Help Centre

Sign up with your name (or pen name — this is what appears on your reports and exports), your email, and a password of at least 8 characters, or use Continue with Google. You must tick the box acknowledging the Terms and Privacy Policy; the newsletter checkbox is optional and unticked by default. No credit card is required. Once registered, you land on My Novels, your project dashboard.

We email a verification link when you register. Until you confirm it, you cannot upload a manuscript or start a read: the dashboard shows a notice, the import button opens a "Confirm your email first" dialog instead, and the server refuses imports and reads too. Use the Resend button on that notice if the email hasn't arrived, and check your spam folder. Accounts created with Google are verified automatically.

A free account covers ONE manuscript and ONE whole-book reading of it, counted against your account for life rather than per project. Free access includes Maestro's First Take in full, the manuscript editor, your notes, and a small lifetime allowance of questions to Maestro. Full access is needed for the fourteen deep diagnostics, the Developmental Report, Manuscript Readiness, Unpinned Suggestions, and Maestro reading each revision you make. Your own copy of the sample novel has full access and does not count against either limit. Note that archiving a project does not free your manuscript slot. Deleting a manuscript frees the slot, but it does not give back the reading you have already had — and it destroys that book's First Take with it. See the Pricing FAQ for details.

There are three ways to start a project: the Import a Manuscript dialog on the My Novels dashboard, the same dialog from a project's Home view, and dropping a file on the home page before you sign up, which is carried through registration and opened for you on the dashboard. We support .docx, .txt, .md, .epub, and .pdf files (as well as .text), or you can paste the text directly. A .docx reads most accurately. PDFs have to be converted back into text, and the conversion makes mistakes — mangled words, run-together lines, the odd lost paragraph. If you can export a .docx from the same document, that reads exactly as you wrote it. There is a 25 MB file size limit, a minimum length of 5,000 words so that the analysis has enough to work with, and a character ceiling to prevent excessively long files.

The import steps: choose your file, and we read the title page to pre-fill the working title (and pick up an author name or subtitle if present). Answer the required "Is this manuscript finished?" question — the Import button stays disabled until you do — confirm you have the rights to the text, and then import. Novel Maestro segments the text into chapters and scenes automatically and takes you straight to Maestro's First Take when it's done.

Scanned or image-only PDFs cannot be read and should be re-saved as .docx or .txt. Importing a file into a project that already has a manuscript is a different thing from starting a new novel: it replaces that project's chapters and scenes with the new draft, carrying your comments, notes and task links across and keeping the draft it replaced under "Earlier drafts". Use it when you have revised the same book; use Import manuscript on My Novels when you are starting a different one.

You can put your own full-access copy of the sample novel on your shelf from the dashboard (via the sample card in the empty state or the shelf grid). It is a real private copy, not shared access. You get one hundred percent of the product on it — all diagnostics, the Developmental Report, Manuscript Readiness, tasks, notes, exports, and Ask Maestro (with its own separate allowance). It does not consume your free read and does not count against your one-manuscript limit, and it carries a "Sample" pill on its card. Because it already contains a finished read, you cannot re-run the read, duplicate it, or replace its manuscript, and expensive regeneration (book summary, blurb, synopsis, query letter) has a small lifetime allowance.

The Project Dashboard lists all your novels. Cards show the title, genre, a meta line, an open-task count, a "Sample" pill on sample copies, and a First Take status pill only when the read has NOT completed (such as "Not yet read" or "Read didn't finish"). You can click a card to open its workspace, or use the card actions to Open, Edit (title, subtitle, author), Duplicate, Archive, and Delete. Note that Duplicate is not available on a sample copy.

Each project opens in a multi-column workspace. The left rail gives you access to every section: My Novel (), My Manuscript (), Maestro's First Take (), Developmental Report (), Diagnostics (), Ask Maestro (), Beta Readers (), My Tasks (), Learning (), My Notes (), Export (), plus an Upgrade () nudge for free accounts and Account () at the bottom. Note that Learning is never locked.

When expanded, the rail groups these under Analysis, Revision and Tools headings. You can collapse or expand it with the edge toggle, and your choice is remembered. On a phone, the rail becomes a bottom tab bar (My Novel, Manuscript, Tasks, First Take, Diagnostics) with everything else behind More. The view you are looking at is tracked in the address bar (e.g., ?view=diagnostics), so back, forward, refresh, and bookmarking all keep your place. The center panel changes based on what you select.

Home is where a project opens: a snapshot showing the novel's title, author name or pen name, genre, word count, when it was last edited, and quick actions to carry on where you left off.

The book summary: a short, story-facing paragraph Novel Maestro writes about your novel (not an editorial note). You can edit it in place or ask for a fresh one. This is the same blurb used in your publishing assets, so a change in one place shows in the other.

The target word count: set it from the quiet control on the word count row, which pre-fills a sensible suggestion for your genre; once a target is set the snapshot shows your progress against it, and you can clear it again. Note the same control also appears on the Word Count row of Manuscript Readiness.

Revision status: where you are in your revision and your most recent tasks. The numbered journey through the product, from the manuscript through to export, is also on this page.

The guided tour walks you round the workspace. Start it from the "Take a tour of your workspace" link on your project's Home view, from the Take the tour action on a sample project, or from the Guided Tour section of your Account page. Note that the deep walkthrough is a desktop-only feature.

In your Account settings, you can manage the six sections: Profile, Plan & Access (with a voucher redemption box), Guided Tour, Preferences (language and region, newsletter, theme, color palette), Security (change password), and Data & Privacy. Novel Maestro has a single, consistent editorial register, so there is nothing to configure about how it talks to you.

