Before you trust anything with your story.

A place to write novels, short stories, comics and screenplays, with a reader beside you that remembers everything. You write at the Writer’s Desk. When you press Review, Understory reads the scenes that changed, keeps track of every character, place and story arc your pages establish, and asks you when something doesn’t add up.

It points to the passage and asks. What happens next is up to you.

No. Not a sentence, and not a typo. In the words of our privacy policy: “The AI never writes in your manuscript, not even to fix a typo.”

A review can add to what sits beside your story: facts in Lore, threads on the timeline, questions in the drawer. Your manuscript only changes when you or a co-author type in it.

Three reasons writers tend to notice:

• It remembers. Chapter 40 is read against the cast and Lore built from every chapter before it, not against whatever fits in one conversation.
• It shows its evidence. Every fact is kept with the sentence it came from, and every question quotes the passages behind it. You can check it rather than take its word.
• It remembers your answers. Settle a question once and every later review is told not to ask it again. A chatbot starts from nothing each time, and it will happily offer to rewrite your chapter. Understory never will.

Four, each with its own editor:

• A novel, divided into chapters.
• Short stories, each one its own part.
• A comic, written as a script of pages, panels and balloons, divided into issues.
• A screenplay, in standard script format, divided into acts.

Those are only the starting names. If your book has parts, books or cantos, call them that.

Understory reads each scene that has changed since the last review, one at a time. With each scene it has:

• the cast, including anything you’ve written about them in Lore;
• summaries of the scenes just before it;
• your notes to self for that scene, read as your intent rather than as story;
• every question you’ve already answered.

Then it looks at the book as a whole: whether a later chapter already answers an open question, how your story arcs are moving, whether each character stays consistent, and what’s new for Lore.

Scenes you haven’t touched are skipped. One press reviews up to 25 changed scenes, and a count shows any still waiting for the next press. The app will tell you it “can take a minute”. A large batch takes a few.

• Contradiction. Two passages that can’t both be true: ten years earlier in chapter 2, “eight years” in chapter 9. Or a page that disagrees with what you wrote in Lore.
• Same? Two names that might be one person. Is “Kit” the same person as “Katherine Vale”?
• Who. Somebody the page describes but never names, like “the figure in black”.
• No payoff. A thread you set up that the story hasn’t resolved.
• Never seen. Somebody you added to the cast who doesn’t appear in any scene yet.

Every question quotes its evidence, and each quote opens the passage it came from. To keep the drawer worth opening, there are never more than 10 open questions at once, and never more than two from one scene.

Then say so. Most questions can be answered in one click: “The first is right”, “Both, in sequence”, “That is deliberate”. You can also answer in your own words, for example: June remembers it wrong, on purpose.

Whatever you answer is sent to every later review as settled, with an instruction not to ask about it again. An unreliable narrator stays unreliable, and nobody flags it twice.

If a question simply misreads your story, choose Not a question. It’s taken off the list for good, and you can undo that.

Only until you tell it otherwise. When two names look like one person, Understory asks Same? Answer “Yes” and the two become one character: the second name becomes an alias, and everything known under it moves across.

You can also list a character’s other names in Lore before a review ever meets them. As the app puts it: “Reviews know them by these too.”

Whenever you’d like a reader’s eye: after a writing session, a chapter, or a big revision. Unchanged scenes are skipped, so frequent reviews spend your allowance on new pages, not on pages it has already read.

A review covers everything that has changed since the last one, rather than a chapter you pick, and one review runs on a story at a time.

Lore is your story bible, and you don’t have to write a word of it. It starts with Characters, Places, Things and History, and reviews fill it from your pages. Each fact is listed with the sentence it came from and a link to its scene. You choose Keep as canon or Take out.

You decide how new findings arrive: “Ask me each time”, “Add it automatically” or “Don’t add”. Sections can be renamed, reordered and added, so a fantasy series can have Magic, Houses and Prophecies.

