Every part, chapter and scene of your book lives in one tree. Click a scene to open it, drag any row to reorder or move it, hover for + to add, and use Cmd+Shift+[ and ] to move between scenes without leaving the keyboard. One scene at a time is the whole model — the book stays navigable no matter how long it gets.
The editor
The writing environment supports rich text editing with standard formatting: bold, italic, headings, block quotes, and lists. Write one scene at a time for focused editing.
Manuscript preview
Use the preview pane to see the full chapter rendered as continuous prose. Toggle the preview with Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + P.
Writing surface controls
Typewriter keeps the line you're on centred as you type; Highlight dims everything but the current paragraph; Focus Mode (Cmd+Shift+F) clears the screen down to the page. Snapshots save a named copy of a scene you can compare against the current text, restore, or keep both. Goals track a daily session target and the whole draft, with streaks and this week's activity. Split opens a reference pane beside the editor, and inline comments sit on a selected passage (Cmd+Enter to post).
Snapshots
A snapshot is a saved copy of one scene. Open Scene Snapshots (⌘⇧S) from the ribbon and choose Take snapshot. It is named with the time; you can rename it. Each snapshot shows its word count and age. Select one to see a word-by-word comparison with the scene as it is now.
Restore replaces the scene with the snapshot, and first takes a "Before restore" snapshot so you can undo it. Bookshaper also takes one automatically before a refine. A scene keeps up to 20 snapshots, and the oldest automatic ones are removed first.
Writing goals
Writing Goals, on the ribbon, tracks two targets: a daily session goal and a word goal for the whole project, with an optional deadline. Today's Session shows your words against the daily goal. Project Progress shows words remaining and, with a deadline set, a recommended words per day. The panel also shows your current streak, your best streak and This Week's activity.
The sprint timer runs a timed session (25 minutes by default; change it in the settings) with Start Sprint, Pause and Stop, and stops on its own when time is up.
Split editor
Split Editor, on the ribbon, opens a reference pane beside the scene you're writing. Fill it with another scene, a character, a location or a Notebook entry, and search to find the one you want. Scenes and Notebook entries open read-only; choose Enable editing to change them in place. The pane header also switches between a side-by-side and a stacked split, changes what the pane shows, and closes it.
There is no keyboard shortcut for the split. ⌘\ toggles the sidebar.
Find and replace
Cmd+F to find; Cmd+Option+F (Ctrl+H on Windows and Linux) to find and replace; Cmd+Option+Shift+F for project-wide search. Preserve-case replacement maps character name casing automatically. Structural operators let you search by chapter title, scene, character, location, or tag. Filter by formatting (bold, italic, underline), save searches for reuse, and undo project-wide replacements with Cmd+Z.
Quick Open
Press Cmd+K or click Jump to… at the top of the manuscript navigator to jump to any scene, chapter, character, or location in your project. Results update as you type with fuzzy matching.
Scene narration (Narrate)
Click Narrate in the toolbar to hear the scene you’re working on read aloud in a professional AI voice. Narrate the whole scene, or select a passage and narrate just that. Play, pause, and cycle the playback speed while you follow along, and pick your voice from the panel’s settings. Narration spends AI credits, and the panel shows the estimate before you generate (none when you’re using your own AI key). Once it’s generated, the audio is saved in your project and can be downloaded as MP3 — your permanent, portable copy. If the scene or the voice changes afterwards, the panel says so and offers to regenerate.