How It Works
The planning that makes
the writing possible.
Most novels stall not because the writing is hard, but because the foundation was never there. Each step here produces something concrete you can read, respond to, and change. Everything stays flexible until you are ready to write.
The Axiomatic Story Construction Method
Strip any story that earns its ending: voice goes first, then structure, then theme, then world, then characters, then genre — until only the idea remains. That stripping sequence has one order. Reversed, it is the construction sequence. The nine steps here follow it. (Scribbard did not invent the rules. It just read them very carefully.)
Idea Board
Think before you commit.
A free-form canvas for capturing fragments before they're ready to become a structured story. No blank page pressure. Just a place to put things down before they evaporate.
You
Add cards for characters, scenes, themes, what-ifs. Sequence them. Connect any two with a typed relationship. The Connections table shows every link at a glance.
Scribbard
One button synthesises everything — cards, content, connections, the sequence you chose — into your Story Concept. Nothing is treated in isolation; nothing is discarded. The board remains open and editable at every stage that follows.
Story Concept
A sentence is enough.
Your raw story idea in free text. It can be a single line, a paragraph, or a page. Scribbard parses it to extract what's implicit: genre, setting, character seeds, conflict type.
You
Write your idea however formed — a line, a paragraph, a page. Import from the Idea Board, start fresh, or upload a reference document.
Scribbard
Generates a logline from your concept. Extracts what's implicit — genre, character seeds, conflict type — and seeds every downstream step with what it finds. Nothing is discarded; every implication becomes material.
Genre & Audience
Genre carries obligations.
Confirms genre and subgenre. Sets audience and target length. These decisions propagate through everything downstream.
You
Confirm or adjust genre, subgenre, audience, and target word count. Set the content language — 27 options across Latin, Cyrillic, CJK, and Indic scripts.
Scribbard
Identifies the obligatory scenes and tropes for your genre — the black moment in a thriller, the first kiss in romance. Suggests comparable titles, each with an axis-of-comparison note. Carries the content language through every generation.
Characters
Architecture, not biography.
Full psychological construction — the frameworks that make characters function in fiction rather than simply appear in it. Followed by a Story Advisory that checks the structural logic.
You
Review and adjust the generated profiles. Add supporting characters. Define relationships — estranged parent, former mentor turned rival, reluctant ally.
Scribbard
Generates Ghost, Flaw/Misbelief, Desire, and Need. The antagonist is built to exploit the protagonist's exact psychological weakness. A Story Advisory checks the structural logic and flags anything load-bearing that's missing.
World & Setting
Build the world. Use what the story needs.
Comprehensive world-building with the discipline to only surface in generation what actually appears in the narrative. Deep context is built; shallow context is used.
You
Review and adjust the generated world. Add details or correct anything that conflicts with your vision. A Magic & Special Rules section appears for speculative fiction.
Scribbard
Builds geography, climate, technology level, political structure, cultural norms, and in-story timeline. Generates a Sensory Detail Matrix for primary settings — five senses per location — carried into every scene.
Theme & Conflict
What is your story actually about?
Articulates the thematic argument — the philosophical question the story is answering — and the stakes structure. A Story Advisory checks for missing structural elements.
You
Review the thematic argument. This is the step most writers skip — the one whose absence most reliably produces drafts that feel aimless.
Scribbard
Defines the thematic argument and value shift — what moves from negative to positive by the final scene. Sets conflict type. Builds three-layer stakes: internal, external, philosophical. A Story Advisory flags anything load-bearing that's missing.
Story Structure & Outline
The full map, before you start moving.
A complete chapter-by-chapter outline generated in two stages: macro structure first, scene-level detail second. Every field is editable inline before you commit. Nothing in the outline is a placeholder.
You
Choose a structural framework — the AI recommends one based on your genre. Review and edit the outline at every level: acts, chapters, scenes.
Scribbard
Stage 1: macro structure — act summaries, chapter titles, beat labels, POV assignments. Stage 2: scene cards per act, each with type, Goal/Conflict/Disaster, setting, and beat label. Supports 10 frameworks, from Three-Act to Kishōtenketsu.
Style & Voice
Hear the voice before committing.
Establishes the prose style governing every generated scene and produces a sample to iterate on. For screenplays: sets format type, tone, and a sample scene. The style is fixed before the first word of the draft.
You
Novels: choose POV, tense, and prose density. Optionally upload a writing sample to target. Screenplays: choose format and tone. Iterate on the sample until it's right.
Scribbard
Novels: generates a Style Guide (POV rules, sentence rhythm, vocabulary register, idiolect notes) and a ~500-word sample passage. Screenplays: a tone-and-format guide with a sample scene. All scene generation uses this guide verbatim.
Your Story, Ready
The Lock. Let's write.
The threshold separating design from execution. Everything built across the prior steps is assembled, validated, and set. Confirm your story and the Lock is in place — from here, every scene draws on a stable foundation. Prose generated against committed architecture is not incoherent by construction. It will need revision. Revision has solutions.
You
Review the checklist. Editing stays open until you confirm. If you revisit Characters, World, or Theme after the Lock, a banner flags what may have changed.
Scribbard
Assembles everything: style guide, world, characters, outline, theme, stakes. Every scene draws on all of it. Novels arrive as 1,000–2,500 words of prose; screenplays as properly formatted scenes that honour every decision made before.
Where Stories Actually Break
The problems writers name.
The layers causing them.
"I don't know what happens next."
Structure failure
The thematic argument hasn't been committed. Once the story knows what it's proving, the next beat is usually obvious.
"I don't know why it matters."
Theme failure
Events are accumulating but nothing is being argued. The character-world collision — what the story is actually testing — was never staged.
