For novelists, on Mac and Windows
From first idea to finished book
Plan your scenes, your cast and your world, write beside them, and read the novel on the pages it will be printed on. One quiet app, offline, yours for a single price.
Coming soon to Mac and Windows
Free to try with a sample novel. $29 to keep, once. Updates for life.
On your phone? Asterysm is for Mac and Windows.
A scene as it’s written, with its plan beside it. Either panel opens and closes whenever you like.
Writing and Planning
Two views of one story
A scene you plan and a scene you write are the same scene. Write with its plan beside you, then step back to see the whole book laid out: every scene, plotline, character, and place.
Every plotline across the book: where each one moves, and where it goes quiet.
Thesaurus
The right word, in its place
Select a word and choose Synonyms in the bubble over it: the thesaurus offers others by meaning, each with a short definition, already in the form your sentence needs. “Rose” offers “soared”, “picked” offers “chose”. Choose one and it takes the word’s place.
It opens only when you ask. Words for the same thing, more specific ones, broader ones, and opposites. Offline, in English and in Spanish.
Her mare picked a careful line between the ruts, hooves sounding dull against the packed clay, and the capital’s pale walls rose ahead like a second horizon.
Mentions
Every name, a link
Type @ and a name, and your words become a link to someone or something in your story. Point at one to see who or what it is without leaving the manuscript. At rest, it reads as your own words, with only a hairline beneath.
Each character’s and place’s page lists where it’s mentioned, and a scene’s plan shows who its words name that the plan doesn’t have yet.
Try it: point at a name
She reached inside her coat and felt the sealed letter against her ribs. The king’s mark. A summons, not a request. Captain of the eastern guard, called back to the place that had taken her brother and given her a rank in return, as if that were a kindness.
The King’s Letter
A summons, not a request, sealed with the king’s mark and phrased so that it could not be refused.
King Aldren
A thinning king who sends for people he once wronged, and does not explain why.
The Eastern Guard
The garrison that held the border through the war, and was given ranks instead of thanks.
Aeric Veyr
Elena’s brother. He believed holding a place was a kind of love, and held the ridge until it killed him.
History
Every draft, kept
Every scene keeps its earlier versions without being asked. Open its history to read last Tuesday’s draft, see what bringing it back would change, marked as an editor would, and restore it. What it replaces is kept too.
And versions of the whole book
At a milestone, name one: First Draft, Sent to Clara. Later, compare it with now: how many words came and went, and which scenes changed. Any version opens as a project of its own.
Saved as you write
Every word is kept the moment it’s written, each save whole or not at all. There’s nothing to remember.
Nothing deleted by accident
What you remove waits in the Archive, with Undo, until you say it’s gone for good.
Backups beside it
A copy of the book is kept outside it, wherever you choose, as it opens, every half hour while it changes, and as it closes.
Book Format
Read it as it will be printed
Choose the page, the typeface, how chapters open and scenes break. Then read the whole novel on its pages, every line breaking where the printed book’s will, without exporting a thing.
Export
Ready for every format
One book, four editions, each made to measure, whether you’re publishing it yourself or sending it to an editor.
The ebook, with its cover, as an e-reader will show it, ready for Kindle Direct Publishing and every other store.
The book’s pages, for a printer or a print-on-demand service like KDP or IngramSpark: every page at the book’s size, its fonts embedded, and room for the spine.
Ebook
EPUBFor Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and every other store, reflowing to any screen. It passes EPUBCheck, Ace by DAISY, and Kindle’s own checks.
Manuscript
DOCXStandard manuscript format, as agents and editors ask for it: Times New Roman at 12 points, double-spaced, the word count on its title page.
Text
MD · TXTThe words alone, for another app or your own records, in one file or a file for each chapter.
Made for long books
A thousand pages, still instant
Asterysm is built for whole novels: thousands of scenes, hundreds of chapters. Every release is timed on a 300,000-word book, and none may be slower than the one before.
1.3 s
to open it, from launch to its words on screen
0.1 s
at most, to go to any of its rooms: scenes, plotlines, characters, or world
0.5 s
to export the whole of it as an ebook
Timed on a 2019 laptop (AMD Ryzen 7 3750H) with a 300,000-word novel, about 1,300 printed pages.
On a 2560 × 1080 ultrawide, the page keeps its measure, and the plan stays beside it.
Respects your privacy
Yours, on your computer
No account
Download it and start writing. There’s nothing to sign up for.
No cloud
Your book is one file on your computer. Keep it, copy it, or sync it however you like.
No AI
Nothing reads your words, and nothing writes them for you.
No subscription
$29 once, with every update included, on up to three computers.
On Mac and Windows, in English and Spanish.
Tell us what to build next
Every update is yours for life, so what comes next is partly up to you. Write to us with what you’d like Asterysm to do, or what got in your way: we read every message.
support@asterysm.comBegin your book
Asterysm comes with The Ashen Crown, a short novel with its plan, cast, and world filled in, so you can try everything before you write a word. When you’re ready for your own, it’s $29, once.
Coming soon to Mac and Windows
Updates for life · Up to three computers · A full refund within 14 days
On your phone? Asterysm is for Mac and Windows.