Chapter nine isn’t working.You just can’t see why. Yet.
Fictorial helps you name it, shows you the evidence in your own pages, and holds you accountable to make the edits.
Forty-two haystacks. Four needles. Found.
Ask anything about your book. Every answer comes citing where it came from, so you can check it yourself. Can’t remember the color of Kelly’s eyes? Just ask.
The questionDoes Kelly stay consistent when things go wrong?
The Kelly of chapter 31 isn’t the Kelly of chapter 4. Deliberate, or accidental?
Chapter and verse.
Every observation comes with the lines that prove it.
Is Kelly inconsistent? She seems to run from trouble early on, then fight back in the middle.
You’re right to flag it. Early on, Kelly’s response to adversity is movement — escape, silence, or explosive confrontation. When Lefty criticizes her art in Chapter 4, she says “I’m scared. I don’t know what to do besides draw. It’s all I know how to do.” … In Chapter 9, she “despised it and doubled down on the things he criticized about her work.”
But by the middle stretch — Chapters 25–31 — she’s different. … In Chapter 31, when Lefty dismisses her work and her identity (“…I’m not your goddamned singing frog”), she’s articulate, furious, demanding recognition rather than disappearing.
The question is whether this shift is deliberate (she’s growing agency) or accidental (the book hasn’t decided who she is yet). Which was it for you?
From Daedalia, the founder’s novel in progressA snippet from an actual exchange in Fictorial’s Workshop feature
The edit you keep putting off.
Every insight worth keeping becomes a note. Notes gather into editing passes, and Fictorial tells you what’s next until they’re done.
Wait, when did the gun first appear?
Storymap charts every character, turn and scene across your whole book, and every event points to its line.
The Four Laws
of Fictorial
AI can do remarkable things. It can’t imagine, and it can’t judge. Those have always belonged to people, and people with tools have built everything worth building: the pen, the press, the word processor. So we wrote the rules down.
- Zeroth law
Fictorial may not take the place of human creativity, or, by any answer it gives, allow a writer’s judgment to be overruled.
In plain English You make every creative decision. It can question you. It can’t overrule you.
- First law
Fictorial may not write a word of your book. Asked to, it must refuse.
In plain English Not a sentence, not a line of dialogue. Every word of your book is yours, so there’s nothing of ours in it to detect.
- Second law
Fictorial must answer with evidence from your own pages, except where none can be found, in which case it must say so.
In plain English Every claim points to a line you can check. When it can’t find one, it tells you.
- Third law
Fictorial must protect your manuscript, so long as that protection does not conflict with your right to delete it.
In plain English Never used to train any model, ours or anyone else’s. Private to your account. Delete it, and it’s gone.
We don’t make books. We help the people who do.
With apologies to Isaac Asimov, who gave robots three laws in 1942 and added a Zeroth decades later. We needed ours on day one.
I just finished my sixth novel. Writing is my passion, but for thirty years my day job has been building software. I made Fictorial because I wanted a way to talk with my book while I’m writing it. I didn’t want a tool to write for me, or tell me I smell terrific. I wanted an honest sounding board with a sharp eye, one that would help me write the best book I possibly can and hold me to the edits. Don’t take my word for it, though. Try it for yourself.
You write the book.
Fictorial helps you see it.
Questions
- What’s in the free trial?
- One manuscript, its full Storymap, and plenty of Workshop conversations to see what Fictorial can do. No card needed to start.
- What can I upload?
- A Word file (.docx). Your book stays in the app you write in; Fictorial reads a copy.
- Can I edit my book inside Fictorial?
- No, and that’s on purpose. You write where you write. Fictorial helps you see what to change.
- Can I cancel?
- Anytime, from your account. Delete a project and its manuscript goes with it.
- Why not just use ChatGPT or Claude?
- Keep them for everything else. Fictorial runs on models from the same companies, so the difference is what’s built around them for a novel. A chat assistant sees only what you paste, forgets it next time, and tends to agree with you. Fictorial knows your whole book and shows you the lines behind every answer, so you can check it. It keeps the notes you save, tells you which ones you’ve dealt with in your next draft, and won’t write a word of your book for you.