturbing the rest.
How It Works & Features
Does the AI write or change my manuscript?
No. The AI in NovelContinuity is a detection and assistance tool only. It identifies story elements, drafts character profiles and chapter summaries from your existing text, reads each chapter's point of view, tense, and emotional beat, and finds potential cross-references. Everything it produces goes through your review before anything is added to your project. Your story is yours alone.
What is Insight?
Insight is the analytical section of NovelContinuity — a dashboard that reflects your manuscript's shape back to you. It shows pacing and word count per chapter, dialogue-vs-prose trends, a Character Presence Map showing who appears where, and a Before You Write compass that surfaces characters who've been absent, recent locations, the latest timeline event, and pacing trends so you can plan your next chapter with context. Advanced adds Emotional Beat Classification and Narrative Voice AI detection. Everything in Insight is observation — never a verdict.
What is the Before You Write compass?
A forward-looking panel that surfaces who's been absent the longest, where the story has recently been, what the latest timeline event was, and how dialogue and pacing have trended over the last several chapters. It's designed to give you context before you write the next chapter — not just organize what you've already written.
More on the features page.
What is Timeline?
A writer-native chronology tool. Each timeline is an event grid — one row per scene or beat, capturing when it happens, time of day, chapter, location, characters present, what happens, what the reader learns, and what's still hidden. You can run multiple timelines per project for parallel threads and switch between them. Build events directly from a passage in the chapter reader. Available on both plans, no credits.
What are merged timelines?
A merged timeline weaves several normal timelines into a single braided view — for a cross-cut sequence like a raid closing in while a character races to escape. Critically, a merged timeline doesn't copy events from its sources — it points to them. So editing an event in its home timeline updates every merged view that includes it. Events are color-coded by source and hand-dragged into the order you want.
What are Plot Lines?
Plot Lines are narrative threads you tag at the paragraph level — investigation, romance, the protagonist's arc, whatever lines your book is following. Each plot line has its own color. The Plot Line Map shows a threads-by-chapters grid that reveals where each thread runs and where one has gone quiet for a stretch.
See six plot threads in Pride and Prejudice.
Why is my main character's row empty in some chapters?
You're probably seeing the difference between two lenses. Character tagging answers "who is here"; Plot Line tagging answers "what is moving." A chapter that introduces a character's backstory might have full character presence but advance no storyline — so the Plot Lines row stays gray while the Character Presence row is full. That divergence is meaningful, not a bug.
What is Narrative Voice tracking?
Narrative Voice tracks the dominant point of view and tense for each chapter. On both plans you set these manually using dropdowns. On Advanced, AI detects them and explains its reasoning. AI also flags individual paragraphs that deviate from the chapter's dominant voice. Critically, any flagged paragraph can be marked intentional — so a dream sequence that shifts tense, or a flash-forward that changes POV, stops being surfaced. Observation, not error correction.
What is Emotional Beat Classification?
An Advanced-plan AI feature that reads each chapter and identifies its dominant emotional beat — setup, revelation, confrontation, crisis, resolution, and several others. A streak indicator surfaces when several chapters in a row land on the same beat. Each beat includes a Why? explanation. The classifications are deliberately non-editable: the value is in having a reading that hasn't been shaped by your own knowledge of the story.
What is a cross-reference (XReference)?
An XReference links story elements across different element types — a character linked to a location they frequent, an event tied to a business. Once linked, searching either element finds every paragraph where both appear. NovelContinuity also surfaces potential cross-references automatically by comparing element names across your project.
What's the difference between an alias and a relationship?
An alias links two names for the same entity — "Bob" is an alias of "Robert Calloway." A relationship describes how two separate entities connect — "husband/wife," "rivals," "employer/employee." Aliases affect search (finding "Bob" automatically finds "Robert Calloway"). Relationships appear in search results and on a dedicated Relationships page. You can convert an alias to a relationship in one click if you realize the connection was categorized incorrectly.
Managing Story Elements
Why can't I rename or delete some of my categories?
The core categories that come with your genre template (like Characters and Locations) are fixed — several continuity tools, including the Character Presence Map and the Before You Write compass, rely on them by name. You can add as many of your own categories as you like, and rename or remove any you've added yourself.
Where do I manage my categories?
Open your project, then under Manage Story Elements choose Story Elements. That page manages both your categories (the types like Characters and Locations) and the elements within them. You can add your own categories there; the core genre categories are fixed.
Privacy & Trust
Is my manuscript safe?
Your manuscript is stored securely in your account and not shared with anyone. It's not used to train AI models. AI scans send chapter text to Anthropic's API for analysis — the same privacy standards that apply to all Anthropic API usage apply here. You can delete your project and all associated data at any time.