Available Free Last reviewed: 24 Oct 2026
A project contains books, and a book contains chapters; here you create and arrange both.
A project can contain several books. Each book has a type (novel, short story, novella, short novel or anthology), optionally a language for the manuscript, and its own chapter list. The detail page of a book is divided into Basics, Chapters, Tools & Analysis, Publication & Collaboration, and Settings.
You create chapters at the end of the list and reorder them by dragging. The order matches the narrative order. For each chapter you maintain the status, a personal word target and a chapter-end tag. The pipeline view shows the status of all chapters at a glance.
From the book page you can also reach the tools for this book, such as structure template, writing statistics, matrix board and revision X-ray. Deleted books and chapters go to the trash first.
In the project, choose “New book”, enter the “Title”, choose the “Type” and, if needed, the “Manuscript language”.
What you see afterwards: The book appears under “Books”.
Open the book and choose “New chapter” under “Chapters”.
What you see afterwards: The chapter is at the end of the chapter list.
Drag chapters by the handle into the right order and enter a “Word target” if needed.
What you see afterwards: The order is saved. Once you reach the target, it says “Target word count reached”.
Switch to the “Pipeline view” and set the status of a chapter to “Idea”, “Draft”, “Revised” or “Final”.
What you see afterwards: The status is saved.
Open a chapter to write it in the chapter editor.
What you see afterwards: The editor opens.
Owners and co-authors with permissions create books and chapters, edit them, move them to the trash and restore them. When you create a book, you decide which existing co-authors get access; you can change that later in the section “Co-author access to this book”.
Books, chapters and their settings belong to the project and are backed up and exported with it. Deleted chapters and books stay in the trash until the retention period ends.
By default, a project allows at most 2 books unless the project owner has a Studio plan. The operators can change these values; Illumentis tells you the value currently in effect in the app once you reach the limit. The title has at most 255 characters. You cannot change the order in the pipeline view; switch to the list for that. There is no limit on the number of chapters on the Free plan.
Illumentis asks for confirmation first. The book becomes part of the official storyline, and the Illuminatio Engine then checks all scenes of the book against the existing canon in the background.
You mark a chapter as “Resolution”, “Teaser” or “Hard cliffhanger”. The marking feeds the cliffhanger matrix of the writing statistics for books in serial mode.
Someone else has opened the chapter. The notice appears in the list and in the editor.