When you import, a background pipeline segments the text, maps your characters, runs the diagnostic passes in parallel and only then writes the synthesis. It usually takes five to ten minutes for a typical novel, though it can take longer for very long books with many scenes. You can leave the page and come back; we email you when it's done. Once finished, you will receive the editorial letter, an account of how your book has been divided up, the Looking Glass reading of your story, Your One Thing, Your First Move, and a set of suggestions.

A personal editorial response to your manuscript — a warm, honest opening to Maestro's First Take. The page features the editorial letter with a "Let's Begin" button, read-completion details, an option to regenerate the letter, and an export action if your plan allows it. Navigation lives in the left sidebar, grouped under "The Looking Glass" and "The Verdict", and later steps are grayed out until the data behind them exists. While the read is still running, you will see progress instead of the letter, and you may see a notice if the uploaded file doesn't look like a novel manuscript.

The first of the Looking Glass steps, and the only page in Maestro's First Take that asks you to check our work rather than confirm our reading of yours. It gives the word, chapter and scene counts, then sets out the whole book as a tree: every chapter with each of its scenes beneath it, carrying the short working title Novel Maestro gave it. Those titles exist for navigation — they are what lets every observation in the read point at an exact passage rather than waving at a chapter. Read the counts against what you know your book to be, then look down the tree for anything in the wrong place. A scene break where you wanted none, two scenes that should be one, a chapter heading swallowed into the chapter above: all of that you can put right yourself, for nothing, in My Manuscript, and every later reading uses the structure you leave behind. If words or whole chapters are missing then the file did not come through whole — import it again, or write to us and we will look at the import ourselves and read the book again. Everything in your First Take was read from what this page shows and nothing else.

The characters we found in your manuscript — their wants, needs, fears, and the lies they tell themselves. This is a mirror: Novel Maestro shows you how your characters come across on the page, not what they say about themselves. If a character doesn't land the way you intended, correct them by clicking "Correct or tweak this" and supplying a replacement value, which also updates that character's profile. If it is accurate, click "This rings true". Corrections are kept on file and show a "Corrected" marker when you revisit.

The genre classification inferred from your manuscript. Genre shapes reader expectations and determines what conventions your narrative is expected to fulfil. If the classification doesn't match your intention, click "Not what I had in mind" and explain how you intended it to be read in your own words. Click "This rings true" if you agree. Note: there is no genre picker in the app — genre is detected from your manuscript, and your correction is recorded as a note that shapes later work rather than forcibly reassigning the genre. The system keeps our original reading on file next to your note and shows a "Corrected" marker. My genre looks wrong.

The voice and register we hear in your prose — the emotional texture of your writing style. Consider whether the tone Novel Maestro identifies matches what you hear when you read your own work. If it doesn't, click "Not what I had in mind" and write your intention. Otherwise, click "This rings true". Your correction is saved and shows a "Corrected" marker on return.

The driving question that pulls readers through your story — what keeps them turning pages. If Novel Maestro misidentifies your central question, that's a powerful signal. Correct it by clicking "Not what I had in mind" and typing your intended question, or accept it with "This rings true". Your correction is preserved with a "Corrected" marker.

The implicit promise your opening pages make — what the reader expects to experience based on how your novel begins. If this misses the mark, click "Not what I had in mind" and explain your intention. If it is accurate, click "This rings true". Corrected fields display a "Corrected" marker.

The underlying ideas woven through your manuscript. This is the last calibration step and only appears if themes were detected. Review whether these match what you believe your novel is about. Accept the reading with "This rings true", or push back with "Not what I had in mind" to supply your own thematic intent. It will be kept on file and marked as "Corrected".

The last of the Looking Glass steps, and the only one where Novel Maestro asks rather than tells. Each question comes from a point in the synthesis where something in the manuscript admitted more than one reading and the page alone could not settle it. Answer the ones you have an answer to and leave the rest — nothing here is required. What you say is carried into your Developmental Report and the next reading of the book, so a question answered now is one the report does not have to guess at. The step is skipped entirely if the read raised no questions.

Corrections made in the Looking Glass are kept on file and never re-run or rewrite the First Take you already have. They feed forward into the Developmental Report, the next read, the story model, the book summary, and the answers you get from Ask Maestro. You either accept the reading ("This rings true") or push back ("Not what I had in mind" or "Correct or tweak this"). At the end of the Looking Glass, a "What you told us" ledger lists all the corrections on file (this page only appears if you actually made a correction). Corrected fields also show a "Corrected" marker when you revisit them.

A single, sharp editorial observation — the one thing that strikes the editor most powerfully. This isn't a comprehensive verdict; it's a focused insight. A collapsible "View evidence" section shows the grounded claims. Each piece of evidence is a real quotation from your manuscript, and clicking it jumps you straight to that passage.

The single most important revision focus with a concrete first step. The page also explains how your worries connect and, where available, links straight to the grounding passage in your manuscript. Don't try to fix everything at once — start here. Click the "+ Add to My Tasks" button to create your first tracked task on your revision board.

The last step of Maestro's First Take, and the one page that asks something of you. It sets out the two ways to carry on with the manuscript — The Full Assessment, which is everything the reading found written up and open to read, and The Whole Revision, which adds the revision board, Maestro's remarks in the margin as you write, questions answered while you work, and each new draft read as you bring it back. Everything on the page is drawn from your own book: the setups the read found planted, the contradictions, the characters it followed, the readers who wrote about it, the tension across your scenes, and one whole finding handed over rather than hinted at. Nothing on it is newly generated, and both prices come from the same place the checkout takes them from. There is a "Have a code?" box if you are holding a voucher, and starting with The Full Assessment costs nothing extra — completing it later brings the total to the same figure either way, with no deadline on doing so. Writers who already have full access never see this step.

