FAQ

What makes Editorial different from other writing and text editing software?

Most writing tools are built around destructive vertical editing. You rewrite a paragraph and the previous form disappears unless you keep copies elsewhere. Editorial introduces horizontal editing. Each paragraph can hold multiple alternate versions inside the same document, so you can compare tone, pacing, structure, and voice before committing to a final choice. It is less like replacing text and more like editorial comparison built directly into the manuscript.

Can you explain the difference between Novel Forge and Editorial? Why do you have two writing applications?

Because these are two different jobs. Novel Forge is built for planning, generating, organizing, and producing. Editorial is built for revising, restructuring, and comparing versions at micro level. Cramming both into a single program would turn it into the kind of bloated everything-tool that ends up doing nothing especially well. Novel Forge is a full novel-writing suite. It is where a book lives from the first unhinged idea all the way to a finished manuscript. You get Plot Boards, Character Cards, Timelines, and Image Walls for planning; a style and time-period thesaurus; a literary style analyzer that compares your prose to writers like Hemingway, Austen, or Dickens; an AI chat; a Redline editor with Manuscript Merge; a neural text-to-speech engine that reads your manuscript or exports it as a narrated audiobook; and export to EPUB, PDF, and Word. It is the workshop. You build a whole book in it. Editorial is a different animal. It is a lean, focused editor built around one idea: horizontal, non-destructive iterative writing. Every block (paragraph, dialogue beat, scene transition, whatever unit you decide on) keeps all of its variations side by side. The first draft, the tighter rewrite, the AI take, the line edit. You compare, you branch, you pull the best sentence from one take into another. Editorial is the bench. It is for the part of writing that begins after the draft exists, when the real shaping happens and you finally find out whether that scene actually works. Both apps connect to an LLM (local or cloud) and both can handle the standard refinement passes: grammar, fluidity, tightening, tone. The difference is what sits on top of that connection. Novel Forge gives you a full chatbot document interface for interactive, conversational AI work (brainstorming, roleplaying with characters, or simply talking the story out). Editorial goes the other direction: an Editorial Agent that walks the manuscript block by block, and a scripting language for building granular, multi-stage AI workflows. Same LLM behind both. Very different way of using it. A lot of writers will happily use both. Plan and draft in Novel Forge, then drop the tricky chapters into Editorial for block-by-block surgery. Others will use only one, whichever matches how they think. Some will use neither, which is entirely fair. These are Cranky Man's creations, and Cranky Man's ideas have always been something of an acquired taste. Both run locally on Windows, both keep your work on your machine, and both are one-time purchases with no subscription. Both are a great deal for the money.

What are blocks in Editorial?

A block is the basic writing unit in Editorial. In most cases, a block is a single paragraph, which makes paragraph-level revision, movement, and comparison very precise. But blocks are not limited to paragraphs. They are fully user-definable writing units, so a block can also be: • a paragraph • a beat of dialogue • a scene transition • or a short outline note, summary, lore or any custom text unit you want to revise independently This flexibility is what makes Editorial different from traditional writing software. Instead of treating the manuscript as one endless vertical stream of text, Editorial treats it as a structured stack of meaningful revision units we call blocks. Each block can: • be moved or rearranged • split • joined with others • labeled • rewritten independently • hold multiple alternate versions • be processed by the AI agent • participate in scripting workflows One version remains the live version, while the others stay available for comparison. This happens on a block-by-block basis, whether your block is a paragraph, a dialogue beat, or any user-defined unit. That makes Editorial exceptionally strong for serious revision, scene restructuring, and AI-assisted manuscript workflows.

So I can keep multiple versions of the same paragraph, at the same time?

Yes. This is one of the core ideas. Nothing is lost when you use versions. A paragraph block can contain: • the original version • tighter rewrites • alternate tone • AI-generated versions • different pacing options • script-assisted alternatives

Is Editorial good for novel writing?

Editorial is aimed at writing and editing after the first draft, when inspiration has already done its wild and glorious damage. The first draft is often written intuitively and sometimes slightly unhinged. Many people also prefer distraction-free writing. Whatever is your method, Editorial is the second step where real shaping happens. Once the raw draft exists in some form, Editorial will help you to break the wall of text into meaningful blocks and you can start tightening pacing, rewriting dialogue or testing different emotional beats. This makes Editorial ideal for developmental editing and draft refinement. Instead of wandering through a 90,000-word manuscript wondering “did I already fix this scene?”, you revise scene by scene, paragraph by paragraph, block by block. The versions tell you immediately which blocks have already been reworked, which ones are still on their reckless first draft, and exactly where the manuscript still needs surgery. Editorial also has a Heat Map view that shows at a glance which paragraphs you've rewritten many times and which ones are still sitting in their original draft, untouched..

