Learning Center

Every tool.
Fully explained.

AuthorUnlocked is an eight-tool AI writing pipeline that walks you from your first idea to a publish-ready manuscript. This page covers how everything works, why it's built the way it is, and how to get the most out of every step.

Overview

What Is AuthorUnlocked?

A connected pipeline from blank page to finished book.

AuthorUnlocked is not a single AI writing tool. It's a pipeline — eight connected tools that build on each other. What you create in Tool 1 travels into Tool 2. What you build in Tool 2 feeds Tool 3. By the time you're drafting chapters, the AI has read your characters, your world, your structure, and your intentions. It isn't guessing.

Each tool has a focused job. None of them tries to do everything. This is intentional — a tool that does one thing well produces better results than a tool that does everything adequately.

① Start Here › ② Outline › ③ Chapter Planner › ④ First Draft › ⑤ Revise › ⑥ Polish › ⑦ Publish › ⑧ Preview

You don't have to start at Tool 1. If you already have a manuscript, jump straight to Revise or Polish. If you have an outline but no draft, start at Chapter Planner. The tools are connected but not mandatory in sequence.

The Philosophy

Your voice leads. Always.

Why the AI does what it does — and what it doesn't.

There's a version of AI writing tools where you type a prompt and the AI writes your story for you. AuthorUnlocked is not that. The goal here is a different relationship: you bring the ideas, the characters, the intentions, the emotional truth — the AI handles the labor of drafting and the craft of revision, grounded in what you gave it.

"The machine was never the architect. It was the tool. The structure — the decisions, the pressure, the contradictions — had to come from the builder."
— The Quiet Draft, True Anchor LLC Publishing

Every tool in AuthorUnlocked is built around this principle. The AI does not invent your characters. It does not decide your plot. It does not replace your voice. It reads what you've built, holds it carefully, and helps you write it.

In the Revise tool, every pass opens with: "Your voice leads. The pass deepens what's already there — it does not rewrite your story." That's not marketing copy. It's a technical constraint built into every prompt.

In the Polish tool, the AI assist panel operates only on text you've selected, suggests a revision, and waits for your explicit approval. It never rewrites unprompted. It never auto-applies. It asks.

Overview

The full pipeline.

Eight tools. One direction. Your manuscript at the end.

The pipeline is designed so that each stage earns the next. You don't move to Revise until your draft is structurally ready. You don't move to Polish until your revisions are complete. The gates exist to protect the quality of your final manuscript — not to slow you down, but to ensure you arrive at each stage with work that's ready for it.

The Prepare Gate
Between First Draft and Revise sits the Prepare gate — three automated passes that check your manuscript for structural gaps, continuity errors, and timeline drift before you spend revision time on prose that has underlying problems. It's the feature that separates a pipeline from a collection of tools.

Every tool produces a downloadable file — an RTF you can print, open in Word, or keep as a record of where you were. Your work is never locked inside the platform.

Tool ①

①Start Here

Build your Story Foundation — the document that anchors everything.

Start Here is where your story becomes a document the AI can read. You fill in five elements: Premise, Characters, World, Conflict, and Scene. These aren't prompts — they're the structural facts of your story. They become the Story Foundation, which every subsequent tool reads before doing anything.

The quality of your Foundation determines the quality of everything downstream. A vague premise produces a vague draft. A sharp, specific Foundation — real character names, a defined world, a clear central conflict — produces work that sounds like your story, not a generic AI story.

Best practice
Write your characters as if you're describing them to a casting director — specific, physical, contradictory. "A cautious woman who rides between settlements and has learned that hope and danger often wear the same face" gives the AI something to work with. "A strong female protagonist" does not.

Output: Story Foundation RTF — a formatted document of all five elements, ready to bring into any other tool.

Tool ②

②Outline

Shape your story's arc before you write a single chapter.

The Outline tool walks you through your story's structural stages. Each stage asks what's happening at that point in the story — the pressure building, the fracture point, the resolution. The AI reads your Foundation and helps you fill in each stage, but the decisions are yours.

Your outline doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be directional — enough structure that when you're drafting Chapter 14, you know what Chapter 14 is supposed to accomplish in the larger arc.

