Real-time collaboration
Real-time collaboration lets several people write the same story together. When it's on, a story's scenes open in a shared editor where everyone's edits sync live — you see each other's changes, presence, and word counts as they happen. This is different from beta reading: beta readers read and comment, whereas collaborators co-edit the actual manuscript.
Collaboration is a newer, beta feature, and whether you can use it at all depends on a site-wide setting an administrator controls (see availability below).
You manage it from your story's overview screen, under the Sharing tab, in the Live collaboration panel. It is owner-only: only the story's owner can turn it on and manage collaborators.
Turning collaboration on
Open your story, go to the Sharing tab, and expand Live collaboration. Choose Turn on live collaboration. While it's on, this story's scenes open in the real-time collaborative editor instead of the solo editor, and solo autosave is paused for the story — edits sync and save continuously instead.
Turning collaboration off returns the story to the normal solo editor, drops any outstanding invite codes, and clears the story's chat history for good. Existing collaborators are kept but become inactive; turning collaboration back on restores their access (with a fresh, empty chat).
Inviting collaborators
While collaboration is on, you can bring people in two ways:
- Add by username — enter a member's account name to grant them access directly.
- Invite codes — create a single-use code and share it. Each code lets exactly one person in, so create one per collaborator. You can optionally bind a code to a specific username. Codes can't be reused, and you can revoke any unused code.
Your collaborator list shows who currently has access, and each has a remove control. Removing a collaborator drops their access and purges the spent code they used; you can invite them back any time with a fresh code or by username.
Redeeming an invite
A collaborator joins from the Shared with me tab of their My stories screen, in the Join a story as collaborator box: they enter the invite code and are dropped straight into the story to start co-writing. Stories you collaborate on appear there badged Editor. You can leave a story you've been shared on at any time; the owner can invite you back later with a new code.
Working together live
Once you're all in a shared scene, edits appear in real time as each person types. Presence and word counts sync live, so you can see who else is in the scene and watch the count move as everyone writes. Words you type in a collaborative scene still count toward your own personal daily writing totals.
Chatting with your collaborators
While collaboration is on, a chat button sits in the scene editor's top bar, just to the left of the word count. It opens a small live chat shared across the whole story — not tied to whichever scene you happen to be in — so you can talk things through without leaving the manuscript. Messages are plain text, and you can mention a collaborator by typing @ followed by their username to get their attention; start typing after the @ and a list of collaborators appears to pick from. Only the most recent hundred messages are kept.
A small number badge on the button tells you when there is something new: it is yellow for unread messages and red when one of them mentions you. The badge clears once you open the chat. If someone mentions you while you are away from the scene editor, it reaches you as a notification instead — naming who mentioned you, in which story, and when — that links straight to the story overview. You can switch those away-from-editor mention notifications on or off under Notifications in your settings; the in-editor badges always show while you are writing.
The chat lasts only as long as collaboration does: turning live collaboration off for a story clears its chat for good, and turning it back on starts a fresh, empty one.
Availability is set by an admin
Because collaboration is still in beta, an administrator decides site-wide who may run it, via a collaboration mode setting with three states:
- Disabled — nobody can run collaboration.
- Admin only — only administrators' stories can run collaboration.
- Open to all — any member's stories can run collaboration.
If collaboration isn't available to you, the Live collaboration panel says so and the toggle is unavailable.