Quickstart
Start by creating a series, even if you are writing one standalone book. In HardPart, a series simply means the main container for a story world or writing project. It can hold one book or many books, plus the facts and rules that need to stay true.
Inside a series, HardPart keeps your story pages, your world notes, your questions, your saved searches, your backups, and your downloads in one place.
- Click the + on the left side, then create a new series or bring in a saved backup.
- Add a book before adding chapters. A book is where the actual manuscript chapters live.
- Add or import your canon. Canon means the people, places, rules, history, magic, terms, and decisions that keep the story consistent.
- Add or import chapters. You can paste a full manuscript, or add one chapter at a time.
- Use HardPart while revising to search, compare, check facts, leave yourself flags, and export clean Markdown when needed.
Writing & Books
The manuscript side is where you read and work with the actual novel text. Chapters open in a clean reading view first. Turn on edit mode only when you want to make a quick change inside HardPart.
- Series: the larger container for a story world or writing project. A standalone novel still gets a series, even if that series only ever contains one book.
- Books: each separate novel inside the series. Use the book dropdown above the chapter list to switch books.
- Chapters: the pieces of the manuscript. You can add a chapter, choose where it goes, and let HardPart renumber later chapters if needed.
- Edit mode: lets you change the chapter text. The heading, bold, italic, and undo buttons add Markdown formatting for you.
- Focus mode: gives you a full-screen writing space when you want fewer distractions.
- Kindle View: shows the current chapter as paginated reading, useful for checking rhythm and flow.
Illustrated Books
Images belong to a book. Upload art once, then insert it into chapters wherever it belongs. This works best for illustrated novels, chapter books, picture-heavy drafts, and any manuscript where the image should appear after a paragraph.
- Book Images: opens the current book's image gallery. Images in this gallery are available only for that book.
- Upload: saves the original print-ready image and creates a smaller screen version for the app and reader.
- Caption: autosaves as you type. A green check means the caption was saved.
- Insert Small / Medium / Full: places the image at the current cursor position using that intended size.
- Focus mode: placed images show a floating image tool. Use the size buttons to change the image in the chapter, or the delete button to remove it from the page.
- Trash: removes an image from the book gallery. If a chapter still references that image, it will no longer display there.
- Reader layout: the phone reader may shrink or give an image its own page so art does not run off the bottom of the screen.
Canon
Canon is everything the story has decided is true. It is the memory of the book or series: character details, place names, magic rules, timelines, promises, secrets, terminology, and decisions you do not want to accidentally contradict later.
- Click the cannon button to open your canon next to the manuscript.
- Use headings for important entries, like a character name, kingdom, spell, object, rule, or timeline event.
- Use
Aliases: lines for nicknames, alternate spellings, titles, plural forms, or phrases the manuscript might use.
- Use Tags to highlight manuscript words that match important canon entries.
- Use Source Links to find places in the manuscript where the current canon entry appears.
- Canon can grow as the book grows. If a chapter changes the truth of the world, update the canon so future chapters stay aligned.
Search & Review
Search is the fastest way to ask, “Where does this appear?” It checks both the manuscript and the canon at the same time.
- The book count shows matches in the manuscript. The cannon/key count shows matches in canon.
- Use the arrows beside each count to jump from match to match.
- The list icon opens a fuller results view with snippets.
- The bookmark icon saves a search you expect to use again, like a character name, place, rule, or recurring phrase.
- When the search box is empty, the list icon opens your saved searches directly.
- Review Flags are notes to yourself about things that need attention: contradictions, timeline questions, unresolved rules, character details, or canon decisions.
- The number on the flag button shows how many open review flags still need attention.
Safety & Exports
HardPart is meant for real revision, so it includes several ways to protect your work and get your text back out again.
- History: chapters and canon entries keep previous versions when you save, so you can go back if a change was wrong.
- Series History: saves the whole series at once, including books, chapters, canon, review flags, saved structure, and notes.
- Backups: a backup is a file you can download and keep outside the app. It can restore a whole series later.
- Export Center: downloads the current chapter, current book, full manuscript, canon, one canon section, or a full series backup.
- Images: current Markdown exports keep image references. Keep your original art files separately until full image-bundle export is added.
- Safety copies: before major destructive actions, HardPart quietly makes a server-side database safety copy.
- Refresh notices: if the same book or series changes in another browser or device, HardPart asks you to refresh instead of silently showing old text.
Phone Reader
The phone version has a different job. It is not meant for editing. It turns HardPart into a private reader for checking your books away from the writing desk.
- The phone shows every book from every series in one simple library.
- Tap a book to open it in full-screen reading mode.
- Bookmarks, light or dark mode, and text size are remembered on the phone.
- If you update that book on desktop while it is open on the phone, the phone will offer to refresh.
- Illustrations are automatically resized during pagination. If an image fits best alone, it can take a full page; otherwise HardPart chooses a smaller reader-only size.
- Use the grid/list toggle depending on whether you want book-cover-like squares or a compact list.
- This makes the phone useful for reading, checking pacing, and catching problems without bringing the full editing workspace along.