On stage count
Not every story fits a six-stage structure. Literary novels with parallel arcs, dual timelines, or multiple POV threads may need more stages to breathe properly. Trust the shape of your story over any framework.

Output: Story Outline RTF — your complete arc, stage by stage, in a formatted document.

Tool ③

③Chapter Planner

Map every chapter before you write it.

The Chapter Planner is where your outline becomes a chapter-by-chapter plan. Each card holds the chapter's POV character, setting, goal, conflict, intended outcome, and a draft context field — the most important field in the tool.

The draft context is what the First Draft AI reads when generating your chapter. The more specific you are — what happens, who's in the room, what the emotional beat is, what must be true by the time the chapter ends — the more the draft will sound like your story.

The Chapter Advisor reads your foundation, outline, and existing draft (if you have one) and suggests a complete chapter plan. You can accept its suggestions, skip them, or build your plan entirely by hand. Chapters can be sent individually to First Draft, or all at once.

The most common mistake
Thin chapter context. If the draft context says "Scarlett arrives in the district" and nothing else, the AI will invent everything that happens. If it says "Scarlett arrives at the main plaza after three days' ride. Mira is waiting. This is their first meeting. Scarlett says less than Mira expects — she's watching, cataloging, not revealing her assessment yet. The chapter ends with Elias seeing Scarlett from a distance and going still" — the draft will be specific, grounded, and yours.

Output: Chapter Plan RTF or DOCX — your full plan in a formatted document.

Tool ④

④First Draft

Write. Prepare. Then move to Revise.

The First Draft tool has three screens: Review, Prepare, and Write. They have distinct purposes.

Write is your drafting room. One chapter at a time. You provide context, the AI generates a draft, you approve or regenerate. The Manuscript Bible — a set of established facts about your story — is injected at the top of every generation call, keeping the AI consistent across all your chapters. When you approve a chapter, a plot card is generated automatically from its content, capturing unresolved threads and carrying them forward into the next chapter.

Review is your chapter list. You see every chapter's status, can reorder them, send them to Write individually, and download the full manuscript at any time.

Prepare is the gate. It runs when you've finished drafting and are ready to move to Revise. Three passes, in order. You can't skip ahead.

Output: First Draft RTF — your manuscript as drafted. Prepared Draft RTF — your manuscript after the Prepare gate, corrected and ready for Revise.

Tool ④ — Prepare Gate

✦ The Prepare Gate

Three passes before you revise. Each one cleans a different layer.

The most common way AI-assisted writing fails is not in the prose — it's in the structure. A character disappears for six chapters. A timeline contradicts itself across three scenes. A crucial arc is introduced and never resolved. These are the problems that make revision feel endless, because no amount of line editing fixes a structural gap.

The Prepare gate addresses this before you touch Revise. Three sequential passes, each unlocking only when the previous one is complete.

Pass 1 — Story Architecture
Reads your full manuscript and identifies structural gaps: characters who never get their own POV chapter, emotional arcs that don't resolve, duplicate scenes serving the same dramatic purpose, compressed endings that haven't been earned. Flags up to five issues. Each one can be approved (the AI generates a fix) or skipped (you'll handle it manually).
Pass 2 — Continuity Check
Reads all chapters and flags cross-chapter contradictions: timeline drift, a character's position changing impossibly between scenes, a named detail that changes, a transition that was never written. Each issue is shown one at a time with a targeted fix. Approve it, or skip it.
Pass 3 — Story Bible Refresh
Regenerates the Story Bible from your corrected manuscript. This becomes the continuity reference that governs every Revise pass — updated to reflect all fixes applied in Passes 1 and 2.

When all three passes are complete, two things happen: the Prepared Draft RTF becomes available for download, and the Revise link in the navigation unlocks. You arrive at Revise with a structurally sound manuscript, a fresh Story Bible, and prose that's ready to be deepened rather than repaired.

