Everything you need
to find your story.
This isn't a manual. It's a map. Whether you've never written a word or you have a draft that needs deepening — this is where you learn what AuthorUnlocked can do and how to use it well.
A writing companion.
Not a writing machine.
AuthorUnlocked is a set of AI-assisted writing tools built for one purpose — to help you find the story that's already inside you and get it onto the page.
It doesn't write your story. It doesn't know your characters until you tell it. It doesn't understand your world until you describe it. What it knows is craft — how scenes carry weight, how dialogue creates tension, how prose can be tightened or deepened without losing the voice that makes it yours.
Think of it as the thinking partner across the desk. The empty chair that asks better questions. You bring the intention, the imagination, the decisions. The tool brings structure, craft knowledge, and the ability to generate — quickly — so you can read, evaluate, and choose what stays.
Every word the tool generates is a suggestion. You are always the author. You decide what stays, what goes, and what gets written again.
From first idea to
almost publish-ready.
AuthorUnlocked is built as a complete system — four tools that connect to each other, each one building on what the last produced. You don't have to use all four. But if you do, the journey looks like this:
Start Here is where you build the raw material — your characters, your world, your conflict, your premise. One element at a time, with no pressure and no craft vocabulary required. At the end you have a Story Foundation document that everything else is built on.
Outline is where you give that material structure. The six-stage system walks you through the arc of your story — Instability, Pressure, Escalation, Fracture, Confrontation, Resolution. You place your elements into stages and describe what happens at each one. The result is a complete story map.
First Draft is where the pages begin. You upload your Foundation and Outline, add any reference material, tell the tool what each chapter needs, and say please. A complete chapter draft streams in. You approve it — it joins your living manuscript — or you ask for another try with more context. Chapter by chapter, your first draft takes shape.
Revise & Expand is where the draft becomes the book it was meant to be. Upload your manuscript, run revision and expansion passes, read the editorial notes, and watch your prose deepen without losing your voice.
You don't have to start at the beginning. If you already have a draft, go straight to Revise & Expand. If you have elements but no outline, start at Outline. The tools are connected but each one works on its own.
The collaboration
is the point.
AuthorUnlocked was built by a writer — not a technologist. It grew out of five books' worth of thinking about what it means to tell a story, what AI can and can't do in that process, and what a writer actually needs when the story isn't coming out right.
The central idea is this: AI is most useful when it amplifies human intention rather than replacing it. A writer who comes to the tool with nothing gets nothing back that matters. A writer who comes with a fully realized world, a clear sense of what a scene needs to do, and a specific question — gets something genuinely useful.
That's why AuthorUnlocked is built in layers. Start Here makes you think about your characters before you draft. The Outline makes you understand your story's structure before you write it. The First Draft tool asks what each chapter needs before it generates. The revision tool asks what the scene intends before it touches the prose.
Every question the tool asks is an invitation to think more clearly about your story. The answers you give determine everything about the quality of what comes back.
Bring your intention. The tool will meet you there.
Start Here
Start Here is for writers who have an idea but not yet a draft. Maybe you have a character in your head. Maybe you know the conflict but not the people caught in it. Maybe you have a question that won't leave you alone but you don't know yet whose story it is.
Start Here gives you five types of elements to build — Character, Scene, World, Conflict, and Premise — and lets you build as many of each as you need, in any order, at any pace.
Each element has two fields. The first is a free-write — no constraints, no pressure, just put down what you know. The second is a set of deeper questions — optional prompts that help you go further if you want to. "What do they want more than anything? What lie do they believe about themselves? What would break them?"
When you're ready, compile everything into a Story Foundation document — a single .rtf file that contains your entire world. This document travels with you into the Outline tool and the First Draft tool, giving every subsequent tool the context it needs to serve your specific story rather than generic fiction.
You can always come back and add more elements. Your story will grow as you build it.
Series writers: use the "Import Elements from a Manuscript" option on the welcome screen. Upload your existing books and the tool extracts your characters, world, conflict, and premise automatically — ready to review, edit, and save as your Story Foundation for the next book.
Outline
A good outline isn't a cage. It's a map. The Outline tool walks you through the six stages of your story — giving each stage a name, a purpose, and a set of questions that help you understand what needs to happen there.
The six stages are: Instability, Pressure, Escalation, Fracture, Confrontation, Resolution. Every meaningful narrative moves through these stages — not always in equal measure, not always in obvious ways, but always in this direction. A story that skips Fracture has no real Confrontation. A story that skips Pressure has no earned Escalation.
At each stage you select which of your elements are present — which characters, which scenes, which conflicts — and describe what happens. The tool asks deeper questions if you want them. By the end of all six stages you have a complete story map that knows who is involved at every turn and what each moment is for.
