FAQs

Urnovl is an online library of solo & collective creative writings. “Urnovl” is an abbreviation of the phrase “your novel”.

A “Novl” is the abbreviation of a novel. It represents anything that is a Prose - Fiction, Prose - Non-fiction, Poetry, Drama and Screenplay, that is also posted as on-going or published on Urnovl.

You become a ”novlist” when you start or collaborate with your chapter in a ”novl”, or if you upload stories you have already written on your own.

Yes! The platform is currently free to use although some actions require payment for accessing.

You can’t do most of the important activities of urnovl without signing up/in. This means that you can’t vote/start new ”novl”/add comments/add novls to your library etc.

Currently, you can't. We are planning to introduce regular signing up with emails though.

Yes. You can definitely upload anything you want to be read by other people, to Urnovl. Either if it's a poem, or a fictional comedy story. We love it all. And our community will love it too. Just make sure to read and follow our House rules first.

This is one of the great things about urnovl. You can start a new ”novl” with some predefined characteristics but the limit of where your ”novl” can go, is relative to the creativity of other coauthors. All chapters written for an on-going ”novl” are visible to the whole urnovl community. The community votes and suggests the best chapters according to public opinion. Chapters with the highest scores will appear on top of others based on a system we have developed. You may decide to continue the story from the chapter with the highest score, or if you don’t like it, you may downvote it and move to the second best version. This way, you decide from which chapter you wish to continue the ”novl”. When all chapters are written, the initial author has the authority to publish the ”novl”.

Completing a ”novl” may be an irreversible action, if the "novl was written in collaboration with other authors. This means that you have to be sure that you want to mark an on-going ”novl” as complete. If on the other hand you have written a story in Solo mode and accidentally marked it as complete, you can easily revert your story back in the ongoing state from the same button in "novl" overview.

The platform offers most of the common genres. You need to write ”novls” that are fit with the existing genres. If you have a request about more genres please send us feedback with that request.

By choosing to start a ”solo novl”, people will be able to view your novl while on-going, but will not be able to add chapters in it. They will however be able to follow your story progressively as you write more chapters.

Beta means urnovl is on a testing period. We are working very hard to develop the best website/app for writing collaboratively and reading online. We will stay in beta until we feel we cover the most demanding users out there.

You can easily send us feedback by using either the bug report link or the contact link on the left menu. We have implemented such an easy way of communication, just because we really can't wait to hear a lot from you.

You can upload stories you have written in the past which means that you can copy/paste your previously written stories even if you wrote them for another website/medium, as long as you retain the rights to do so.

No, as the author/creator you retain all rights and ownership of your content.

For the longer story please check "Your content" section in our Terms of service.

Starting a ”novl” is very easy. You can just click on the menu button or on the call to action button in our homepage grid.

There are multiple ways to collaborate in a ”novl”. The most standard way to collaborate is through novl overview. You can get to novl overview by clicking the "Novl overview" button, in novl summary.

The other way to collaborate, is while reading on-going ”novls”. If you read a chapter that you don't like and click on the dislike button, you will get prompted to write your own alternative version.

Finally, if while reading an on-going ”novl”, you click on the "Read next chapter" button, but that chapter hasn't been writen yet, you will be prompted to continue the story with your chapter.

Remember, you can only collaborate in a novl while the ”novl” is on-going. By the time a novel gets published, it gets locked from further collaborations.

No, you can also choose to write a novl with unlimited duration, if your novl is in "Solo" mode.

If your novl is a collaboration, you have to choose the total reading duration of that novl. This will help your readers, understand how much time will it take, to completely read your novl.

Additionaly, collaborating in a novl with a chapter, becomes much easier if you know around how many words you have to write.

Reading duration is calculated, considering that the average human, can read around 210 words per minute.

• approximately 30 minutes novl > 3 chapters, 10 minutes each > 1050 to 3150 words per chapter
• approximately 45 minutes novl > 3 chapters, 15 minutes each > 1575 to 4725 words per chapter
• approximately 90 minutes novl > 6 chapters, 15 minutes each > 1575 to 4725 words per chapter
• approximately 120 minutes novl > 6 chapters, 20 minutes each > 2100 to 6300 words per chapter

Note: You can post a chapter with a margin of +/-50% of the total chapter's duration. For example a 10 minute chapter can be posted with a minimum of 5 minutes reading duration and a maximum of 15 minutes reading duration.

Short summary is a few words of your novl, that will be shown in the novl grid. Short summaries should attract readers and writers into your novl. A short summary is between 30 to 80 characters.

Long summary is a summary of your novl presented in the novl summary splash. Think of it as the summaries at the back of books.