Important
Run the Prepare gate once. Each pass is marked complete when you finish it — re-running an already-completed pass will prompt a warning, because the Architecture pass can add chapters and running it multiple times on the same manuscript will stack duplicate additions. If you make significant changes to your draft, you can reset individual passes and run them again deliberately.
Tool ⑤

⑤Revise & Expand

Deepen, expand, and sharpen — one chapter at a time.

Revise is where your draft becomes a manuscript. Upload your Prepared Draft RTF (or any manuscript file) and work through it chapter by chapter. Each chapter can receive multiple revision passes — you choose which ones and in what order.

The tool reads your Story Bible before every pass. It knows your characters' names, your established facts, your world details. It will not invent a new character or change an established detail. Voice preservation is built into every prompt.

Each pass returns a revised version of the chapter alongside editorial notes that explain what was changed and why. You copy the result into the editor if you want to keep it. Nothing is applied automatically.

Output: Full revised manuscript RTF — all chapters in manuscript format, ready for Polish or direct submission.

Tool ⑥

⑥Polish

Your hands on every word. The final pass is yours.

Polish is a hands-on manuscript editor. You do the editing. The AI can assist with selected passages — tighten a sentence, vary the rhythm, flag passive constructions — but it assists only when asked, only on what you've selected, and never more than a few paragraphs at a time.

The three-panel layout shows your original text on the left, your edited version in the center, and an AI assist panel on the right. Changes auto-save. You can export the completed manuscript at any time.

This is the stage where the manuscript becomes definitively yours. Revise deepens the prose. Polish makes it precise.

Output: Polished manuscript RTF — standard manuscript format, Times New Roman 12pt, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, running header, title page with word count.

Tool ⑦

⑦Publish

Assemble your complete book. KDP-ready.

Publish takes your finished manuscript and assembles it into a complete book file — front matter, chapters, back matter, all properly formatted for KDP upload.

You configure your trim size (6×9 or 5×8), fill in your title page, dedication, acknowledgments, and author bio. You can generate back-cover copy with AI assistance. When you export, you get a publishing-ready RTF with mirrored margins, proper section breaks, running headers suppressed on front matter, Roman numeral front-matter page numbers, and Arabic chapter page numbers starting at 1.

A back-cover-copy text file is also exported separately — ready to paste directly into KDP's description field.

Output: Complete book RTF (KDP-formatted) + back-cover-copy.txt.

Tool ⑧

⑧Preview

Read your proof. Make corrections. Export the final file.

Preview converts your RTF to PDF and displays it exactly as it will appear in print. You read through it as a reader would. When you find something to fix — a typo, a word choice, a spacing issue — you make the correction in the editor and regenerate. The PDF updates with your change.

When the proof is clean, export the final corrected RTF. This is the file you upload to KDP, IngramSpark, or your distributor of choice.

Output: Final corrected RTF, print-ready PDF proof.

Going Deeper

Revision passes explained.

What each pass does — and when to use it.

The Revise tool offers eleven passes in three categories. Each one is designed for a specific problem. Running them in the right order matters.

Revision Passes
Line Edit
Fix awkward phrasing, improve sentence rhythm, eliminate redundancy. The craft pass.
Clarity
Cut jargon, untangle complex sentences, replace vague words with precise ones.
Voice
Amplify what makes your writing distinctive. Remove generic phrases. Use this if a pass has drifted from your style.
Pacing
Vary sentence lengths deliberately — short for punch, long for immersion. Cut what stalls momentum.
Show / Don't Tell
Replace telling statements with concrete sensory detail and behavior. Reveal emotion through action.
Cut 20%
Remove every unnecessary word, sentence, and idea. The result should feel lean and essential.
Expansion Passes
Expand Scene
Find thin or rushed moments. Add sensory grounding, deepen beats, fill spatial and temporal gaps.
Expand Dialogue
Add subtext beneath exchanges. Weave action and gesture between lines. Sharpen each character's distinct voice.
Inner Life
Deepen the POV character's interiority — what they notice, the texture of their emotions, memory triggered by the scene.
Ground Setting
Add specific sensory details that place the reader in the scene. Use environment to reflect or contrast emotional tone.
Transform
Narrative Flow
Transforms a compressed, fragmented draft into full narrative prose. Treats each fragment as a seed and grows it into a scene — preserving all intention, voice, and meaning.
Recommended order
If starting from a compressed first draft: Narrative Flow first, then Expand passes to fill what's thin, then revision passes (Line Edit, Pacing, Show/Tell) to sharpen what you've built. Save Cut 20% for last — don't cut before you've built.
Going Deeper

AI assists in Polish.

