Writer's Guide
How to keep track of your story
Every story outgrows your memory eventually — a forgotten eye color, a character who dies twice, an event that happens before it's supposed to. Here's a workflow that scales past your memory, so you catch the mistakes before your readers do.
See it in the live demoCapture characters and facts as you write, not after
The moment you introduce a character or a fact, write it down somewhere structured — not just in the prose. If you wait until "later" to organize your notes, later never comes, and the facts scatter across chapters instead of living in one place you can search.
See how character tracking works →See how everyone connects, not just who exists
A list of characters tells you who's in your story. It doesn't tell you who's married to whom, who betrayed whom, or which three characters are secretly the same bloodline. Relationships are where continuity actually breaks — track them as their own thing, not as a note buried in a character's bio.
See the relationship map →Keep one story bible instead of scattered documents
A separate document for characters, another for locations, a spreadsheet for the timeline, a sticky-note board for plot threads — each one drifts out of sync with the others the moment your story grows past a few chapters. A single connected story bible means updating a fact once updates it everywhere it's referenced.
See story bible software →Check your story's chronology before your readers do
"Did this happen before or after that?" is one of the hardest questions to answer from prose alone, especially across a long manuscript or a series. A dedicated timeline — built from the dates and events you've already tracked, not a separate spreadsheet you maintain by hand — catches chronology mistakes while they're still cheap to fix.
See story timeline software →Treat your whole story as one connected world
Characters, places, factions, events, and the manuscript itself are all part of the same world — treating them as separate, disconnected tools is exactly what causes things to fall out of sync. A single connected model is what makes the rest of this workflow actually hold together as your story grows.
See the full worldbuilding tool →Share it with an editor, proofreader, or publisher — not your whole workspace
Once your world model exists, you don't have to email drafts back and forth or lose context in a shared doc. Invite an outside collaborator to exactly the book you're working on, with the same connected characters, timeline, and comments you already have — nothing else in your workspace is visible unless you choose to share it too.
See how editorial collaboration works →Already using — or evaluating — a specific tool like Scrivener, Notion, or Obsidian for this?
See how Lokee compares →FAQ
Where should I start if my story is already large and disorganized?
Start by importing what you already have (plain text, Markdown, or Word documents) and reviewing what gets extracted — you don't need to re-enter everything by hand. Add relationships and dates as you notice gaps, rather than trying to backfill everything at once.
Do I need to plan my whole story before I start tracking it?
No — this workflow is built for discovery writers as much as planners. Capture facts as they appear in your draft; the story bible grows alongside your manuscript instead of needing to exist before it.
What if I already have notes in another app?
Export them as plain text or Markdown and import them — the same review-and-extract workflow that works for a manuscript works for existing notes, so you're not starting from zero.
Does the AI write any of my story for me?
No. AI assistance here is limited to noticing facts you've already written and suggesting them for your review — every suggestion is something you approve or reject, never something inserted into your prose automatically.
Is this workflow only useful for big, multi-book series?
It scales down just as well as up — a single novel with a handful of characters benefits from the same consistency checking as a ten-book series, just with less to track.