Help & Documentation

Rule of Words is a web-based novel writing application. Once you've created an account, you'll land on your dashboard where you can create your first project.

Each project represents a single book. You'll set the title, genre, POV, tense, and other settings that help shape your writing environment. If you're writing a series, you can group projects together later.

Your work saves automatically every 30 seconds, and you can manually save at any time with Ctrl+S (Cmd+S on Mac).

A project is your book. When you create one, you set metadata like genre, POV (first person, third limited, third omniscient), tense, tone, and target audience. These inform both the writing environment and the AI assistant if you use it.

The project dashboard gives you an overview of your manuscript, including chapter and scene lists, word count progress, and quick links to characters, locations, story architecture, and your notebook.

You can also set custom AI instructions and a writing voice sample on the project settings page. The voice sample (200-400 words of your own prose) helps the AI match your style.

Your manuscript is organised into chapters, each containing one or more scenes. Chapters and scenes can be reordered by dragging them on the project dashboard.

Each scene can have a POV character, location, mood, purpose, and time of day assigned. These metadata fields are used by the AI assistant for context, but they're useful for your own organisation too.

Scenes have statuses (draft, revised, final) so you can track your editing progress through the manuscript.

The scene editor is a rich text editor with novel-style formatting. Paragraphs are formatted with first-line indents and no gaps between them, just like a printed novel.

The toolbar gives you access to bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, headings (H2, H3), blockquotes, bullet lists, scene breaks (***), and undo/redo.

Keyboard shortcuts work as expected: Ctrl+B for bold, Ctrl+I for italic, Ctrl+U for underline, Ctrl+Z for undo, Ctrl+Shift+Z for redo, and Ctrl+S to save.

Word count updates in real time as you type, and the save status shows in the breadcrumb bar.

Click the expand icon in the breadcrumb bar (next to the Save button) to enter focus mode. This hides the navigation, breadcrumbs, and sidebars, giving you a clean full-screen writing view.

Focus mode includes a dark theme toggle (the moon/sun icon) for comfortable late-night writing. Your dark mode preference is saved between sessions.

Press Escape or click "Exit Focus" to return to the normal view. The toolbar and all editing features remain available in focus mode.

Character profiles include over 20 fields: name, role, age, occupation, physical description, personality traits, values, fears, desires, flaws, strengths, mannerisms, speech patterns, internal contradictions, backstory, and character arc information.

Characters are grouped by role: protagonist, antagonist, supporting, and minor. You can assign characters to individual scenes and set one as the POV character for each scene.

Character Progressions track how a character changes over the course of the story. Each progression is linked to a scene and records a change in the character's knowledge, emotional state, physical condition, relationships, skills, or beliefs. The AI assistant sees only progressions from scenes at or before the current one, so it always has the right version of the character.

Character Relationships map connections between characters with a type, description, and directionality.

Locations have a name, description, and atmosphere. They support a parent-child hierarchy, so you can nest "Joe's Office" inside "Washburn Police Station".

Assign a location to each scene to keep track of where the action takes place. The AI assistant uses location details for context when working on a scene.

Story arcs represent the major narrative structures in your novel: main plot, subplots, character arcs, and thematic arcs. Each has a title, type, description, and status.

Plot threads are the individual story elements that run through your manuscript. Each thread has a status: planted (introduced), developing (active), or resolved (wrapped up). This helps you track which threads need attention and which have been completed.

The notebook is split into two sections: world-building notes and research notes. Use world-building for your story's rules, history, and lore. Use research for real-world facts, references, and source material.

Notes are organised by category and can be as long as needed.

The timeline view shows your manuscript as a horizontal sequence of scene cards, grouped by chapter. Below the scene cards, a character appearance grid shows which characters appear in which scenes.

This is useful for spotting pacing issues, characters who disappear for too long, and chapters that may be too heavy or too light on content.

The continuity report analyses your manuscript's data and flags potential issues. It checks for characters mentioned in scene text but not assigned to the scene, scenes with no characters or POV character set, plot threads that have been planted but not developed, characters with too few progressions relative to their appearances, and empty scenes.

This is not an AI feature - it runs entirely on your manuscript data and is available on all plans.

Group multiple projects into a series. Books can be reordered by dragging. The series view shows all books with their word counts and statuses.

When you're writing a later book in the series, the AI assistant automatically pulls in synopses, key characters, locations, world-building notes, and unresolved plot threads from earlier books. This happens through a priority-based context system - current book data always takes precedence, with series context filling remaining space in the token budget.

Import: Upload a .docx manuscript and Rule of Words will detect chapter breaks and scene breaks, split the text into chapters and scenes, and optionally extract characters and locations using AI.

Export: Download your manuscript as a .docx file with proper novel formatting - chapter breaks, scene breaks (***), and first-line paragraph indents.

Set a daily word count target in your profile. The dashboard shows your progress for today, this week, and your current writing streak. A 14-day bar chart tracks your recent output.

Word counts are tracked automatically from autosaves - just write, and the system records your progress. Common targets are 500 words (casual), 1,000 words (steady), and 1,667 words (NaNoWriMo pace).

Author includes all writing and editing tools: the editor, characters, locations, story arcs, timeline, continuity report, series support, import/export, focus mode, reference panel, and writing goals.

Author +AI includes everything in Author, plus the AI assistant, inline editing tools, blurb generator, and voice matching.

You can upgrade or downgrade at any time from your profile or the plans page. Upgrades take effect immediately with prorated billing. Downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing period.

Payment is handled securely through Stripe. You can manage your payment method and view billing history through the billing portal link on your profile page.

The reference panel is a sidebar that sits alongside your editor, available on all plans. It has three tabs: Characters, Locations, and Scenes.

The Characters tab shows your POV character first, then scene characters, then all other project characters. Click any character to expand their full profile. The Locations tab works the same way, with the current scene's location shown first. The Scenes tab shows your full manuscript structure - click any scene to preview its content or jump to it.

If you're on the Author +AI plan, you can switch between the reference panel and Oscar,your AI assistant, using tabs at the top of the sidebar.