When you ask Maestro to read after revising, it measures your manuscript against the one it last read and decides how much of it needs reading again. It makes no difference to that decision whether you revised inside the app or in your own word processor: both routes are measured the same way. A revision of some substance gets a reading of what changed — Maestro reads the parts that moved, asks what they did to the rest of the novel, and writes you a letter headed "what's changed" rather than a fresh First Take. A rewrite large enough that the old reading no longer describes the book is read from the beginning again, and so is every third revision, because otherwise each reading would be built on the last one rather than on your manuscript. If you have changed very little, Novel Maestro tells you so and leaves your existing reports alone rather than spending ten minutes returning the letter you already have — you can overrule it and ask for the whole book to be read anyway. The same text is never read twice: a reading is refused outright if the manuscript has not changed at all. Whenever a new reading runs, your earlier completed First Take is archived and stays readable from the "Earlier drafts" panel on the Welcome step, so you can read the new letter beside the one it supersedes. On a paid book there is no allowance and no counter: reading your revisions never runs down, and asking for the whole novel again is subject only to fair-use ceilings over any 30 days. The free tier's single reading belongs to your account for life, not to each project. Only one reading can run at a time, and a sample copy already carries a finished reading and cannot be read again.

You can cancel a reading from the progress view. On a paid book nothing is spent in the first place, so cancelling costs you nothing and you can simply ask again. On the free tier, where your account has one reading, cancelling a whole-book reading early — while it is still queued or under 15% progress — gives it back; cancelling after that point uses it, because the analysis has already been done, and the app confirms which it will be before going ahead. Cancelling never loses the First Take you already have: your previous report is restored and stays available. Only a first-ever reading leaves nothing behind, because there is no earlier report to fall back on.

You can download the whole First Take as a formatted PDF from the export action on the Welcome step, provided your plan includes report export. Every completed read is also automatically archived to your report library.

You can upload your manuscript from the "Import a Manuscript" dialog on the My Novels dashboard, the same dialog from a project's Home view, or by dropping a file onto the home page to carry it through signup. We support .docx, .txt, .md, .epub, and .pdf (as well as .text files), but a .docx file provides the most reliable result. Novel Maestro will detect the title and author from a title page if one is present. You must answer whether the draft is finished before the Import button enables. When the import completes, you are taken directly to Maestro's First Take. There is a 25 MB limit and a minimum length of 5,000 words. Scanned or image-only PDFs cannot be read and should be re-saved as .docx or .txt.

Importing a revised draft replaces that project's chapters and scenes with the ones in the new file. It stays the same novel, and most of your work follows it across. Your scene comments come with it: they keep the date you wrote them and are re-anchored to the scenes they were about, first by chapter and then, once the new draft has been divided into scenes, by matching what the comment was pointing at. Your tasks keep their jump-to-passage links, which are remapped to the new scenes rather than dropped. The analysis of any scene that came through word for word is kept as it was; a scene you changed is left blank until something has read the new prose, because a score is a claim about words that no longer exist. Your notes, your per-scene notes, your Looking Glass corrections and your Report Library PDFs are untouched. What is genuinely rebuilt is the work that describes the book as a whole, because it now describes a different book: character relationships and arc analyses, subplot threads, the story model and the diagnostics. Character profiles Novel Maestro inferred are cleared and worked out again, while any you wrote or edited yourself stay. Tasks generated from a report or the revision map are kept and marked "Previous draft" rather than deleted, and tasks you wrote yourself stay live. Your previous completed First Take is archived and stays readable in the app, and the draft you replaced is kept under "Earlier drafts", where you can put it back at any time without spending a read. You do need active access or an available read to import a revised draft: the check happens before anything is deleted, so a manuscript is never destroyed and then left without a read to describe it. A sample copy cannot have its manuscript replaced, and there is a short cooldown of about ten minutes before a project's manuscript can be replaced again.

You are never locked into editing inside the app. You can export your manuscript at any time, revise it in Word, Scrivener, Google Docs, or anywhere else, and import the revised draft over the old one in the same project. Export from Novel Maestro before you go away to revise if you can: the draft you bring back then has the same shape, which makes the comparison sharper and keeps more of your existing analysis. You cannot upload only the chapters you changed — a draft is imported whole, and Novel Maestro works out for itself which parts of it moved. Use Import manuscript on My Novels only when you are starting a genuinely different book; that puts a second novel on the shelf, with nothing carried across. For how this compares with editing in the app, see Two ways to revise.

There are two, and Novel Maestro treats them the same way. You can edit in the app, where the finding, the scene and the task sit together and nothing is replaced, so your comments, your task links and each scene's analysis all stay exactly where they are; each scene you touch quietly re-analyses itself in the background. Or you can revise somewhere else and import the new draft over the old one, which replaces the chapters and scenes but carries your work across and keeps the draft you are leaving behind. When you ask for a read, either way, Novel Maestro compares your manuscript against the one it last read, sentence by sentence, and counts how many words genuinely differ. A revision of some substance earns a read of what changed: it reads the parts that moved and asks what they did to the whole novel, and the letter it writes is headed "what's changed" rather than presenting itself as a fresh First Take. That read does not use up one of your reads. A rewrite large enough that the old reading no longer describes the book is read from the beginning again, and so is every third revision, because otherwise each reading would be built on the last one rather than on your manuscript — those are whole-book reads and are counted as such. If you have changed very little, Novel Maestro says so and leaves your reports alone rather than spending ten minutes returning the letter you already have; you can overrule that and ask for the whole book to be read. You do need active access, or an available read, for any of this: a read of what changed costs nothing from your allowance, but it is not a way in without access.