Long summaries are between 30 to 1200 characters long.

You can add characters in your novl in step 2 of the novl creation process. You can give a name to your character and a description. A character can also be an item.

You can add more characters than two, by clicking on the add characters button.

The writers' menu is only visible while you are on urnovl's editor. It contains information that other writers may find userfull while collaborating in your novl.

Such information are for example, your hints, the name and the description of your characters.

You can browse the characters and hints of other writers by click on the corresponding tab. You can also add your own characters and hints for the current chapter you are writing

Note: The first tab (the one with the feather), is the tab that contains the characters and hints that were set by the creator of the novl, on step 2

In novl overview you can bind chapters and publish your ”novl” and discover all branches and sub-stories.

You can go to novl overview from a ”novl's” summary splash.

You can add people to collaborate in your novl, by marking your novl as private and entering the emails of the people you want to invite.

An email invitation will be sent when you create and post the novl as on-going.

Hints are important information either for you or for other writers and are related to the story. You can pass on usefull information to any writer like where you want your story to go, or why you did something in your chapter so that they understand and continue writing your story based on that information.

Marking a novl as private makes it invisible to everyone. It cannot be seen in the homepage grid.

Usually you'll want to mark your novl as private for two reasons:

• You want to write your novl on your own
• You want to invite people in your novl and collaborate

You can change your personal settings from your profile settings tab, in your profile.

You can add information like your location, your website or your social networks links.

You can delete a chapter you have posted from the 'Novl Overview' screen.

Just click on the chapter's menu, then delete chapter and confirm your action.

Note: Deleting a chapter is an irreversible action.

You can delete a ”novl” you have started only while the ”novl” is on-going.

Just click on the ”novl”'s menu, then delete ”novl” and confirm your action.

Note: Deleting a ”novl” is an irreversible action.

There are multiple licenses to choose from. These licenses are applied to the novl content and every coauthor agrees to contribute to the novl with the corresponding novl's license.

The licenses included are:

• ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  You, the copyright holder, reserve all rights provided by copyright law, such as the right to make copies, distribute your work, perform your work, license, or otherwise exploit your work; no rights are waived under this license

• CC0 PUBLIC DOMAIN

  When a work is in the public domain, it is free for use by anyone for any purpose without restriction under copyright law. Public domain is the purest form of open/free, since no one owns or controls the material in any way

• CC BY 4.0 INT

  This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials

• CC BY-SA 4.0 INT

  This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects

• CC BY-ND 4.0 INT

  This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you

• CC BY-NC 4.0 INT

  This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms

• CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 INT

  This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms

• CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 INT

  This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially

There are currently two types of ”novls”:

On-going ”novls”

All ”novls” are started as on-going, until the creator decides to publish them. While a novl is on-going, everyone can collaborate and add their chapters in it

Note: The rating system of on-going novls, is thumbs up/down with a touch of our magic mathematical formula

Published ”novls”

When the creator of an on-going novl, decides to publish a ”novl”, the novl then changes state to published. The published ”novl” is then locked from futher collaborations and the storyline that the creator chose to publish, becomes the standard storyline of the ”novl” when someone clicks on the read ”novl” button

Note: Published ”novls” have a 5-star rating system. This too has a touch of our magic mathematical formula

You can read by clicking on the ”Read novl” button in the ”novl” summary.

While a ”novl” is on-going you can vote for the chapter you are reading with a thumb up or down, at the end of that chapter.

If you are reading a published ”novl”, you can vote with a 5-star rating system at the end of the ”novl”.

If you are reading with pagination, you can vote at the end of the laste page.

While a ”novl” is on-going, the storyline is not yet set and other writers may come up with a better alternative storylines than the current highest rated one.

Voting with thumbs up or down for a chapter, may change the current storyline and bring the alternative storyline ontop, as highest rated.

When a ”novl” is marked as complete, the storyline is now locked and the rating system becomes a standard 5-star rating system.

Currently you can read alternative versions while reading an on-going ”novl”. If you thumb down the current chapter you are reading and an alternative version of that chapter exists, you will be prompted to read the next best alternative version.

You can change your reading settings directly by clicking on the settings button in the reading menu.

The current settings you can change are:

• Reading style:
  • Scrolling: Standard top-to-bottom scrolling
  • Pagination: A unique pagination style, specifically designed for tablets/mobile. Just swipe left for next page and right for previous page
• Font style:
  • Serif (default)
  • Sans
• Font size: Choose the size that makes your reading more confortable:
• Themes: Four themes to suite all times of day and make reading easier for your eyes:
  • Light mode
  • Sepia mode
  • Sunset mode
  • Dark mode