Write
A page that gets out of the way
The editor is the point. Everything else in Charc exists to keep you in it for longer.
Distraction-free prose editor
Clean typography, real formatting, and a page that stays quiet. Set your typeface, size, spacing and indents to match how you like to read your own work.
Best practices for writing in Charc →Page view
See your manuscript paginated as it will actually print, with headers, margins and facing pages — not an approximation.
Focus mode
Dim everything but the sentence you're writing. Zoom the page in or out without touching your saved layout.
Keyboard shortcuts
Every common action has one, and you can rebind them. Formatting, navigation, snapshots and search never need the mouse.
Search the whole project
Find any line across every scene, character and note — then filter scenes by status, point of view or keyword.
Scrap pile
Cut a scene without losing it. Anything you delete waits in the scrap pile until you're sure, and comes back whole.
Plan
Structure you can actually see
Outline first, discover as you go, or both — the structure follows your process rather than dictating it.
Acts, chapters and scenes
Drag to reorder, nest to any depth, and restructure a whole act without cutting and pasting a single paragraph.
Outlining for discovery writers →Scene status & metadata
Mark scenes outline, draft, revised, final or cut. Tag point of view and keywords, then filter the manuscript by any of them.
Progress & draft phases
Track a book through its phases with act-level progress, milestones and word targets — so "how far along am I" has a real answer.
Daily goals & streaks
Set a daily word goal and watch the streak build. Your writing history is recorded per day, per project.
Build a writing habit that sticks →Timeline
Lay events on a timeline in story time, so you catch the continuity problem before your reader does.
Charts
Build simple visual aids — arcs, relationships, structures — and drop them beside the scenes they belong to.
Build the world
Notes that stay next to the writing
Reference material belongs an arm's reach from the page, not in another app you forget to open.
Characters
Sheets that look like your book rather than a database form. Add the fields you actually use and ignore the rest.
Building characters that feel real →Settings & places
Keep locations, rules and histories organised in sections and subsections, with room for as much detail as you like.
Custom reference tabs
Magic systems, legal procedure, ships, recipes — make your own tabs and rename them to suit the book you're writing.
Images & inline art
Keep a visual library, and place images directly in the manuscript where they belong in the finished book.
Reference panel
Pin any scene, character, note or image beside the editor and keep it in view while you write.
Footnotes & endnotes
Proper notes with citations, numbered and formatted correctly in every export.
Collaborate
Work with the people who make the book better
Coauthors, editors and early readers each get exactly the access their role needs — nothing more.
Roles that mean something
A coauthor writes in the shared manuscript with you. An editor gets their own working copy. An alpha reader can read and comment, and nothing else.
Real-time presence
See who's in the project, which scene they're in, and their words appearing as they type — with each writer in their own colour.
Scene locks
One writer per scene, claimed automatically as you start typing. No stepping on each other, no mangled paragraphs.
Comments in the margin
Highlight a line and leave a note. Comments appear for everyone instantly, and each person controls their own.
Working copies
Read an editor's version side by side with yours, compare the differences, and adopt their draft wholesale when it's right.
Offline-tolerant sync
Write on a plane. When you reconnect, anything that changed in both places is shown side by side for you to decide — never merged behind your back.
Revise & protect
Rewrite without fear
The reason writers hesitate to cut a scene is that they're afraid of losing it. Charc removes the reason.
Snapshots
Name a version before a big rewrite — "before the Act Two overhaul" — and read or restore it any time.
Automatic backups
Charc saves versions as you work, so there's a way back even when you didn't think to make one.
Scene history
Every scene keeps its own trail of changes, so you can recover a paragraph without rolling back the whole book.
Cloud sync
Your work follows you between machines automatically, and keeps working in the browser when the connection drops.
Publish
From manuscript to something you can hand someone
Formatting is where most writing tools stop and a second piece of software begins. Charc goes the rest of the way.
Export anywhere
DOCX for your agent, PDF for print, EPUB for readers, or plain text — laid out properly, not dumped.
Front matter builder
Title pages, copyright, dedication and epigraphs, designed visually and included in every export.
Page layout & formats
Trim size, margins, running heads, facing pages and drop caps — saved as reusable formats you can apply to any book.
Print covers
Full wraps with spine and back, dust jackets with flaps, bleed handled properly, and presets for KDP and IngramSpark.
Print-ready colour
Export covers as PDF/X-1a in CMYK so what your printer produces matches what you designed.
E-reader preview
See your book as a Kindle, tablet or phone will render it before you publish a single file.
Import your work
Bring a manuscript in from Word or Scrivener with its structure intact — chapters and scenes, not one long block.
Charc vs. Scrivener, compared →Compile what you choose
Export a single chapter, a set of scenes, or the whole book — useful for submissions and beta packets.
Start writing today
Free forever, no card, nothing to install. Your first project is one click away.
Open Charc →