When you import a revised draft, the prose of the draft it replaced is kept, and appears under Earlier drafts beside Open, Export and Import. Putting one back is a restore, not a resurrection: the text returns as it was, and anything anchored to it is re-matched to the restored scenes exactly as it would be on an import. It does not spend a read, and it does not bring back the old report — that stays in its own archive, where you can read it next to the current one, because a report about text you can no longer see would be worse than useless. A restore is itself undoable: the draft it replaces is kept in turn. Novel Maestro keeps the draft you first arrived with for as long as the project exists, plus the five most recent. Editing in the app keeps no such copy, because nothing is being replaced — if you want a copy to go back to before a large pass, export the manuscript first.

The manuscript tree on the left lists your chapters alongside their scenes and word counts. Click a chapter to read and edit its scenes in one continuous view. Edits save themselves a moment after you stop typing, and there is an undo affordance. Editing a scene quietly re-runs that scene's own analysis in the background, so its synopsis and scores update without you asking. Nothing else is disturbed: because nothing is being replaced, your scene comments, your notes and your tasks' jump-to-passage links all stay exactly where they are. The findings that describe the book as a whole — your letter, the diagnostics, the Developmental Report — still describe the draft they were written about, and are brought up to date when you ask for a read. Editing in the app keeps no restorable copy of the draft you started from, so export the manuscript first if you want one before a large pass. The top bar contains buttons for Insights (which opens the Scene Insights sheet), Ask About This Scene, Focus, and Export.

You can create, rename, reorder, and delete chapters, and reorder scenes by dragging them in the tree. You can also split and merge scenes, or generate a scene title. Deleting a scene or chapter is a soft delete that you can restore. Note that merging two adjacent scenes in the same chapter creates a new piece of text, which discards the analysis held for them until the new merged scene is re-analysed.

The right-hand Scene Intelligence panel holds information about the current scene: the characters present as clickable pills, pinned tasks for the scene, a suggested next action, suggested tasks, and the scene's comments. This panel can be collapsed and resized, and becomes a slide-up sheet on a phone. Tasks created here appear on your revision board.

The slide-out sheet opened with the Insights button has two tabs. "Scene Anatomy" holds the synopsis plus the scene analysis (conflict, point of view, purpose, stakes, emotional shift, and the threads it advances). "Scene Signals" holds the scene's measurements: the six Narrative Pulse dimensions, then theme presence and value charge under The Value Arc (with the value charge shown against what the genre's charge skeleton expects at that point in the book), and the prose metrics. These are read comparatively against your own book's averages, not as absolute grades — a number is only meaningful next to the rest of your manuscript. A scene can show as not yet analyzed. Findings which cross a threshold can be turned straight into revision tasks.

You can leave comments on a scene from the Scene Intelligence panel, mark them resolved, delete them, and promote a comment into a note. This is where to park a thought about a specific scene that isn't yet a revision task.

Wherever Novel Maestro quotes your text — in Maestro's First Take, a diagnostic, the Developmental Report, or a task — that quotation is a link. Following it opens the manuscript at that scene with the passage highlighted. This is the fastest way to work through a report.

Focus mode provides a distraction-free single-scene editing layout. It is entered with the Focus button in the top bar and left with the Exit button.

Diagnostic passes run automatically and in parallel as part of Maestro's First Take — you do not start them one at a time. Afterwards, each view serves the stored result instantly from that read, so opening a diagnostic costs nothing and changes nothing. Every finding is grounded in a real passage from your manuscript.

Diagnostics () from the left rail opens a landing page presenting the tools as a numbered journey in five groups, with your progress through each group and a marker for what to look at next, plus Manuscript Readiness as the capstone. Crucially, the fourteen tools are NOT fourteen separate pages: they open as tabbed groups — The Shape of the Book (The Value Arc, Narrative Pulse, Momentum); Characters (The Ensemble, Character Arcs, Character Agency); Patterns & Promises (Genre Promises, Motifs, Setups & Payoffs); Threads and Subplots (Thread Browser, Subplots); Structural Checks (Cause & Effect, Continuity Check, The Scene Ledger). You can also access them from the Diagnostics sidebar. Each tool has its own ?view=analysis-… address you can bookmark, and the Developmental Report links directly into the relevant tool.

Each tool opens with a verdict and an editorial letter reading of what it found. Suggested actions and individual findings can be turned into revision tasks in one click, which is the main thing you do with a diagnostic. Clicking a point, cell, or quoted passage jumps you to that exact place in your manuscript. Related diagnostics are cross-linked at the foot, and every diagnostic can be downloaded or printed as a formatted PDF or saved to your report library. For craft depth, check the 'About this tool' panel (behind the question-mark beside the title, or from a pill part-way down the page) which explains what the tool is and how to use it. The 'How to read this chart' or 'How to read this table' sheet in each chart's header explains only the visual grammar — the marks, axes, color legend, and interactions. Character Arcs additionally has a 'Dimension reference' sheet.

On the landing page, a tool can read 'Not yet analyzed', show when it was last run, say it came from a previous read, or warn that scenes have been edited since. In the sidebar, an amber dot means the manuscript has changed since that tool last ran, and a grey one means the result was carried forward. Results come from the last read of the whole book, which is what brings every tool up to date at once. A read of what changed after a revision does not: it reads the parts that moved and tells you what is different, so some tools will still carry a date from the read before it. A substantial rewrite, and every third revision, get a whole-book read automatically, and you can ask for one outright. A forced re-analysis of a single tool is briefly rate-limited, and on a sample copy, the results are deliberately frozen.

Without full access, the fourteen diagnostics, the Developmental Report, and Manuscript Readiness are locked (enforced on the server). You are not left guessing what is behind them: open any locked tool and it shows you what that particular tool already found in your manuscript — a real finding about your book, in a sentence, rather than a list of features. If a paid plan lapses, everything already generated stays readable and exportable — only generating new work stops. Your own copy of the sample novel has full access, so you can use all fourteen tools on it for nothing.

