For writers

Every Boughly account starts as a reader. Writing is a free, one-time activation — it unlocks the creator dashboard and the story editor without changing anything about your reading account.

Open Settings → Writing and click Become a writer. You can also reach it from the avatar menu (top-right) or the quick links on your Home page. You'll land on your Dashboard ready to start your first story.

Two fast ways to grow the story from where you are:

• Drag to create. Grab the handle on a scene's edge and drag it out to empty canvas. When you let go, Boughly makes a new scene already linked to the one you dragged from.
• Branch while you write. With your cursor in a scene's text, press Ctrl+Enter (or Cmd+Enter). A little "What does the reader choose?" prompt pops up at your cursor — type the choice label, hit Enter, and Boughly adds the choice plus a fresh linked scene and drops you into it to keep writing.

No code. Conditions and mutations read as plain sentences — "Show this choice only if Trust is at least 3" or "Add 1 to Trust when the reader picks this." You build them from dropdowns in the Inspector, and you can create a new variable right there inline when you need one.

A gated choice is one with a condition attached. You decide what happens when the condition isn't met: the choice can be hidden (the reader never sees it) or shown grayed out (visible but not selectable, hinting there was another way through). Pick whichever fits the moment.

• Group. Select the scenes you want together, then press Ctrl+G to wrap them in a chapter frame.
• Collapse one chapter. Double-click a chapter's header to fold it down to a single capsule, so a finished section stops taking up space.
• See the whole outline. Use Collapse All in the top bar (graph view) to fold every chapter into capsules for a table-of-contents view of the story; the same button expands them again.
• Re-chapter. Drag a scene into a different chapter's frame to move it there.

• Zoom out for the map. As you zoom out, scenes simplify automatically — full cards become pills, then dots — so the overall shape of a large story stays readable.
• Highlight connections on hover. Hover a scene to dim everything except it and its direct connections. If you find that distracting, turn it off with the "Hover to highlight connections" toggle in the canvas view options — trace and filter still work either way.
• Trace routes. Select a scene and press T to light up the paths that reach it from the start (press Shift+T to trace everything downstream from it instead). Press the key again or hit Esc to clear.
• Filter scenes. Press Ctrl+F to open the filter bar. Type plain text to match titles and prose, or use tokens like type:ending, is:gated, and tag:canon to narrow the canvas.
• Jump to a scene. Press Ctrl+K to search your scenes by title and jump straight to one.

Yes. Select several scenes — drag a marquee box around them, or Shift-click to add scenes one at a time — and the bulk action bar appears with word count, set-type, tag, and delete controls for the whole selection.

• Select connected scenes. Right-click a scene and choose Select all downstream (everything reachable from it) or Select all upstream (everything that can reach it).
• Context menus. Right-click a scene, an edge, or empty canvas for the actions that make sense there.
• Duplicate. Select a scene and press Ctrl+D to copy it.

• Autosave. Your work saves continuously as you write — the save indicator in the top bar shows the current state.
• Named checkpoints. Press Ctrl+Shift+S to save a named snapshot you can find and return to later.
• Automatic snapshots. Boughly also snapshots before risky actions, so a big change is always recoverable.
• Restore. Open Version History to restore a whole story to an earlier snapshot — or restore just a single scene without rolling back everything else. Restoring adds a new version on top; nothing is destroyed.

Open Preview to play your story with your real conditions and mutations live. A few things it can do:

• Play from any scene. Jump into the story at a specific scene instead of always starting from the beginning — handy for testing a branch deep in the tree.
• See the paywall. Toggle the 0 coins reader view to see exactly what a reader with no coins sees and where your paywall falls (display only — no charge).
• Check mobile. Toggle the Phone frame to constrain the preview to a phone-width column and check your line lengths.

There are two ways to monetize, and which one you want depends on whether you're charging for one story or a series of chapters.

A single story → set a coin price + a paywall node. In the story editor, open Publish and choose Paid, then pick a coin price (100 coins = $1.00). Readers sample your story for free up to the paywall node — the node you mark as the cut-off — and spend coins once to unlock everything past it. Mark the paywall on a node from its settings in the editor ("Paywall Gate"). One unlock buys the whole rest of that story.

Chapter-by-chapter → publish a Book. If you want a free intro and then paid chapters (or every chapter paid, or the latest few free), create a Book from your Dashboard and add your stories to it as chapters. A Book's Pricing & Access panel gives you the chapter-aware modes:

• Whole book — one unlock buys every chapter.
• First N chapters free — hook readers, then charge.
• Latest N free — back catalog paid, newest chapters free.
• Per chapter — each chapter unlocks individually.

Either way, payouts come from paid coin spends only and pay out monthly via Stripe once you clear the threshold. See Creator Payouts for the full split and fee math.

Open Publish from the editor top bar and step through the flow: story details (blurb, cover, rating), access (free or a coin price), and a final review. Publish is blocked while any error-level diagnostic is unresolved, so clear the Diagnostics panel first.

For a paid story with chapters, the access step shows a chapter ladder. Drag the free line between chapters to set where free reading stops and paid begins — the free line marks the entry of the first paid chapter. As you move it, the reader's receipt updates to estimate what a reader samples for free and what they pay to unlock the rest. The manual paywall picker on a scene stays in sync with the ladder — both set the same paywall.

You earn a flat 70% of the face value of every eligible paid coin spent on your stories — and on tips, which use the same calculation. Boughly keeps 30% and pays payment-processing and payout costs from it. The split is computed automatically.

• Monthly payouts into the Stripe Connect account you onboarded.
• $10 minimum — below it, your balance rolls into the next month.
• Your first three payouts are capped at $200 each (anti-fraud on new creators); the remainder carries over, and later payouts are uncapped.
• If a buyer refunds or charges back a bundle, the matching creator earnings are proportionally reversed — you are paid only on coins that stay paid.

Full split and fee math is on the Creator Payouts page. Questions about a specific payout — email support@boughly.com from your account address with the payout ID.