Yes, and it makes reviews sharper. Give a character a profile and reviews check your pages against it. When a page disagrees, you’ll get a Contradicts Lore question with three answers: “Lore is right”, “The page is right”, or “Both: it changes in the story”.

Reviews never change what you’ve written in Lore. It stays yours to edit.

That’s what the Story arcs page is for: every thread on one timeline, with a switch between two orders.

• Story order is the order a reader meets things.
• Time order is the order they actually happen, so a flashback drops back to where it belongs.

A scene whose timing isn’t clear stays in Not placed yet rather than being guessed at. A line like “the next morning” is enough to place it. On the timeline, each bubble is bigger where a thread matters more in that scene.

Reviews find five kinds: main plot, subplot, character, relationship and mystery. Each one is followed through your scenes and marked as it moves: setting up, rising, climax, resolved, or left hanging. That last one is useful to know about before a reader finds it.

Yes. It works the way Final Draft does, so your hands already know it:

Enter

Moves to what usually comes next: a heading leads to action, a character name to dialogue, dialogue back to action, a transition to a new scene heading.

Tab

Changes the line you’re on: action, character, transition, scene heading. In dialogue, it switches between dialogue and a parenthetical.

(

At the start of a line of dialogue, starts a parenthetical.

Names

Type the start of one, like MA, and it offers MARA from your cast. Enter or Tab takes it.

Type “INT.” or “EXT.” and the line becomes a scene heading; type “CUT TO:” and it becomes a transition. Two hyphens stay two hyphens, as scripts expect.

New to screenwriting? The Terms button opens a searchable glossary of script terms, from V.O. to smash cut.

Yes. A PDF export is set in Courier Prime with the standard indents, and when a speech breaks across a page it gets (MORE) at the bottom and (CONT’D) at the top, the way a production script does. You can also export for Final Draft (.fdx), Fountain, Word or plain text.

Going the other way, Understory imports Final Draft and Fountain files, and scripts saved as PDF or Word.

The comic editor has a button for each part of a script: page, panel, dialogue, caption, SFX, art note and spread. The keys keep you moving:

• Enter on an empty balloon starts the next panel. On an empty panel, it starts the next page.
• Tab steps between panel, balloon and note.
• Speaker names complete as you type.

Reviews read a comic script as carefully as prose, so a character who changes eye color between issues gets noticed.

You can get a first draft to work from. When you import a prose file into a screenplay, the Shelf offers Turn it into a draft screenplay: “narration as action, speech as dialogue under the speaker’s name.” Into a comic, Turn its dialogue into balloons gives a panel for each paragraph and a new page every five panels.

It’s a rearrangement of your own words, not a rewrite. Every line is still yours, just laid out as a script, ready for you to adapt.

Yes. Any story can become a series: Books for novels and short stories, Volumes for comics, Episodes for screenplays.

Lore, story arcs, reviews and questions cover the whole series. A scar described in Book 1 is checked in Book 3, and a thread you left hanging in Episode 2 is still being tracked in Episode 6. Each book keeps its own Writer’s Desk and scene list. In Your Stories, the series is one entry, and you choose the book you want from it.

Yes. Choose Join a story into… and the other story comes in as the next book, bringing its reviews, questions and notes with it. People you’d invited to that story aren’t brought along, so you decide who sees the series.

A series is one kind of writing, so a novel can join a novel but not a screenplay. You can also import a finished manuscript straight in as the next book.

Either. The export window asks whether you want “The book open now” or “The whole series”.

• Manuscripts: Word (.docx), PDF, Markdown and plain text.
• Screenplays: Final Draft (.fdx) and Fountain.
• Plans: Plottr files, and spreadsheet outlines (.xlsx or .csv) with a row per scene.

Files go to the Shelf, which can divide a manuscript into chapters for you, or keep it whole until you mark where they go. Then you choose where it lands: in the story you have open, as the next book of a series, or as a new story. Files can be up to 10 MB.

