A writing app for novelists

1. One document per chapter. Name them “01 — Arrival”, “02 — The Ferry”. Recents becomes the manuscript, newest first, and search finds a character's name across all of them.
2. Write in Focus mode. Esc clears the interface down to the page and the sentence. Another Esc brings the toolbars back.
3. Watch the count, not the clock. The word count is in the document list, so a chapter's length is visible without opening it.
4. Back the draft up. Local Sync writes one .quorly file per document into a folder you choose; Pro Cloud Sync keeps a copy in your own Google Drive.
5. Export when it is a book. EPUB (Pro) gives a reflowable file with a table of contents; Markdown keeps the manuscript portable, and PDF gives a reader something to mark up.

• Zero friction. No account, no purchase, no project setup. The first sentence is one click from the homepage.
• Long sessions. The draft saves continuously and the browser can be closed without a “save?” dialog.
• Offline. Install it once and it works on a train, a plane, or a bad hotel connection.
• No assistant. If you do not want a model suggesting the next sentence of your novel, there is nothing to switch off — see why that is structural.
• Exports that a publisher or an editor can open. PDF for reading, Markdown for editing, EPUB for the e-reader.

This is the part the comparison pages usually bury, so it is on the front page here:

• No binder or corkboard. Chapters are documents in a list, not scenes in a tree. If you outline by rearranging index cards, Scrivener is still the better tool.
• No compile presets. There is no “export manuscript with title page and chapter breaks” button; EPUB export is the closest, and it builds the book from headings.
• No daily goals or streaks. There is a word count, not a target that resets at midnight.
• No footnotes or comments. A novel rarely needs footnotes; a thesis does, which is why this is not the app for the thesis.

The honest summary: Quorly is the drafting surface, not the whole studio. Many people write here and move the finished files into whatever handles the editing and the compile. The manuscript leaves as Markdown, so nothing is trapped.

Two free starting points if the outline still lives in your head: the three-act structure template and the character profile sheet, both Markdown files you can import.