Your cast roll call. Maps every character's presence across the manuscript — who appears where, how often, and for how long. Look for characters who barely appear or vanish for a long stretch, and read the warnings about two characters doing the same job. You can find this tool in the Characters group, under The Ensemble tab.

Tracks characters' internal arcs across eight measures — Emotional, Agency, Moral, Want/Need, Power/Status, Relationship, Knowledge, Thematic. Scores each measure at every scene to show how a character changes (or doesn't) throughout the narrative. The measures are separate readings rather than parts of a single score, while the belief line is built from Want/Need and Moral. See the in-app 'What each measure means' sheet for what each one tracks. Compare the change Novel Maestro found with the one you meant to write, then use the scene detail to find where it stops moving. You can find this tool in the Characters group, under the Character Arcs tab.

Examines whether your protagonist is driving the story or being driven by it. Classifies each scene as proactive or reactive and flags 'passive runs' — stretches of consecutive reactive scenes. Look at stretches of passive scenes and consider adding a moment of choice or initiative to restore your protagonist's agency. You can find this tool in the Characters group, under the Character Agency tab.

Evaluates your manuscript against the conventions of the genre detected from your manuscript — the ingredients, beats, and character archetypes readers expect. There is no genre picker in the app; Novel Maestro detects your genre from the text. Results are categorized as kept, bent, or broken. Evaluate broken promises that might leave readers feeling something is missing, or use the subvert action to mark intentional deviations. You can find this tool in the Patterns & Promises group, under the Genre Promises tab.

Identifies recurring images, symbols, emotional patterns, and thematic echoes. A motif in the opening and closing creates a satisfying frame. Strengthen the motifs that serve the story, and cut or repoint the ones that are just repetition. You can find this tool in the Patterns & Promises group, under the Motifs tab.

Tracks narrative promises — questions raised, mysteries hinted at, threads left dangling — and checks whether they're paid off. Look for promises without payoffs that could frustrate readers, and payoffs that arrive without a clear setup. You can find this tool in the Patterns & Promises group, under the Setups & Payoffs tab.

Tracks whether each scene leaves your character better or worse off on the one thing the book is about, measured against the shape the genre expects — the expected charge skeleton is overlaid on your actual arc. Two supporting signals are read alongside it: the emotional temperature of the prose, and how strongly the themes surface. Check the arc moves and moves the way you meant, then look for scenes where the mood of the writing pulls against what actually happens, and for long stretches where the theme disappears. You can find this tool in The Shape of the Book group, under The Value Arc tab.

A multi-dimensional emotional map charting tension, conflict, stakes, agency, revelation, emotional intensity scene by scene. Note that theme presence, prose sentiment, and value charge are NOT Pulse dimensions — they live in The Value Arc — and the composite energy line belongs to Momentum. Look for long flat stretches where a reader might drift, and check that your biggest scenes really do spike. You can find this tool in The Shape of the Book group, under the Narrative Pulse tab.

Analyzes your manuscript's pacing — the rhythm of fast and slow, the ebb and flow of narrative energy. It identifies pacing zones and classifies the overall profile. The chart inside is called The Energy Arc, and its address-bar key is analysis-tempo, so the word 'tempo' in a URL or older report text means Momentum. Check the pace does what you meant it to, and read the flagged problems — a sagging middle or a rushed ending. You can find this tool in The Shape of the Book group, under the Momentum tab.

Shows a Thread Weave chart of each thread's presence across your scenes, filter tabs for open, advancing, resolved, and at-risk threads, and a detail view per thread with dormancy warnings where a reader could lose track of it. This tool and Subplots come from the same analysis pass. Filter to at-risk or open threads, and use the detail view to find where a thread goes quiet long enough that a reader might lose track of it. You can find this tool in the Threads and Subplots group, under the Thread Browser tab.

Analyses how your subplots and secondary threads interact with the main storyline — whether they complement, contrast, or compete with the primary narrative. Check whether your secondary threads are pulling their weight, and whether their big moments land at the right time against the main story. You can find this tool in the Threads and Subplots group, under the Subplots tab.

Maps cause-and-effect chains. Shows how events connect — which scenes cause later developments, and which feel disconnected. Strong causality makes a story feel inevitable rather than arbitrary. Look for broken links where events happen for no clear reason, or where consequences never materialise. You can find this tool in the Structural Checks group, under the Cause & Effect tab.

Scans for continuity errors — contradictions in character behavior, setting details, timeline, and factual elements. Review high-severity continuity contradictions, deciding whether they are genuine errors or intentional choices like an unreliable narrator. You can find this tool in the Structural Checks group, under the Continuity Check tab.

A simple table with one row per scene. Empty cells show passive protagonists, sagging middles, and exposition that masquerades as story. Check for empty cells that reveal scenes that change nothing and merely provide information. You can find this tool in the Structural Checks group, under The Scene Ledger tab.

A full editorial assessment presenting: an 'In a nutshell' health verdict with a readiness chip, a note of how many of your corrections were taken into account, At a Glance (top strengths and risks, each backed by a verbatim quote and a jump-to-passage link, risks promotable to tasks), the editorial letter with inline links into the relevant diagnostics, 'What to Focus On' (sequenced scene-grounded revision priorities, promotable individually or all at once), 'Protect This in Revision', 'Dangling Threads' grouped open/advancing/resolved, 'Scenes Needing Purpose', 'Go Deeper' cards across Character, Pacing, Theme, Continuity, Prose & Voice, Structure & Shape, Openings & Endings, and Genre Expectations, where it sits in the market, matched craft lessons with a practice step, and Report History with a diff against your previous report. It is queued automatically after a whole-book read and takes a few minutes. It is not regenerated after a read of what changed — a report is an assessment of the whole novel, and rewriting it every time you revise a chapter would replace a considered view of your book with a slightly different one. When scenes have been edited since it was written, it says so at the top; use Run a fresh report whenever you want it brought up to date, and every whole-book read writes a new one anyway. It is written afresh each time, and when it has a previous report to compare with it measures your manuscript against the one that report read, so it can say what genuinely improved rather than guessing from its own last conclusions — and it will tell you plainly when the text has not changed at all. It is paid-only. Once you read to the bottom, a first-reaction prompt appears, asking separately how you are willing to be quoted.

