The canon — the memory of the novel

The canon is what is true in the novel: the intent, the style, the characters, the places, the way the world works. The assistant checks against it in every scene.

Why the canon is needed

The assistant does not remember your novel on its own. Before every scene it gets the canon cards it needs: who these people are, how they speak, what the place looks like, by what rules the world lives.

That is why a character in the tenth scene is still the same person as in the first, and the world does not contradict itself.

Where the canon comes from

You can write the canon in yourself, or you can have it assembled from your own material: put your notes and sketches into the “Draft” section, and the assistant will lay them out across the cards. What you wrote yourself it never overwrites.

When the canon suits you, you approve it — the Approve the canon button. From that moment on you can write scenes.

The canon grows together with the novel

The canon does not freeze once it is approved. You can edit the cards at any time. And every accepted scene adds to the memory of the novel: what happened, what changed for the characters, what went into the timeline.

The more precise the canon, the fewer fixes in the text: vagueness in a character card comes back as vagueness in every scene with that character.