Minimal, surgical, on your terms.

The Polish tool's AI assist panel works on selected text only — highlight a passage, choose an action, get a suggestion. Three actions are available:

Tighten
Removes unnecessary words and weak phrases. Sharpens without changing meaning or voice.
Vary Rhythm
Mixes long and short sentences so the prose breathes. Doesn't change the events or the voice.
Flag Passive
Rewrites passive constructions in active voice where it strengthens the sentence.

Every suggestion is shown alongside your original. You accept it, ignore it, or use it as a prompt for your own edit. Nothing applies automatically.

Going Deeper

KDP formatting explained.

What the Publish export does — and what to check before uploading.

The Publish RTF is formatted to KDP's specifications for print-on-demand. Here's what's included automatically:

  • —Trim size — 6×9 or 5×8, selected by you. Page dimensions are set to match.
  • —Mirrored margins — Inner margins wider than outer margins to account for the spine. Gutter is built in.
  • —Section breaks — Proper section breaks between front matter, chapters, and back matter so page numbering works correctly.
  • —Page numbering — Roman numerals for front matter. Arabic numerals starting at 1 for Chapter 1. Title page and front matter have headers suppressed.
  • —Running header — Your title on odd pages, your name on even pages. Standard trade formatting.
Before you upload
Open the RTF in Word or LibreOffice and do a final check — widow/orphan lines, chapter titles sitting alone at the bottom of a page, any formatting quirks introduced by the conversion. KDP's file checker is strict. The export handles 95% of formatting requirements automatically; that last 5% is yours to verify.
Going Deeper

Voice & AI guardrails.

What the AI is and isn't allowed to do — and why.

Every AI prompt in AuthorUnlocked carries explicit instructions about voice preservation. The system doesn't just ask the AI to "be careful" — it defines exactly what should and shouldn't change.

In the Revise tool, the system prompt reads: "The writer's voice is sacred. You amplify it, never replace it." The expansion passes carry: "Maintain the author's exact tone, voice, tense, and POV." The Narrative Flow pass carries: "Do not smooth away the writer's voice — the stillness stays, the weight stays, the deliberate rhythm stays."

In Polish, the assist prompts read: "Do not change the meaning, the voice, or the events. Preserve the author's style exactly." They operate on a maximum of a few paragraphs at a time — no chapter-scale rewrites are possible through the assist panel.

The Story Bible is the continuity guardrail. Every established fact — character names, ages, locations, backstory details — is injected into every generation and revision call. The AI cannot contradict what you've established without being explicitly asked to.

Voice tip
If a revision pass produces something that doesn't sound like you, the Voice pass is designed specifically to fix that. Run it after any pass that feels like it drifted from your register.
Going Deeper

Jumping in mid-pipeline.

You don't have to start at Tool 1.

Every tool in AuthorUnlocked accepts file uploads. You can bring your existing work into any stage.

  • —Have a finished manuscript? Go to Revise. Upload your .docx or .rtf. Fill in a Foundation in the Foundation field — even two paragraphs describing your world and characters will improve the revision quality significantly.
  • —Have an outline but no draft? Go to Chapter Planner. Upload your outline. Use Import as Chapters to convert it into a chapter plan, then send individual chapters to First Draft.
  • —Have a draft that just needs a final pass? Go straight to Polish. Upload your .docx or .rtf and edit directly in the three-panel editor.
  • —Have an existing manuscript you want to evaluate structurally? Upload it to the Chapter Planner — the Chapter Advisor will read it against your Foundation and Outline and tell you what's strong, what's weak, and what's missing.
Going Deeper

Exporting your work.

RTF everywhere. Every tool. Any time.

Every tool in AuthorUnlocked produces a downloadable file. Your work is never locked in the platform.

