StoryHelm vs Plottr: Planning a Series vs Checking the Books You Wrote
Plottr is a visual outliner: you plan plots and hand-build a series bible before and while you draft. StoryHelm starts once the draft exists: it reads each book you wrote, builds a canon from it, and flags where the books contradict themselves. Many series authors plan in one and check in the other.
What Plottr is for
From plottr.com, checked October 13, 2026. Plottr is visual outlining software: you plan plot lines and scenes visually, with timeline, outline, notes, characters, places and tags views, and you hand-build a series bible, which Plottr’s site describes as organizing the characters and places in your books and series, with sorting and filtering. Its site says you can export your outline to Word and Scrivener. Its site says “No AI” on every plan. Plans on the day: Plottr at $60 a year; Pro at $9.99 a month or $99 a year; Pro + Community at $14.99 a month or $129 a year; and lifetime licences at $150, $599 and $649. Prices change; check plottr.com before you buy.
Where a hand-built bible stops
A bible you build while planning records the series you intended to write. Your manuscripts record the one you wrote. Between the two sits every change a draft made and nobody wrote down: the scar that moved to the other hand in revision, the season the wedding slipped into, the cousin who became an uncle because the dialogue read better. The Self-Audit calls this “the bible has drifted from the books”, and it is the commonest way a careful series goes wrong.
What StoryHelm adds once the draft exists
- A canon per book, from the prose. StoryHelm reads each book and records its characters, places, factions, items and events; you confirm or correct any entry, and a book’s canon updates when a read runs. Every book’s canon is gathered in your Series Atlas.
- Checks inside each book. In a Full read (the Author, Series and Studio plans, and the free trial at public launch), the Coherence Guardian checks the book against its own canon and can flag contradictions in traits, timeline, places, knowledge and relationships, often quoting the line that raised it; the Timeline pass orders the book’s events and flags where its clock breaks; Foreshadowing finds setups and which are paid off. The Writer plan runs a Quick scan.
- A cross-book check you start. It compares, between books, the appearance and distinguishing marks each book records for characters with the same or a nearly identical name; how a character speaks, when they have 20 or more lines of dialogue in each book; and, between two fully read books, the same event given a different year, month or season, or a different length. Each finding names both books and shows what each one records, without quoting passages. It does not compare names, world rules, relationships, places or who knew what, and there is no master series timeline.
- The editor. You write every word of your book yourself, in StoryHelm’s built-in editor or in files you import. It never drafts your prose; Ship Dock drafts pitch material about the book and Translation Studio produces machine-translated editions, both disclosed below.
Side by side
| What you need | StoryHelm | Plottr |
|---|---|---|
| Plan a series before drafting | No Not a planner; it reads what you wrote | Yes Visual outlining, with a timeline view |
| A record built from your manuscript | Yes A canon per book, from each read | Manual A series bible you fill in |
| Checks continuity inside a book | Yes In a Full read | Not on its pages Plottr plans; it does not describe reading a manuscript |
| Compares the books | Partial Appearance, marks, voice and event dates, in a check you start | Not on its pages |
| AI | Analysis only Powered by Claude; never drafts your prose | None “No AI” on every plan, per plottr.com |
| Starting price | Writer plan from $14/mo billed annually ($19 monthly); Full reads from the Author plan at $35/mo billed annually; a 14-day free trial, no card, at public launch | $60/yr; Pro $9.99/mo or $99/yr; lifetime from $150 (plottr.com, October 13, 2026) |
The honest take: use both
If you plan in Plottr, keep planning there. When a draft is finished, import the manuscript into StoryHelm, let a read build that book’s canon, and run the checks against what you wrote rather than what you planned. The planning bible and the read canon will disagree in places; those places are the list you wanted.
Questions authors ask
You can paste notes into Story Elements, which suggests capitalized names from them for you to file in your Story Bible, one by one. Those records are yours to keep; they feed no continuity check. The canon the checks use comes from reading your manuscript.
Not a view you build on. In a Full read, each book’s events are put in story order and the pass flags where the clock breaks inside that book. There is no master series timeline; the Series Bible export lists events from the books you select together.
No. You write every word yourself, in StoryHelm’s built-in editor or in files you import, and StoryHelm reads it. Two disclosed features produce text that isn’t your manuscript: Ship Dock drafts pitch material about the book for you to review and edit, and Translation Studio produces machine-generated translated editions of a finished book.
Writer $14, Author $35, Series $59 and Studio $199 a month, billed annually; billed monthly, Writer $19, Author $44, Series $74; Studio is annual only ($2,388 a year). Full reads start on the Author plan. A 14-day free trial, with no card, comes at public launch.
StoryHelm is an AI manuscript-intelligence platform for indie series authors. It reads and analyzes an entire fiction series, catches continuity errors before readers do, and never writes or rewrites the author’s prose. You write every word of your book yourself, in StoryHelm’s built-in editor or in files you import. Two disclosed features produce text that isn’t your manuscript: Ship Dock drafts pitch material about the book (a query letter, synopsis, logline or back-cover blurb) for you to review and edit, and Translation Studio produces machine-generated translated editions of a finished book.
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ReadPlan the series however you like. Check the books you wrote.
Bring in one book or all six once the drafts exist. StoryHelm reads each one, builds its canon, and in a Full read flags where the book contradicts itself; a cross-book check you start compares what the books record. It never writes your prose.
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