Is Editorial for AI writing?

Not at all. The block-based writing and paragraph variation workflow is already powerful without AI. AI simply makes the comparison workflow wider and faster. Writers who never touch AI can still use Editorial as a manuscript editor, revision workspace, scene restructuring tool block-based writing environment. AI is a power layer, not a requirement.

So how about the AI?

It is woven into the software at multiple levels, from simple paragraph rewrites all the way to fully programmable manuscript workflows. AI Assist >> AI Agent >> AI Programming Level 1: AI at block level At any block, you can directly ask AI to: • fix grammar • rewrite text • tighten prose • improve pacing • fact-check • generate alternate versions You can manually use only the parts you like, or let the result become a new block version. The AI also has access to summaries and lore, which means it can preserve continuity, maintain constraints, and even help fact-check your writing against the context stored in the document. Level 2: The Editorial Agent The next level is the Editorial Agent. Think of it as a self-running AI loop that moves through your manuscript block by block, performing structured editorial tasks across the whole document. This loop can rewrite blocks, create new versions, generate summaries and handle some housekeeping. The best part is that this is done in a highly visual way, so the process remains understandable instead of disappearing into an invisible automation pipeline. Level 3: AI scripting language The deepest level is the scripting language, where blocks and AI become fully fused together. The script has access to every blocks and versions, summaries, lore and can build prompts dynamically, run repeated AI passes and even orchestrate multi-stage writing pipelines.

How is the AI used? Is it some subscription?

No subscription. We strongly believe in Bring Your Own API. Editorial does not force on you some monthly fee, proprietary credits, or a mysterious cloud service that suddenly stops. Instead, Editorial fully supports both cloud AI providers and local LLM models. That means you can use: • your preferred cloud API provider • your own locally running models • private offline LLM workflows • different models for different editorial tasks And no, there is no ritual required to set it up. It’s very easy. This makes Editorial ideal for writers who want privacy and no vendor lock-in.

How to set it up?

Any OpenAI API compatible server should work. That includes LM Studio, llama.cpp, vLLM and all cloud providers. Local: Example for LM Studio and local machine at 192.168.1.120: http://192.168.1.120:1234 Note: For local connection use http:// NOT https:// Cloud: There is a preset list with all the major providers:. The usual format is a base url: Example for openrouter https://openrouter.ai/api/v1 Note: If you are using NovelForge, the URL in Editorial changed into a more standard full base format. Then just use Test Connection first and if that is fine, try Test Full Response button which sends a Hello message to the LLM. After that you can Fetch Models and select the one you want. For the cloud providers you need to specify the model (it should correctly appear in Model name after you select it in the model list) and the Request Model From Server checkbox should be ON. For a local connection many servers like LM Studio allow for a manual model selection in which case you don’t specify the model (Request Model From Server is OFF) and use whatever is loaded in your server at the time.

Does Editorial support formatting?

Editorial supports basic Markdown-style formatting and structure, making it easy to keep your manuscript clean, readable, and ready for further formatting. This includes support for: • multiple levels of titles and headings • bullet and numbered lists • page breaks • bold • italics • code blocks • structured section formatting The syntax is intentionally familiar and similar to Markdown, so writers can use lightweight formatting without turning the document into a technical mess.

Can I export the text?

Editorial will export the live version of your manuscript to markdown, DOCX or PDF. The Export will follow the internal markdown syntax so your document will have titles, bold/italics or page breaks.

Free Updates and other silly stuff

We can't promise “never, ever” for a paid upgrade somewhere down the line. But in practice our free-update commitment runs very long. Novel Forge, our other writing software, is currently on its 4.0 major version; the first release shipped in 2021, and every update since has been free. Editorial is much smaller in scope, so in all honesty the author strongly suspects all updates to be free for a long time. Yeah, that’s why Cranky Man will be swallowed by the taxes with all his software venture (this is 25 years carrier, BTW) and everything. But till then…