A comprehensive readiness assessment featuring an overall readiness score and band running from 'Early days' to 'Ready to send out', a readiness checklist that puts what needs attention first, a loose-ends scan you start yourself (it is expensive, so it is not run automatically) across your story model and the manuscript text, findings grouped Critical / Moderate / Minor with the scene named, every loose end promotable to a task, and a handoff into Export & Publishing when you're ready to submit. Use this as a pre-submission checklist to identify what is still visibly unresolved in your manuscript.

Create rich notes with titles, content, tags, and colors. Organize them into collections. Pin important notes for quick access. You can sort notes by last updated, date created, or title. The sidebar lets you navigate between All Notes, Collections, Recent, Tags, and Pinned.

Attach files via drag-and-drop or file picker. Add web links with automatic URL unfurling (title, description, image preview). Link notes to specific chapters, scenes, or characters.

Group related notes into named collections with descriptions, icons, and colors. A note can belong to one collection, and collections can be reordered in the sidebar.

A note that carries a quoted passage and a scene link becomes anchored to that passage, so you can jump from the note back to the exact place in the manuscript. You can create one by promoting a scene comment, or by adding a scene link and a quote to a note.

Select multiple notes (including select-all) to act on them together from the bulk action bar. You can move them into a collection, retag, pin, or delete them in one go.

The revision board features To Do, Doing, and Done columns. Drag a card between columns to change its status, and within a column to reorder it. There is a priority filter, a toggle to show archived tasks, and a 'Group by area' toggle that groups your open tasks by editorial area with per-area progress. Free accounts can use the board — only the Unpinned Suggestions tab requires full access.

Tasks arrive when you add one yourself, or when you promote a finding from Maestro's First Take, a diagnostic, the Developmental Report, or a suggestion. Click a card to open its details, where you can set its priority and editorial area, see the scene and quotation it came from, follow the link to that passage, and archive or delete it. Archiving hides a task from the active board but preserves it, while deleting permanently removes it.

The Verify action appears on a task only once it is in the Done column AND it is linked to a scene. Verifying re-reads that scene to check if the change actually landed and stamps the task as verified. This feature requires full access.

A triage list containing every suggestion the diagnostics raised that hasn't become a task. It also surfaces the sequenced 'What to Focus On' priorities and Your First Move while they are still unconverted. For each row, you can create a task, set it aside for later, or dismiss it — and you can undo these actions. You can filter by New, Set aside, or Dismissed, as well as by priority and editorial area. You can also select several rows to act on them in bulk. Viewing this tab requires full access.

Ask Maestro () is where you put a specific problem to Novel Maestro and talk it through, grounded in your actual manuscript. Open it from the rail, or use "Ask about this scene" while reading a scene to ask about that scene directly. To ask a question, choose what it is about, choose the specific element if the focus needs one, then either pick one of the suggested questions or write your own. The suggested questions each come with their own editorial stance, so picking one sets the tone of the answer, and anything you have asked before shows which stance was used.

The focus options offered are the whole book, a scene, a chapter, a character, a thread, or a theme. For everything except the whole book, you then choose the specific scene, chapter, character, thread, or theme from a second dropdown, and your question is answered against that material rather than in the abstract.

Some questions open a conversation that runs over several turns. When Novel Maestro proposes a concrete change to something held in your project, it is offered as a change you can apply, which saves it directly. Nothing is written to your project until you explicitly apply it. Questions about a scene, chapter, thread, or the whole book give you a single considered answer rather than a back-and-forth conversation.

A free account gets 3 questions counted over the lifetime of the account — they never reset, and they are counted across all your projects together. Full access carries no limit; the only brake is a generous daily fair-use ceiling (if you somehow hit it, the app will let you know, and it clears the next day). Asking a new question counts, but continuing an existing conversation does not, so following up on an answer is free. Your copy of the sample novel has its own separate allowance, and asking Maestro there never touches your free questions. When your allowance is exhausted, the page shows your remaining count and offers full access.

Every question you ask is saved and listed in the History tab, with its focus and wording, so you can come back to an answer later. Note that multi-turn conversations are kept with the thing they were about rather than in that list. With full access, you can export your questions and answers as a PDF from Export & Reports.

Each reader provides a different lens and answers questions specific to their role. Disagreements between panelists are a useful signal for revision. There is a panel of six readers: a literary agent, a commissioning editor, a genre reader, a character-focused reader, a first-time reader, and a pacing-focused reader. You can find this in the Beta Readers () rail item. It requires a completed read to work from, runs in the background for a few minutes, requires full access, and can be exported as a PDF.

Each reader returns a verdict phrased in the terms of their own role, not a quality score. An agent either passes, asks for a revise-and-resubmit, or would request the full manuscript. An editor either passes, would acquire it with work, or would champion it. An agent passing is a statement about that reader's commercial appetite and is not a judgement on the literary worth of the book. The useful information is in the reasoning and in where the readers disagree, not in the verdict word.

If your panel is empty or a report failed, there is a Generate Beta Reader Reports action (and a Try Again button on a failure) that produces the panel from your existing read without spending a new read. Note that regenerating replaces the current panel.

