> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.quarkle.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Writing a Novel with AI: A Step-by-Step Guide > How to brainstorm, draft, and revise a new novel with an AI writing assistant, from a blank page to a finished chapter, using Quarkle. This is the path for a book that doesn't exist yet: no draft, no outline, just a blank page and Quarkle thinking alongside you as it fills. ## Overview A new, empty Quarkle manuscript with an Untitled title The shape of it: start blank, brainstorm before you commit words, lean on Chat and the Highlight Bar for lines that need a second pass, and jot notes for beats you haven't written yet. ## Start with a blank page A blank editor opens straight away. See [Create & open a manuscript](/getting-started/create-a-manuscript). Click the title field at the top (it starts as "Untitled"). Autosave means there's nothing to remember to save. Write your first lines like you would in any editor. ## Brainstorm before you commit Staring at a blank page is the hardest part. Before you write a scene, talk it through. Open the **Chat** tab and ask something like *"help me brainstorm how Elias and Mara first met"* or *"what's the central tension in this opening?"*. Quarkle reads what you've written so far and thinks with you, not for you. A Quarkle Chat exchange with a tool trail showing Notes and Search Early on, there's little manuscript for Chat to search, so be specific in what you tell it. As you write more, it has more of your actual pages to ground answers in. ## Get inline suggestions as you write Turn on **Suggestions** in the Chat [Toolkit](/ai/quarkle-chat) (click **Toolkit** or type **@**), then ask for a change directly: *"add a sentence here describing the smell of the room"* or *"tighten this paragraph"*. Quarkle marks the proposed edit inline as a diff, right where it would land. Nothing changes in your manuscript until you accept it. A chat-proposed sentence shown as an inline diff addition in the manuscript, with a diff view card offering accept and reject Click the checkmark to accept, the cross to reject. ## Keep the draft moving with Ghostwriter When you know the next beat but do not want to draft it through Chat, use [Ghostwriter](/editor/ghostwriter). Type a direction such as `Bring Mira to the door` or leave the steering field empty, then press the pink quill. Quarkle continues from the chapter's final line and streams the new prose onto the page. Ghostwriter prose streaming in pink at the end of a chapter You can stop at any moment and keep what has arrived. For a more deliberate scene, plan the beats in Chat, save them to your Atlas, and point Ghostwriter to that scene document. ## Rework a single line without leaving the page For quick, local rewrites, you don't need Chat at all. Highlight any passage and the **Highlight Bar** appears with one-click actions: Expand, Embellish, Concise, Restructure. Pick one, preview the diff, accept or reject. The Highlight Bar over a highlighted sentence A preview card showing a rewrite as an inline diff with accept, reject, retry, and copy controls Full walkthrough: [The Highlight Bar](/editor/highlight-bar). ## Leave yourself notes for what's coming Know Chapter 4 needs a confrontation but you're not there yet? Open the Story Atlas, add a **Chapter Note**, and write your working instructions: the beat to hit, a character's mindset, a tone reminder. A Chapter Notes entry with working instructions for a character's mindset and tone in a chapter Chat reads that chapter's notes automatically once you're working in it, so by the time you get there, Quarkle already knows the plan. See [Mastering the Story Atlas](/guides/mastering-the-story-atlas) for the full picture of what goes where. ## Keep moving forward Add chapters as you go from the **Chapters** panel in the left rail, no need to plan the whole structure up front. See [Chapters](/editor/chapters). Want to spitball a wild alternate direction without it becoming canon? Turn on **Memory Lock** in the Toolkit first. See [Memory](/ai/memory#memory-lock-brainstorm-without-remembering). Bring Chat, the Review Room, and Reports together to work through a draft.