Cut the scene.You can always get it back.

Revision is several jobs, not one

Writers talk about revision as one stage, but it’s really a sequence of different passes. The structural pass moves, merges and cuts chapters. The scene pass asks whether each scene earns its place. The continuity pass checks that the changes didn’t break anything downstream. The line pass, last, works sentence by sentence. Each needs something different from your software, and doing them in the wrong order wastes weeks polishing scenes you later cut.

What every pass shares is fear of loss. A writer who can’t get a deleted scene back keeps it out of caution, and the book suffers for it. Good novel revision software removes that fear, so the only question left is whether the change makes the book better.

Every version kept, every change reversible

History is one feed of every document’s versions and every change to the plan and the bible. Open any version to preview it, see a diff against the one before, or restore it. Open a single commit and undo just the field you want, without rolling back anything else. Press Ctrl/⌘+S to save a named version at a moment that matters, like “before the big cut”.

In the manuscript itself, recent-edit marks in the margin show what changed lately. Click one for a word-by-word diff of that passage. The chapter scrollbar marks where recent edits sit across the whole book, which is useful when you’re checking that a revision pass reached every chapter it should have.

• Preview, diff and restore any version
• Undo one change to the plan or the bible without touching the rest
• Named versions with Ctrl/⌘+S
• Recent-edit marks with a word-by-word diff

Alternates for the chapter you can’t decide on

Some revision choices are local: this chapter, told two ways. An alternate is another take on a chapter, kept beside it with a label of your own such as “Grim version” or “Rewrite”. The book uses one take at a time, and Use this one moves the pointer without copying any text, so switching back and forth costs nothing.

Every alternate is a whole document with its own version history and its own title. Only the take in use is in the book, so export and publishing never pick up the draft you set aside. If you use the assistant, ✦ Rewrite in this voice writes each chapter as a new alternate and never touches the original.

Branches for the rewrite that changes everything

Other choices ripple through the whole book: a character who should die in act two, a villain who should be someone else. For those, cut a branch. Start from everything so far, or rewind to after any chapter and take the story somewhere new. With the AI on, a rewind also cleans the bible of everything that no longer happened, so the facts on file match the branch.

Collaborators can each work on their own branch. When you’ve decided, merge the branch back. A merge shows what it will change before it changes anything, and asks you about each real conflict instead of guessing. If you decide against the rewrite, the main line of the book was never touched.

A useful habit: before any branch, write a line in the plan about what you’re testing, such as “what if the sister lies?” When you come back to merge a week later, you’ll judge the branch against the question you asked, not against how much work went into it.

The continuity pass, done as you go

Most revision bugs are knock-on effects. You moved a reveal from chapter twelve to chapter eight, and now two characters in chapter ten are surprised by something they already know. Chapter readings record events in order and tie each fact to the words that established it, so once the moved chapters are read again you can see where the reveal now happens and which scenes after it to check. A line that contradicts an earlier fact or an anchored one is flagged beside it.

Checks gathers every open continuity issue and likely duplicate entry in one list. Rename an entry across the whole text with a preview and undo, so a character renamed in revision is renamed everywhere. Free prose stats show sentence length, dialogue share, -ly adverbs and the words you lean on, a useful start for the line pass.

A revision order, and the people who help

Big to small is the old advice, and it holds. Start with structure, because every later pass depends on which chapters survive. Save a named version first, then reorder, cut and merge chapters freely; each reorder is one step in History. If a structural idea is risky, try it on a branch so the main line stays as it was.

Next, the story pass. Read the arcs and the overview to see whether each chapter still serves an arc after the restructure, and use the drift checks to hear when one has strayed. Then continuity, with Checks open. Leave the line edit for last, when the words you’re polishing are the words that will stay.

Revision is rarely solitary. Invite an editor by email with a link that works only for that address, and give them a role: viewer if they should only read, editor if they should change the text. Everyone works live in the same chapter, with named cursors, so there’s no question of whose file is the latest.

If an editor works in Word instead, export the manuscript, and re-import their edited file when it comes back. The re-import shows what changed in the file and what changed in the studio since, section by section, so you take their changes without losing yours.

• Structure: save a version, reorder, cut, branch the risky ideas
• Story: arcs and overview, drift checks per chapter
• Continuity: Checks, contradictions, rename everywhere
• Lines: prose stats, selection tools, alternates for the hard chapters