Write the story. Keep its world in order.

Polyquill is a writing studio and a story timeline in one app. Chapters, characters, places and every dated event live together, in one file on your own computer.

Download for Windows See pricing

$50 once. Try it free for 30 days.

14 Thawmoon 1202

The ferry

The bell on the ferry rang twice, which it never did. Maren counted the lights on the far shore the way her father had taught her, and came up one short.

By the time the second bell faded, the water had gone flat and silver, and the boatman had stopped rowing.

Chapter 41,860 of 2,500 words

Early thaw, 1202Maren leaves the lighthouseChapter 1
14 Thawmoon 1202The ferry goes down off Calder PointChapter 4
Both moons full, Ashfall 1202The council meets at AshgroveChapter 9
Midwinter 1203Maren comes homeChapter 22

Two halves of one book

Most writers keep the manuscript in one program and the history of their world in another. Polyquill joins them: an event on the timeline opens the scene it happens in.

The writing

A binder of chapters, scenes, characters, places and research
A rich text editor with full-screen composition mode
A corkboard of index cards and an outliner
Snapshots of any scene, and undo for the whole project
Word targets and a writing history with charts

Polyquill writing a scene of The Hound of the Baskervilles: the binder of chapters and scenes on the left, the text in the middle, and the inspector on the right with the scene's synopsis, label, status, word target and its event on the timeline. — Writing The Hound of the Baskervilles, from the demo novel.

The chronology

Calendars of your own: months, weeks, eras and moons
Events linked to scenes, characters and places
Arcs, and lanes by character or place
Each character's age at every event, from their birth date
Export the timeline as a spreadsheet, picture or PDF

The demo world's timeline: a thousand years in four eras shown as a band above the ruler, with events in lanes for the world's history, the heroine's story, the scholars and the crown. — A thousand years of an invented world, from the demo world.

A short tour

Every picture on this site is the real app with one of the demo projects open. Download one and look around.

The corkboard showing the demo world's main cast as index cards, each with a portrait, a one-line synopsis and a word count. — The corkboard, with a picture on each card.

A character sheet with a portrait beside the text. The inspector shows her birth date in the world's calendar and her age at each event she is part of. — A character's age at every event, in the world's own calendar.

The Progress view: today's words against the daily goal, the week, the manuscript against its target, and a chart of the last 30 days. — Your writing history, day by day.

See every feature

For every kind of storyteller

Novelists: Draft in chapters and scenes, move them on a corkboard, set word targets and watch the book grow day by day. Export a standard manuscript for an agent, or a Word file, PDF or EPUB.
Worldbuilders: Give a world its own calendar, months, eras and moons. Keep its characters, places and centuries of history in one project, with every event on a timeline you can read at a glance.
Game masters: Keep session notes, people, places and factions together, and put the campaign's events on a timeline in the setting's own calendar, so the players' past is always in front of you.

How each of them uses Polyquill

Your work is a file

A Polyquill project is one ordinary file. Keep it where you like, copy it, back it up, or put it in a synced folder. There is no account to create and no server your writing depends on.

Polyquill saves as you write, keeps dated backups, and exports your manuscript to Word, PDF, EPUB, OpenDocument, RTF, Markdown, a web page or plain text whenever you want it somewhere else.

$50, once

One licence for two computers. Every 1.x update is free, and the Mac version will be included when it arrives.

Try it free for 30 days Pricing and upgrades