  • —Start Here — Story Foundation RTF.
  • —Outline — Story Outline RTF.
  • —Chapter Planner — Full chapter plan as RTF or DOCX.
  • —First Draft — First Draft RTF (raw manuscript). Prepared Draft RTF (corrected, post-gate manuscript, ready for Revise).
  • —Revise & Expand — Full revised manuscript RTF.
  • —Polish — Polished manuscript RTF in standard manuscript format.
  • —Publish — Complete book RTF (KDP-formatted) + back-cover-copy.txt.
  • —Preview — Final corrected RTF + PDF proof.
Questions

FAQ

The questions writers actually ask.
Is this free?
AuthorUnlocked offers a 7-day free trial with no credit card required. After that, it's $7.99/month or $63.99/year. The literary games are also available separately as a standalone purchase.
Do I need an account?
Yes — an account is required to use the writing tools. Sign in with Google and your work saves to the cloud, accessible from any device. The trial starts the moment you first sign in.
Does the AI write my book for me?
It can draft chapters — but it drafts them from what you've built. Your characters, your structure, your context. The AI is a very capable drafting assistant, but the story decisions — who, what, why, what it means — those come from you. Writers who treat the draft as a starting point and do real revision work end up with something that sounds like them. Writers who accept every draft unedited end up with something that sounds like AI.
What is the Prepare gate and why does it exist?
The Prepare gate sits between First Draft and Revise. It runs three automated passes — Story Architecture, Continuity Check, and Story Bible Refresh — to catch structural gaps and timeline errors before you spend revision time on prose that has underlying problems. It exists because the most expensive mistake in AI-assisted writing is polishing a draft that has a structural hole in it. Fix the structure first. Revise the prose second.
Will the AI change my writing style?
Every prompt in AuthorUnlocked is engineered to prevent this. Voice preservation is explicitly required in every revision pass, every expansion pass, and every AI assist in Polish. That said, the Revise tool works best on text you've personally drafted or already worked on. If you run a Line Edit on AI-generated prose you haven't touched, you'll get polished AI prose. If you run it on writing that's genuinely yours, the pass preserves and sharpens what's there.
What file formats does AuthorUnlocked accept?
RTF, DOCX, and TXT uploads are accepted across all tools. The file reader strips formatting and extracts the text — what matters is the content, not the container.
What if a chapter draft is wrong?
Add more context and generate again. The context field is your lever — the more specific you are about what this chapter needs to accomplish, who's in it, what happens, and how it ends, the closer the draft will be. If the AI keeps getting something wrong, name it explicitly: "Do not introduce a new character in this chapter" or "The tone here is quiet, not dramatic — no confrontation yet."
Can I use this for a series?
Yes. Use the Reference Material upload in First Draft and Revise to bring in previous books in the series. The AI reads the reference material and maintains consistency with established characters, world details, and tone across books.
What AI model does AuthorUnlocked use?
All drafting, revision, and analysis passes use Claude Sonnet by Anthropic. Your Foundation, Outline, Chapter Plan, Story Bible, and reference material are all included in every call — the model always has full context before generating anything.
Can the Publish tool actually prepare my book for KDP?
For most standard books — yes. Choose your trim size, configure your header and page numbers, fill in your front and back matter, and export. The RTF comes out with mirrored KDP margins, proper section breaks, running headers suppressed on the title page and front matter, Roman numeral page numbers for front matter, and Arabic page numbers starting at Chapter 1. Always open the file in Word before uploading and check for widows, orphans, and any formatting quirks — the export handles 95% automatically, but a visual check before upload is always worth the ten minutes.
How is Polish different from Revise?
Revise is an AI-powered editing pass — you feed it a chapter and it returns a revised version with editorial notes. Polish is a hands-on manuscript editor where you do the final work yourself, with optional minimal AI assists available on selected passages. Revise is for systematic improvement of your draft. Polish is for the final pass when the work is substantially yours and you want complete control over every word.
Will it work on my phone?
The tools are usable on mobile but designed for desktop. The Polish editor in particular is best on a full-width screen — the three-panel layout collapses on smaller screens, which works but loses some of the side-by-side editing benefit.
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