Finishing an abandoned manuscript

Illustrative example. This walkthrough shows how the workflow fits this kind of book. The author and book are fictional; no results are claimed.

Five years ago, Ruth, a nurse, started a historical novel set in a glassworks town in 1920s Ohio. She wrote 14 chapters, about 52,000 words, then stalled at the midpoint. She knew how the story ended but not how to get there, and the manuscript has sat in a Word file ever since. Here’s how she could use AIBookWriter to finish it without losing a word of what she already wrote. Before any paid action, the app shows its price, her balance and the balance after.

Importing the manuscript

She starts a Fiction book and, on the Start step, chooses Import a Word manuscript instead of starting from scratch. AIBookWriter accepts .docx files of up to 200,000 words, and importing is free. The file is read in her browser first, so she can check the chapter split before anything is imported. Her chapters begin with lines like “Chapter Seven” rather than Word headings, so she switches the split to lines starting with “Chapter”, checks that her dedication is recognized as front matter rather than as a chapter, and imports.

Filling in the story bible

Next she chooses Read it and fill in my story bible. This free AI pass recaps every chapter and suggests the premise, genres, style and characters, and anything she has already filled in is kept. Five years on, the chapter recaps double as a refresher. She corrects one relationship the pass misread (the foreman is her heroine’s uncle, not her father) and adds to the description what existed only in her head: the factory fire she always meant to build toward.

Details and style

Her own chapters make the best writing sample. On Details & style she pastes about 18,000 characters from two chapters she still likes, under the 20,000-character limit, so new chapters match her voice. She checks the suggested style against her chapters and settles on close third person, past tense, a melancholic but hopeful tone, and an atmospheric, character-driven style. The mature-content switch, off by default, stays off.

Characters

The import pass suggested a cast from her chapters. She reviews each profile and fills in what’s missing, such as stakes, arcs and how each person speaks. The second half needs two new people, a union organizer and a company lawyer, so she generates two characters with AI, which doesn’t use credits, and edits them by hand, paying most attention to how each one talks.

Outlining the second half

On the Outline step she raises the chapter count to 26, chooses the Three-Act Structure and regenerates the outline with an instruction: keep chapters 1 to 14 as written and build chapters 15 to 26 toward the fire. Regenerating keeps the text of chapters already written. If the plan for a written chapter changes, the app flags that chapter so she can decide whether to rewrite it; she leaves most of them as they are.

As the first outline on her account, it’s free. After that, outlines cost 3 credits per chapter, which would be 78 credits for 26 chapters.

Choosing a plan

AI chapter writing beyond chapter 1 starts on the Plus plan: $12 a month billed yearly, or $15 monthly, with 1,000 credits a month. The writing and review in this example come to about 1,740 credits, more than one month of Plus, and print-ready PDF and EPUB formatting need Pro anyway. Ruth chooses Pro: $30 a month billed yearly, or $37 monthly, with 5,000 credits a month.

Writing in her own voice

Ruth wants to write some of the remaining chapters herself and use AI drafts for the ones she has been stuck on. She picks the Literary tier, at 30 credits a chapter, to stay close to her prose. For eight chapters she generates drafts: 240 credits. AI drafts never replace her text. Each one appears next to her version for comparison, and she rewrites freely, often keeping a scene’s shape and redoing its dialogue. Every save goes into the version history, so she can restore an earlier version at any point.

She writes the other four chapters herself and uses AI chat edits, at 5 credits each, to tighten particular passages. Each edit applies only to the passage it was made for; if she has changed that passage since the suggestion was made, it isn’t applied.

Review

At about 96,000 words, the whole-book review costs 15 credits per 1,000 words, about 1,440 credits, charged once for the book. The per-chapter pacing notes show whether the new chapters move at the same pace as the old ones. Suppose the editorial letter says chapters 15 to 17 rush, and the line edits catch continuity slips such as a character’s age. She revises, accepts or rejects each line edit and re-runs the review for free.

Finishing and publishing

From here the steps are the same as for any novel. On Metadata & cover she edits the suggested blurb, keywords and categories and generates an AI cover for 30 credits. Format & export produces a print-ready PDF and an EPUB for 200 credits, once for the book, with free re-exports. Publish gives her an author page and a book page with free sample chapters and an email sign-up, and Distribution drafts launch posts and emails from the book.

If she writes a sequel, she can add this book as context for the next one, with up to five earlier books in a series, so book two remembers book one.

The credits in this example

These are the main charges; smaller actions, such as listing suggestions and launch materials, show their price, if any, before they run.

• Import and story-bible pass: free
• Two new characters: free
• Outline: free as her first outline
• Eight chapters on Literary: 240
• About 12 AI chat edits: 60
• Whole-book review: about 1,440, with free re-runs
• AI cover: 30
• Formatting: 200
• Total: about 1,970 credits, within one month of Pro’s allowance