• Novels, short stories and comics: Word, PDF, Markdown and plain text.
• Screenplays: PDF, Final Draft, Word, Fountain and plain text.

It’s free, always, even if your subscription has lapsed. Your notes to self are left out unless you choose to include them. For a copy of everything we hold about you, use Download my data under Settings, Your data.

Our terms promise at least 30 days’ notice, export working until the very end, and a refund for any time you’ve paid for past the closing date. Since export is free and complete, the best insurance is the one you already have.

• A co-author writes the story with you. They can’t invite anyone or delete anything. Each co-author is a seat on your subscription, with their own review allowance.
• A reviewer reads the whole story and leaves comments in the margin, but can’t change the writing. Reviewers are free, up to 10 per story, and don’t need a subscription. They do need a free account.

Invitations go by email, and each link works for 14 days, for that address only.

Notes in the margin, pinned to the passage they’re about. Each carries a reason, so you can see at a glance what kind of note it is: I got lost, This contradicts, Pacing, Out of character, Typo, A question, A thought, and This landed.

That last one matters. Knowing what’s working is as useful as knowing what isn’t.

Notes to self (Ctrl Shift H) are reminders written right into a scene. Reviewers never see them: they’re removed on our server before the page is sent. Co-authors share the manuscript with you, so they do see them.

Notes are never counted in your word count and are left out of exports unless you include them. Reviews read them as your intent, not as part of the story, so a note like Kit is lying here, and the reader shouldn’t know yet tells the review what you’re up to.

Almost certainly. Open History on the Writer’s Desk: Understory keeps a version every few minutes while you write, up to the last 100, and any one of them can be restored.

Your work saves itself within a second of when you stop typing. If your connection drops, unsaved edits are kept in your browser and offered back when you return. A story or scene you delete is kept for 30 days. Email us within that time to get it back.

Calm, deliberately. Curly quotes, ellipses and em dashes (type two hyphens) happen as you type. There are scene breaks, a word count for each scene, a page count for screenplays, search across the whole story, and light and dark themes.

It works on a phone or tablet as well as a computer. On a narrow screen, the margin slides over the page. It works online, saving your writing to our servers as you go.

Open the sample story. It’s a book by a public-domain author, already reviewed by Understory, with its Lore, arcs, timeline and questions filled in. It’s read-only, so explore as much as you like. It’s offered when you first sign in, before you’ve written a word.

Writing, importing, exporting, comments, and inviting reviewers are free, with no time limit. A subscription turns on reviews for every story you own. It’s $10 a month or $100 a year per writing seat, and each co-author you invite adds a seat.

You can write for as long as you like, and explore the sample story, before you decide. The pricing page sets out every line of both plans.

The Plot page counts it in scenes rather than credits or tokens: roughly how many more scenes you can review this month. The estimate gets more precise as it learns what your reviews cost. Since only changed scenes are read, revising one chapter uses only that chapter.

If you need more in a busy month, Add half a month’s allowance for $5. It counts for the month you buy it in. If you run out, you can keep writing, editing, importing and exporting as usual until the next month.

From our terms: “You’re never locked out of your own manuscript over a bill.” Only the reviews stop. You can still write, import, export and comment, and everything reviews have found, including Lore, arcs and answered questions, stays where it is.

No. “We’ll never sell your writing, share it with anyone for their own use, or use it to train anything.”

Reviews use AI from Anthropic, through its API, and “Anthropic doesn’t train its models on what’s sent through its API.” Anthropic keeps API traffic for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policies.

No. “Nobody at Understory reads your story, and there’s no internal tool that shows us your writing.” The only exceptions are fixing a specific problem you’ve reported, with your permission, or when the law requires it.

Nothing leaves our servers until you press Review, and only the people you invite can open your story.

You do, entirely. We claim no rights over your writing: we can’t publish it, show it to anyone you haven’t invited, or train a model on it.

You can download everything we hold about you at any time. Deleting your account removes everything straight away, and encrypted backups expire within 30 days. The privacy policy has the details.