You can import your elements directly from your saved Start Here projects — if you're signed in, your foundations appear as selectable cards. Tap one and your characters, scenes, world details, conflicts, and premise all become selectable chips at every stage. No downloading, no copy-pasting.
When you're done, download your Story Outline document — another .rtf file, ready to upload to the First Draft tool alongside your Foundation.
First Draft
The First Draft tool is where your manuscript begins. Not from nothing — from everything you've already built. If you're signed in, your Story Foundation and Outline load directly from your saved projects — just tap to select. Or upload the files directly. Add any reference material, tell the tool what each chapter needs, and say please. A complete chapter draft streams in word by word.
The four inputs are what make this different from every other AI writing tool:
Story Foundation — your characters, world, conflict, and premise. The tool knows who your people are and what world they inhabit before it writes a single word.
Story Outline — your six-stage structure. The tool knows where each chapter sits in the larger arc — what pressure has already been established, what's still coming, what this chapter needs to accomplish.
Reference material — optional but powerful. Upload previous books in a series, research notes, style references, anything that adds texture and specificity to the world.
Your context — the most important input. Tell the tool what it can't know from the documents. The mood of this chapter. The time of day. What the character is carrying into this scene. What you want the reader to feel. The more you say, the closer the draft gets to what you imagined.
When the draft arrives you make a decision. Approve it — it joins your living manuscript document, chapter by chapter — or ask for a Try Again. When you try again, the tool asks what was missing. You add context. It generates again. This continues until you have a chapter worth approving.
When you're ready, download your complete manuscript — all approved chapters compiled into one .rtf document, ready for the Revise & Expand tool.
The First Draft tool writes to be revised. Don't expect perfection — expect a complete draft that you can work with. That's what it's for.
Revise & Expand
The Revise & Expand tool is where the draft becomes the book it was meant to be. This is the connected pipeline tool — built for writers who have been through Start Here, Outline, and First Draft. Your Foundation, Outline, and manuscript all load directly from your saved projects. No uploading, no copy-pasting.
The tool reads your whole manuscript, builds a context card from your voice, your characters, your world, and carries that context into every pass you run. The revision of Chapter 12 sounds like it belongs to the same book as Chapter 1 — because the tool knows it does.
The workflow is chapter by chapter. Select a chapter, choose a pass, add anything the tool doesn't already know, run it. Approve what works — or try again with more context. When all chapters are approved, download one clean compiled manuscript as a single .rtf file. No more titleV2_FINAL_forreal.
The "Anything else before this pass?" field replaces the old scene intent fields. Your Foundation and Outline already carry your characters, world, and story structure — so you only need to add what those documents don't already say. The mood of this chapter. A specific detail. Something only you know.
After the tool runs a pass, the output is a suggestion — not a replacement. Read it carefully. Take what serves your story. Rewrite what doesn't. Your voice leads.
Standalone Editor
The Standalone Editor is for writers who started writing before they found AuthorUnlocked. Upload your manuscript — the tool reads your voice, your characters, your world, and builds a context card it carries into every pass. Same eleven passes. No pipeline required.
Series writers can upload reference material alongside their manuscript — previous books in the series, character sheets, style notes, a series bible. The tool reads everything and builds a unified context card that knows the complete history of your world. Character details established in Book 1 travel into every pass on Book 3.
The chapter dropdown detects chapter markers in your manuscript automatically — so you can work chapter by chapter without copy-pasting. Select a chapter, run a pass, approve it, move to the next. When you're done, download one clean compiled manuscript.
The scene intent fields are available for writers who want to add more context — what your character believes at the start of the scene, what happens to that belief, how you want the reader to feel, and what you see that isn't on the page yet. These are optional but powerful.
The Standalone Editor and Revise & Expand run the same eleven passes. The difference is context — Revise & Expand knows your full pipeline. The Standalone Editor reads what you give it and builds from there.
Six ways to
tighten your prose.
Revision passes work on existing prose — tightening, clarifying, sharpening. They don't add content. They make what's there do more work.
Four ways to
deepen your scenes.
Expansion passes add content — they find the thin places in your prose and fill them in. They always make the scene longer. Use them on scenes that feel rushed, underdeveloped, or emotionally flat.
One pass that
changes everything.
The Transform pass is different from revision and expansion. It doesn't tighten or add — it converts. It takes one form of writing and transforms it into another, preserving every intention along the way.
When your world
spans multiple books.
AuthorUnlocked is built to handle series writing — and the more context you give it, the more precisely it can serve your specific world.
This matters for continuity. If Book 1 established that a character's pendant is a silver cross, the tool will carry that detail into every pass on Book 3. Character voices, world rules, recurring symbols — all of it travels with the context card.
For series writers: maintain a running series bible document that you update after each book is complete. Upload it as reference material in every subsequent book's sessions. The more history the tool can read, the more accurately it serves your world.