Learning is the craft library, opened from the Learning () item in the rail. It is available to every writer and is gated on nothing: you do not need a paid plan and you do not need a finished read. The catalogue contains 61 lessons across 16 craft areas and 10 structure models. The sidebar groups lessons by craft area, showing completion counts, plus rows for what's suggested for your book and for your genre. A lesson contains the craft idea, worked examples, a walkthrough of which in-app tool to open and what to look for in it, and can point you at further reading in this Help Centre.

The "Suggested for your book" row is built from your latest Developmental Report, so the lessons offered are the ones behind the notes your own manuscript actually earned. Each suggestion carries the reason it was chosen, the diagnostic to open alongside it, and a concrete practice step you can turn into a revision task. This row is empty until you have a Developmental Report.

A "For your genre" row appears when your manuscript's genre resolves to one of the 8 genre families. The genre is detected automatically from your manuscript (there is no genre picker in the app), so if no family has been identified yet, this row will not appear. A genre lesson covers the promise the genre makes, its ending contract, how strictly readers hold it, its obligatory scenes, and its character roles.

Lessons can be marked as complete, and your progress is shown per craft area in the sidebar and on your project's Home view, so you can see what you have worked through. Nothing is locked behind completing a lesson.

There is a deliberate three-way division to help you find what you need: this Help Centre tells you what a tool is and where to find it; Learning holds the craft depth — why a technique works and how to apply it; and the tool itself carries the reading guidance for its own charts, in the "About this tool" panel and the per-chart "How to read this chart" sheets.

You can export your manuscript by first choosing your layout (either a Reading copy, or Standard manuscript format for submission) and then your scope — the full manuscript, selected chapters, or selected scenes, using the Select All and Clear helpers. Next, set your options: whether to include scene breaks, scene titles, and scene intelligence metadata. Note that scene titles and metadata are only available when scene breaks are switched on. The summary bar tells you how many chapters, scenes, and words you are about to export and roughly how many pages that is. You can download your manuscript as a PDF, a Word document (.docx), plain text, or send it straight to print. Choose .docx if you are taking the file into Word, Google Docs, Pages, or Scrivener. There is no EPUB export.

Standard manuscript format produces exactly what agents and editors expect to see: 12pt double-spaced text, one-inch margins, a running header, each chapter starting on a new page, and an optional title page. You can fill in your author name and contact information for the title page. Your contact block sits in the top-left corner, and your word count is rounded to the nearest thousand, which is the industry convention. This is the version to send out for submission, while the Reading copy is designed for reading on screen.

The reports offered are: the Editorial Letter, Maestro's First Take, the Developmental Report, a Full Consolidated report, your Questions & Answers, and a custom selection of diagnostics. You can download the Editorial Letter and the Developmental Report without full access. The consolidated report, custom selection, and Maestro's First Take require report export on your plan, and Questions & Answers require full access. For each, you can download the PDF, print it, or save it to your library. Note that saving a report to your library requires full access, even when downloading does not.

Every read and every Developmental Report is archived to your library automatically, so you always have a dated snapshot of what the book looked like at that point. You can also save a report yourself, which generates in the background and appears in the library when it is ready — you do not have to wait on the page. From the library, you can re-download or delete any snapshot. This is the best way to compare where the book was against where it is now.

The Publishing Assets section has three tabs: the Blurb (which opens first), the Synopsis, and the Query Letter. Each can be generated for you and then edited by hand, with length guidance shown as you write: roughly 150–200 words for a blurb, 500–800 for a synopsis, and under 400 for a query letter. Edits save themselves, and the asset is then marked as authored by you rather than generated. Be aware that saving an empty asset clears it entirely. The blurb here is the exact same blurb used on your project's Home view, so editing it in one place changes it in the other. Each asset can be copied or downloaded.

You can change your name, email address, and your avatar from the Profile section. Note that changing your email address will clear its verification status and we will send a new verification link to your new address. You can change your password from the Security section. If you cannot remember your current password, use the forgot-password link on the sign-in page.

If you created your account using Continue with Google, you do not have a password, so typing one on the sign-in form will be refused. To get one, use the forgot-password flow, which lets you set a password for the first time; after that, you can sign in either way. Note that repeated failed sign-in attempts will lock the form for a short period as a security measure.

The Plan & Access section shows which plan you are on, how many reads you have used and have left, and when your access runs to. There is a distinction between full access on a single manuscript and having a subscription. If your plan was gifted or granted, it will show where it came from. For more details, see the Pricing FAQ.

Everything you have already generated — your reads, reports, diagnostics, tasks, notes, and exports — stays readable and downloadable forever. What lapses is generating new work: new reads, new reports, and new analysis. We email you 30 days, 7 days, and 1 day before your access ends, and again when it does, so it never arrives as a surprise. A banner will appear in the app when your access has lapsed, providing a link to restore it.

A voucher code that gives full access on a single manuscript is different from one that grants a subscription. You can redeem a code in the Plan & Access section of your Account page, inside the Have a voucher code? panel. There is also a redemption box on the last step of Maestro's First Take, and on any locked tool. During the beta, codes cannot be bought and are only issued via beta acceptance or a direct grant from us.

A gift is a separate flow from a voucher code, and gift recipients will find nothing when they search for their code in the voucher box. If someone has given you Novel Maestro, follow the link on your gift card; you will see what has been gifted before you accept it, and redeeming it applies it to your account. If you do not have an account yet, follow the link to create one first.

You can switch between light and dark mode, and choose from 6 color palettes in the Preferences section. Your theme and palette choices are remembered per device.

Your spelling preference lives in Preferences → Language & region. It is detected from your browser the first time you use the app, and you can set it to Automatic, American English, or British English. Changing this setting affects newly generated text, but it will not rewrite analysis you already have.

You can opt out of the newsletter in the Preferences section, but essential account emails — password resets, verification, read-completion notices, and expiry warnings — will still arrive. If mail to your address bounced repeatedly, we mark it as undeliverable. In that case, your subscription can only be reactivated from the Preferences section of your own Account page, not from a public form.