"I don't know how to say it."
Structure failure (not voice)
A scene that doesn't know what it needs to do has no tone to locate. The prose problem is usually a structural one in disguise.
"The character isn't working."
Genre, World, or Theme failure
Rarely the character's fault. More often: wrong calibration for the genre, a world not designed to test this specific psychology, or a flaw the story isn't actually testing.
Stage 2 — Draft
Where your story comes to life.
With your outline confirmed, Scribbard writes your novel scene by scene. After each scene you can approve it, refine it, or reshape it. The whole story stays in view — nothing falls through the cracks.
Scene Writing
Every scene knows your whole story.
Your style guide, world, character states, chapter context, the previous scene, active plot threads, motifs, and the scene plan: all of it shapes each scene Scribbard writes. Novels arrive as 1,000–2,500 words of prose. Screenplays arrive as fully formatted scenes ready to import.
Story State Panel
The AI's working memory, visible.
After every scene, a background job updates the continuity tracker: character locations and emotional states, plot thread status, deployed motifs, in-story timeline. The Story State panel in the sidebar shows all of it, readable while you write.
Version History
Nothing is ever deleted.
Every generated version, AI revision, and manual edit is stored permanently. The History drawer on any scene shows the full timeline with word count and a prose preview. Restore any version with one click: the restore is itself stored as a new version.
Progress & Milestones
Word count tracked against your target.
The progress bar shows current words vs. target length: 42,310 / 80,000. At milestones (10K, 25K, 50K, 75K words), Scribbard says something in its own voice. “50,000 words. That's a short novel, by some measures.”
Search & Reading Mode
Navigate and read 80,000 words.
⌘F searches all scene text and returns results with prose snippets. The Manuscript Reading Mode renders all approved scenes as continuous prose: chapter headings, scene breaks, your chosen font. No editing chrome. Just the novel.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Built for writers, not point-and-clickers.
- ⌘↵Approve the current scene
- ⌘GGenerate the next scene
- ⌘FOpen draft search
Draft page auto-resumes at your last unreviewed scene on return.
Stage 3 — Finish
Your manuscript, examined.
Most writers finish a draft with no reliable way to assess whether it holds together. The AI Review changes that. Six dimensions, scored 0 to 100, with chapter-level findings and specific fixes for every problem it surfaces.
AI Review
Six dimensions. Scored 0–100. Every finding linked to a scene.
When the draft is complete, Scribbard analyses the full manuscript across six dimensions. Each is scored from 0 to 100. Every finding links directly to the chapter and scene it concerns, with a specific, actionable suggested fix. Strengths are identified alongside problems.
After revisions, re-run the review and see what changed. The score moves because the manuscript moved.
Plot Cohesion
Whether the story's events connect logically from beginning to end. Cause-and-effect chains, unresolved threads, contradictions — every point where the plot works against itself is surfaced and linked to the scene it occurs in.
Character Arc Integrity
Whether each character's journey is earned. Motivations are traced, behavioural shifts are tested against what the character has actually experienced, and any arc that feels unearned or abandoned is flagged with the specific moment it breaks down.
Thematic Execution
Whether the story's themes run through the manuscript or merely appear in it. A theme stated once is decoration. Scribbard checks whether yours is present in scene choices, character decisions, and the ending — not just the opening pages.
Pacing
Whether the story moves at the right speed in the right places. Scenes that drag, act breaks that land late, tension that dissipates before the climax — all identified, all linked to the chapter they occur in, all with a suggested fix.
Voice Consistency
Whether the narrative voice stays true to itself across the full manuscript. Tone shifts, register changes, moments where the prose sounds like a different writer — Scribbard traces the voice from the first page to the last and notes where it drifts.
Continuity
Whether the details stay consistent from page one to the end. Character descriptions, place names, timelines, objects introduced and forgotten — continuity errors are exactly what readers notice and writers don't, until something like this catches them.
Front & Back Matter
The pages before and after.
A full page editor for dedication, epigraph, copyright page, author note: anything that goes before or after the manuscript body. Pages are grouped into Front and Back, can be drag-reordered, and are included in every export format.
Export
Format-aware export.
Novels: Shunn DOCX (standard manuscript format with author contact block), EPUB (Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo), Plain Text, Markdown.
Screenplays: Screenplay plain text (preserves slug lines, action, dialogue for import into Final Draft or Highland), Plain Text, Markdown.
Manuscript Translation
Your story in another language.
Scene-by-scene translation from any final version, in any of 27 languages. A free ~1,000-word sample is generated first; a glossary of character names and key terms is extracted from it and carried through every subsequent scene for consistency. Translated versions are available in all the same export formats as the original.
Audiobook Generation
From manuscript to MP3.
Browse and preview voices, choose your source (any final version or translation), and generate a full-length audiobook. A free sample — your opening and first chapter — plays before you commit. The finished audiobook arrives as a single downloadable MP3.
Study — Free Masterclass
Not sure where to start?
Learn the craft first.
Before you plan a story, Scribbard gives you a free masterclass on writing craft — structure, character, voice, conflict, and more. Fifteen units, seventy-three lessons, built around the same frameworks the planning steps use. Read a unit before you tackle that step. Or just read it because it's worth knowing.
Story Fundamentals
What makes a story work. Structure, conflict, stakes.
Character & Arc
Ghost, Flaw, Desire, Need — the architecture underneath.
Plot & Structure
Ten frameworks. When to use each one.
Voice & Style
POV, tense, prose density, and how to find your register.
World Building
Build the world. Use only what the story needs.
Dialogue & Scene
How scenes work. How dialogue does its job.
All of it free. Right now.
Always free. Upgrade for more.