Where your stories grow.
The last writing software you will ever need.
NovlHeim is a local-first writing workspace for novelists building long stories and the worlds behind them. Manuscript, characters, places, timelines and arcs live in one place, and nothing you write leaves your machine unless you send it.
Your idea is the seed.
We provide the fertile ground.
Structure gives it roots.
Imagination does the rest.
NovlHeim is your Yggdrasil. Carve out as many worlds as you will.
Every novel begins the same way: with more in your head than fits on a page. The first question is not what to write. It is where to put it.
Today the honest answer is three or four different apps. It should be one.
Either way, you write, and then you write again. Redrafting is built in, not bolted on.
You outline first.
NovlHeim has the planning rooms for that: a timeline with your world's own calendars, an arcs board that follows each character from promise to payoff, and a codex for every person and place. All of it is wired to the manuscript, so when the plan changes the chapters know.
You write first and find the shape on the way.
So the writing room comes first: a focus editor with four passes, Compose, Redraft, Revise and Polish, and a chapter list you reorder by dragging. As you add chapters and scenes the structure fills in behind you. The timeline and codex are there when you want them, not before.
Most writers plan a little, write a lot, and change the plan.
In NovlHeim the plan and the prose are one project. Move a scene and the timeline moves. Rename a character in the codex and every chapter follows.
Begin with a scene, a character, a map or a timeline. The other rooms are already there when you need them. When you need a new tool you do not need a new app, and your manuscript and your notes come with you the whole way.
A focus editor that shows only the chapter you are in, and keeps every draft you write.
Every version is kept, so nothing you cut is lost.
A timeline with ages and calendars of your own making, and an arcs board with beats for every character.
Change a date once and every scene that depends on it knows.
A codex for every person, place and thing, with aliases, tags and kin, and maps you draw yourself with pins, regions, labels and layers.
Bring what you have. NovlHeim imports docx, epub, odt, rtf, markdown, html and pdf, and whole folders, as manuscript, notes or codex entries.
Export leaves in the same formats.
Six tools, one project. Open any of them and the others are one step away, sharing the same characters, the same places, the same dates.
The writing rooms
The world rooms
Write without leaving your world.
Four passes: Compose, Redraft, Revise and Polish. The chapter list beside you (parts, chapters, scenes, drag to reorder), only the chapter you are in on the page, and Cuts, where every line you take out is kept.
Two drafts, side by side.
Two drafts open at once: the one you are working from on the left, the new one on the right. You rewrite a scene rather than edit it, and both are kept.
Your story at a glance.
Every chapter and the one still open, the writing goal and where the draft stands against it, and sessions and word counts read as bars.
See every thread. Shape every turn.
Ages and calendars of your world's own making, events placed in time, and ranges that can be a war or an afternoon.
Follow each arc from promise to payoff.
Each character's thread, its rise and fall act by act, beat by beat, summarised as throughline, wound, need and change.
Every place, remembered.
Maps you draw yourself, with pins that open a place's page, and a wiki entry behind every pin: lore, geography, who lives there, aliases, tags, kin, and every scene it appears in.
The roadmap is not a wish list. Every branch below is growing toward these.
A still can only say so much. This is the app itself, moving between the rooms of one open project.
Write
Write without leaving your world.
The same manuscript, four ways of working on it. Compose puts the words down; Redraft, Revise and Polish each open the tools that pass needs and put the rest away.
Parts, chapters and scenes in the order the book reads. Drag to reorder; the manuscript follows.
Compose hides everything but the chapter you are in. The codex, the plan and the desk are one key away and otherwise out of sight.
The same manuscript, four ways of working on it. Compose puts the words down; Redraft, Revise and Polish each open the tools that pass needs and put the rest away.
The draft you are redrafting against, whole and scrollable. Pull a line across as it stands, or leave it behind: the old draft is never altered.
The new draft, starting empty. Scene by scene you rewrite rather than edit, and both versions are kept, so a second draft never costs you the first.
Every chapter in order, with the one you left open ready to carry on. Picking the thread back up takes one click.
The book opens on where it stands: the target you set, the words against it, and how much of a draft that is.
Recent sessions as bars, and word counts chapter by chapter. A thin chapter shows here long before a reader finds it.
Your world's own calendars and ages, not the Gregorian ones. Dates in the manuscript resolve against them.
One event: when, where, who was there, and the scenes that show it. Move it and its scenes keep their links.
Zoom from a dynasty to an afternoon. The ruler keeps the scale readable at every level.
An arc is a promise and its payoff, with the beats between. Each thread is drawn as the shape it makes across the acts.
One turn of the arc, placed where it lands in the book. Unplaced beats sit in the margin until they have a scene.
What the arc is for, stated plainly: the throughline, the wound underneath it, the need it answers, and what the character becomes.
A location with its own page behind the pin: lore, geography, the people tied to it and the scenes set there.
Everything on the map is a layer you can switch off — markers, regions, routes — so one map serves the whole book.
Drop a pin, draw a border, name a sea. The map is yours to make, and the entries hang off it.
There is more to see.
Read on
