Today, we’ve released our largest new feature update since Laterpress launched: a suite of brainstorming, plotting, writing, and editing tools designed to help simplify the book creation process. Fill them in with your own notes and they can serve as mile markers while writing, or you can take advantage of our new Laterpress AI offering to quickly move from an idea to a finished draft. This update also introduces a few quality-of-life features and several bug fixes. Read on to learn more about what’s new, and get answers in our FAQs. Our release notes on bug fixes and quality of life improvements can be found HERE.

Our new story tools are designed to walk users through the process of creating a story, from the initial concept to a completed draft. These tools are optional and can be enabled or disabled at any time within the text editor.

1) Story Tools for Brainstorming and World Building

Found in the new Storybook, the Idea section is a great place to put your notes about the high-level overview of your story. Need help fleshing out an idea? Tell the AI what you know about your concept and it can give you a working plotline, which you can then modify and edit until you’re satisfied.

For example, here is a story concept:

And here’s the start of the prospective plotline:

Use the Character tab to help create characters, or place your own notes.

Use the Lore tab to leave yourself notes on locations, organizations, historical details, alien / fantasy species, and more. AI can help generate ideas here if you’re stuck.

2) Story Tools for Plotting and Outlining

At launch, our text editor supports the Three Act story structure. We will be adding more story formats over time, as well as allowing for authors to create their own story structures. Fill out these story beats so they can serve as mile markers for you while writing your book, or use AI to help fill in gaps in your plot.

Use Scene Cards to outline key moments in each chapter. The Action and Reflection scene types are built with beginners in mind, offering a structured breakdown of the flow of the scene. Fill these out on your own, or have the AI pull from what you’ve filled out so far to suggest what happens next in the story.  These screenshots show raw AI output. Modify these or take them as a starting point and insert additional details as you desire.

Get even more specific with events, which break down scenes into smaller component parts. Events can serve as stepping stones or checkpoints to keep you on track while writing a scene.

Want less structure? Use the General scene card type and turn off event generation. The General scene card can be home to your own chapter summary, or use AI for scene suggestions.

If you want to take things a different direction, modify the selected scene with feedback.

Here is the revised result:

You can use the idea as-is, or edit this further to focus on the most critical elements of the scene.

3) Story Tools for Writing

With your Beats, Scenes, and Events filled out, Laterpress AI can then help you generate the rough draft of a scene, giving you raw clay to refine and expand upon. These are tools — human insight and editorial direction are needed to make your story shine.

4) Story Tools for Editing

Use editing tools to help with word choice, rephrasing sentences, and more.

Use the plot hole checker to identify logic errors and inconsistencies in a chapter. If you’re using the story tools for drafting assistance, this can help point your attention to the things you’ll need to address first:

When you’ve got the logic errors resolved, the developmental editor tool can help point out higher-level stylistic issues to consider addressing:

5) Build Your Own Story Tools

Don’t like our default story tools? Make your own! Use the custom story tools feature to design your own drafting and editing prompts, which you can then run from the text editor:

Name your tool, choose the model to run it, and write your own prompts. You can even import story text, character cards, or lore details to add more context.

LATERPRESS AI FAQ

Why develop AI writing tools?

We wrote a separate article on this topic, which you can find HERE.

How do I get access to Laterpress AI?

We are treating this initial launch of Laterpress AI as a beta. Laterpress AI was more than a year in the making, and we know that with any release of this size, bugs are inevitable — despite our best efforts to squash them pre-release.

Users who wish to test out these features during the initial closed beta period can email us at beta@laterpress.com to request access, and we will add them to the waitlist for the beta. Users will then be admitted on a rolling basis and provided with credits to try out the beta features for free.

With our closed beta, we’re not trying to be exclusive or to create a false sense of scarcity; we simply want to start small, collect user feedback, and expand access in a responsible way in order to provide the best experience.

After incorporating feedback from the closed beta, we will open the beta so that any interested users can sign up to try out Laterpress AI directly within their account. When the beta is opened in this way, we will announce it publicly and update this FAQ.

What does Laterpress AI cost?

The Storybook, Beat Cards, Scene Cards, and Event Cards can all be used in the editor to enter your own notes at no cost. You only pay when using Laterpress AI, meaning story tools that use AI models to generate ideas or text.

Laterpress AI charges a small 10% fee on top of whatever the third party AI provider (currently, OpenAI and Anthropic) we are leveraging is charging. The amount the AI provider charges varies, depending on the skill used, the Large Language Model (LLM) processing the request, and the amount of context needed to complete the task. The more context added into a prompt, the more running the skill will cost.

Unlike most AI tools out in the market, we don’t require a subscription. You simply load funds into your Laterpress AI balance and pay for what you use. No expiring credits or recurring fees. See exactly how much you’re spending at any time in the Laterpress AI tab. Our system is designed to be transparent and affordable.

Is Laterpress using or licensing my content to train Large Language Models, such as OpenAI’s GPT models or Anthropic’s Claude?

No. Laterpress does not use your content to train AI models nor do we license it to any third party to train on. Further, while we have no plans to do so at this time, if we ever created a program to train a model, we would make such a program opt in only. For example, we would present a modal to you that asked “Would you like to share your content to help us improve our AI models?” and you could select “Yes” or “No”.

If I use Laterpress AI to help generate ideas or text for my story, am I helping train the AI?

No. The user inputs Laterpress sends to third party providers are not used by those providers to train their AI models.

Can I use my own custom AI model?

Not at this time. We may expand our integrations with more language models over time. Focusing on OpenAI’s GPT models and Anthropic’s Claude helps us ensure the tools we create work as well as possible for as many people as possible. Adding additional models increases complexity for us with tool design, and creates a higher learning curve for new users.

If I use Laterpress AI to help write a story, can I publish it somewhere else?

Yes! Individual chapters can be exported as Word documents or epubs to be uploaded into other programs for further editing or book formatting. It’s also possible to export an entire book at once. If you decide to publish stories produced with the assistance of Laterpress AI tools on other platforms, please respect those platform’s policies regarding AI generated content and disclosure.

Will books published on Laterpress created with the assistance of AI tools be labelled or branded in any way to show AI was used?

Books created with the use of these tools will not be branded on our platform. We want each author to be able to make their own decisions about how they craft their books, and how they articulate that process to their readership.

Can I use Laterpress AI to write NSFW content?

We allow spicy romance and erotica to be published on our platform, but our AI tools will not generate certain kinds of erotic or sexual content. We recommend all users review the applicable terms and policies of OpenAI and Anthropic to understand what kind of usage is permitted.

I don’t want to use AI or plotting tools. Can I hide these features?

Absolutely! Beats, scenes, and events can all be created and filled out without interacting with AI. If you don’t want to use the new features or the story tools at all, they can be disabled at any time within the editor.

What does this mean for the future of Laterpress development?

Laterpress aims to support authors at every stage of their storytelling journey — from idea to publication.

With that goal in mind, we’ll be focusing our development resources in two key areas: AI writing tools and indie publishing tools.

In other words, authors wishing to use Laterpress for direct sales without interacting with AI in any way will continue to see new features they can benefit from.

What’s next?

If you think this was a big launch, just wait. We have so much more planned for this year… and beyond!