Is NovelForge free, offline and private? Your questions, answered

NovelForge is free, open-source novel writing software for Windows. It combines a binder of chapters and scenes, a corkboard, nine outline frameworks, a timeline, reference sheets for characters and places, a story graph that checks continuity, a procedural fantasy map maker and offline prose diagnostics. Every scene it creates is a real Microsoft Word (.docx) file in a folder on your own disk.

Yes. It is released under the MIT licence: free to use, copy, change and share. There is no trial, no subscription, no locked feature and no account. If it helps you and you would like to say thank you, you can donate, but you never have to.

That depends on what you value, so we would rather show than claim. If you want a free, offline studio that stores your book as ordinary Word files and includes planning, worldbuilding and continuity tools made for fiction, NovelForge is built for exactly that. If you need ebook and print typesetting, live co-writing or a Mac or phone app, another tool will suit you better. Our honest comparison lays it out.

Completely. It never connects to the internet while you write: no telemetry, no update check, no cloud. You need a connection only to download it and, the first time you run it, to fetch two small Python libraries.

In a normal folder on your computer, Projects\Your Novel\, next to Write.bat. Every scene, character sheet and location sheet is its own Word (.docx) file. A small project.json remembers ordering, links and word counts, and never holds your prose. You can open the folder in Explorer at any time (File → Open Project Folder).

Nothing. Your scenes are ordinary Word documents, readable in Word, LibreOffice or Google Docs today and in twenty years. The source code is public, so anyone can keep the program alive. That is the reason the files are .docx and not a private database.

No. There is no generative AI in NovelForge, nothing is sent to any service, and nothing reads your manuscript except the program on your own machine. The prose diagnostics are ordinary offline rules that point at possible problems (adverbs, filter words, passive voice, sentence rhythm, word echoes). They never rewrite your text.

Yes. NovelForge has no accounts, no cloud storage and no telemetry, and it makes no network connections while you work. Your manuscript exists only where you put it. The only local server in the code binds to your own machine and is used only by an unfinished experimental interface you never see.

Not yet. The engine is plain Python, but the interface has only been built and tested on Windows 10 and 11. Support elsewhere is possible but not promised. If it would get you using NovelForge, please say so on GitHub. Because the files are Word documents, you can always take your book to another tool.

No. The steps are: install Python from python.org, unzip the download, and double-click Write.bat. The first run installs two small libraries by itself. The download page covers the common problems.

Yes. Copy your existing .docx files into a chapter folder under 00 Manuscript\ and choose Manuscript → Import Loose .docx Files. Each file becomes a scene with its word count read in. There is no direct import of Scrivener project files; export from Scrivener to .docx first.

Yes. Press F5 and NovelForge compiles every scene into one Word document in standard manuscript format: US Letter, one-inch margins, 12-point, double spaced, a title page, a running header, each chapter on a fresh page and THE END at the close. It also exports plain text and a treatment (every synopsis in reading order). It does not typeset ebooks or print interiors.

One button builds a whole world: coastlines, mountain ranges, rivers that run from the highlands to the sea, forests, deserts, roads and named settlements, all editable afterwards. You can export PNG, SVG or a Word document. The maps you make are yours to use in your own books and anywhere else, since NovelForge is MIT-licensed and places no restrictions on the images it produces. More about the map maker.

Yes. The same seed and settings rebuild the identical world, place names included, on any machine. The seed is recorded on the map, so a world you like can be shared or regenerated exactly.

Press Ctrl+B. NovelForge zips the whole project into a _Backups folder, then reopens the zip and checks its checksums before it tells you it worked. It also keeps a snapshot of every scene before each save, writes files atomically so a crash cannot leave half a file, and keeps a recovery journal that asks before it restores anything. You are also free to copy the folder anywhere you like, since it is just files.

Yes. Open a scene in Word, edit and save, and NovelForge picks up the change; edit in NovelForge and Word sees it. The two stay in sync in either direction. Italics and bold are preserved; other formatting is normalised when you compile, which is the point of compiling.

Yes. Files are written safely (to a temporary name, then swapped in) so a sync client never catches a half-written document, and NovelForge itself is developed inside a OneDrive folder. You can keep your Projects folder in a synced folder if you like.

Open an issue on GitHub. You do not need to explain the technical cause: “it felt glitchy when I did this” is a complete bug report. Code contributions are welcome too; see CONTRIBUTING.md.