The editor

The editor is the center panel — where you actually write. It’s built to stay responsive even on book-length documents, and it keeps the tools you need within reach without cluttering the page.

Writing and saving

Type to write. MUSE saves automatically as you go — there’s no save button. The status bar shows your save state and live word count, and on very large documents saving and checking happen quietly in the background so they never interrupt your typing.

Formatting and styles

A format bar gives you the essentials: bold, italic, headings, lists, alignment, block quotes, links, highlights, and more. For consistent, reusable formatting you can define your own paragraph and character styles rather than formatting by hand each time. See Formatting & styles.

Structure and rich content

Beyond plain prose, the editor supports the building blocks of a real manuscript:

• Headings that feed the document outline.
• Page breaks and section breaks for controlling layout and headers.
• Tables, images you can resize in place, and special characters.
• A print layout that paginates your document the way it will appear on the page.

Focus tools

When you want the world to fall away:

• Focus mode dims everything except the sentence or paragraph you’re working on.
• Zen mode hides the surrounding panels for a full-screen, distraction-free page.
• Typewriter scrolling keeps the line you’re writing centered on screen.
• Syntax highlighting can be toggled on to color parts of speech as you write.

See Focus, Zen & typewriter.

Wikilinks and backlinks

Type [[ to link to another document by name, with autocomplete. Links are two-way: each document’s Inspector shows what links to it (its backlinks), so you can move through your project like a web of connected notes. See Wikilinks & backlinks.

Footnotes and endnotes

Insert footnotes and endnotes directly in the text, edit them in a dedicated panel, and choose how they appear when you compile. See Footnotes & endnotes.

Spelling and grammar

MUSE checks your writing as you type and offers suggestions you can accept or dismiss:

• Spelling, with a custom dictionary you can add words to.
• Repeated adjacent words (e.g. “the the”).
• Very long sentences that may be worth breaking up.
• Wordy phrases that have shorter equivalents.
• Passive-voice indicators.
• Weak intensifiers and crutch words, adverbs, and clichés.

Each check can be turned on or off, and on large documents checking runs in the background so it never slows your typing.

Templates and guidance

Create documents from templates — built-in ones like Scene Builder, Chapter Builder, and Character Profile, or your own. Templates can carry optional ghost-prompt guidance: faint, in-context prompts that suggest what to write in each section and disappear as soon as you start typing. See Templates & guidance.

Scrivenings and split view

Select a folder (or several documents) to edit them as one continuous flow — called Scrivenings — while they stay separate files underneath. You can also split the editor to show two documents side by side. See Scrivenings & split view.

Read-aloud and lookup

Hear your prose read back to you to catch awkward phrasing, and look up any word in the built-in dictionary and thesaurus without leaving the page. See Read-aloud & lookup.

The Inspector and side panels

To the right of the editor:

• The Inspector holds the current document’s synopsis, notes, metadata, writing goal, and links.
• A synopsis bar above the text shows (and lets you edit) the one-line summary used on Scene Board cards.
• Other tabs hold the document outline, comments, suggestions (tracked changes), footnotes, and version history.

Writing goals and sessions

Set a word-count target for a document or the whole project and MUSE tracks your progress in the status bar and Inspector, along with your writing sessions over time. See Writing goals and Sessions & statistics.

Working with very large documents

The editor is engineered to stay smooth on 80,000-word manuscripts and beyond — heavy work like word counting and pagination runs off the main thread. If a single document grows large enough to risk slowing down, MUSE will gently suggest splitting it into smaller working documents, which you can do safely without losing anything.

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Ready to revise? See Suggesting mode for tracked changes, or Comments to leave notes for yourself and collaborators.