Your work is never used to train language models. It goes to our AI providers only to produce your analysis, and projects are private to your account. Authorized staff can access data to investigate faults and provide support. You can download a complete JSON file of your account data using the data export tool.

Account deletion is permanent and takes everything with it: all your projects, manuscripts, reads, reports, tasks, and notes. You must confirm the deletion by typing your email address. When you delete your account, we suppress your address from future mailings and keep only a minimal record of any code redemptions as an audit trail. We recommend exporting your data before deleting.

To tell us something is broken or missing, use the in-app feedback form, which goes straight into our queue, or email support@novelmaestro.com. To help us get you a fast answer, please include what you were doing, which project you were in, and what you expected to happen.

The read runs as a background pipeline in stages. A normal read takes five to ten minutes, but longer books with many scenes will take longer. You can safely close the tab because we email you when it finishes. The progress view keeps updating on its own and does not need refreshing. If it has clearly stalled well beyond that, please email support@novelmaestro.com with the book title and we can close the stuck read and return the credit. Note that only one read can run at a time, so a read that looks stuck will also block you starting another.

If a read fails, your read credit is returned automatically — you do not have to ask — and we email you once to tell you. The error card offers a Retry button, and your dashboard card will say the read didn't finish with a link back into it. If it fails a second time, please contact support@novelmaestro.com. Possible causes worth checking are uploading a file that isn't really a novel manuscript, or text that came in badly from a PDF.

The most likely reasons are: the file is over the 25 MB size limit; the manuscript is under the 5,000 words minimum, which exists so the analysis has enough to work with; it is a scanned or image-only PDF, which contains pictures of words rather than words and cannot be analyzed — re-save it as .docx or .txt; the file is enormously long and exceeds our 5,000,000-character ceiling; the format isn't one we support (we support .docx, .txt, .md, .epub, and .pdf); or your email is not yet verified, which blocks uploading entirely.

Novel Maestro finds chapter and scene boundaries from the text itself, so unusual formatting can be recognized differently from how you intended. PDFs are the least reliable source because running headers, footers and hard line breaks have to be stripped and paragraphs reflowed. To fix this, you can create, rename, reorder, split, merge and delete chapters and scenes by hand in the manuscript view, and deleting is reversible; or re-import from .docx for a cleaner result. Re-importing carries your comments, notes and task links across and keeps the analysis of every scene that comes through unchanged, but it does rebuild the findings that describe the book as a whole, and the draft it replaces is kept under "Earlier drafts" if you want to go back.

Most often nothing is wrong: Novel Maestro has measured your revision, found it too small to be worth reading again, and declined to spend ten minutes returning the letter you already have. That is a judgement, not a refusal — the message says so, and offers to read the whole book anyway if you would rather. The genuine refusals are these. A reading is already running, and only one can run at a time. You have not changed the text at all, in which case there is nothing new to read: the same text is never read twice. You do not have full access on this book, in which case the app prompts you to take it — note that having your revisions read is not rationed, but it does need active access, so it is not a way round a lapsed plan. Novel Maestro has read this novel from the beginning an unusual number of times in the last month, in which case reading your revisions still works and you can write to us if you need another full reading sooner. If you are importing a revised draft, there is a short cooldown of about ten minutes before the same project's manuscript can be replaced again. And a sample copy already contains a finished reading and cannot be read again.

This can mean several distinct things. The tool hasn't been run because your read has not finished; the tool ran but genuinely found nothing of its kind in your manuscript, which is information rather than a fault; the result is showing as carried forward from a previous read; or scenes have been edited since the tool last ran, which is what the amber warning means. Results come from the last read of the whole book, so a read of what changed after a revision does not refresh all of them — it reads what moved and tells you what is different. The way to bring every tool up to date at once is a whole-book read, which is what a substantial rewrite and every third revision get automatically, and which you can also ask for outright. On a sample copy, results are deliberately frozen. Finally, a free account simply cannot see the detail for most tools — but a locked tool is not blank: it shows you what that tool already found in your manuscript, in a sentence of its own.

Your genre is detected from the manuscript during the read; there is no genre picker anywhere in Novel Maestro, so there is nothing for you to set. Genre Promises and the genre craft lesson depend on this. If it looks wrong, tell us on the Your Genre step of the Looking Glass using "Not what I had in mind", which records your intent and carries it forward into your Developmental Report and your next read. If the genre was not detected at all, the genre-specific rows and lessons simply will not appear. If the detection is badly wrong, please email support@novelmaestro.com.

The panel is built from a completed read, so it needs one first, and it needs full access. If it is empty or a report failed, use the Generate Beta Reader Reports action (or Try Again) to build it from the read you already have without spending a new read. Note it runs in the background and takes a few minutes.

If you signed up with Google, you have no password, so the password form will refuse you — use the forgot-password flow to set one, after which either method works. If you have simply forgotten your password, use the same link. If you have tried too many times, the form is locked for a short while as a security measure, so wait and try again. Finally, check that the email address is the one you registered with. A reset link is single-use and time-limited, so request a fresh one if it has gone stale.

For verification emails, password resets, read-completion notices and expiry warnings: check your spam or junk folder, check you used the address you think you did, use the Resend button on the verification notice, and add our sending address (support@novelmaestro.com) to your contacts. Some workplace mail systems filter automated messages before they reach you at all, in which case nothing you change at your end will help. Step-by-step instructions for Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail are here. If mail to your address has bounced repeatedly we stop sending marketing to it, and only you can reactivate that from your Account page. If nothing arrives at all, email support@novelmaestro.com.

You can reach us via the in-app feedback form or by emailing support@novelmaestro.com. Please tell us what you were trying to do, which book, what you saw instead, and roughly when. We will never need your password.