Managing Your Stories and Chapters

Managing your stories and chapters

Your Library brings together saved reading items and your authoring work. Use it to find drafts, follow review feedback, manage polls, recover deleted work, and return to stories where you hold a role.

Open your authoring lists

Open your profile menu and choose a Library page, or move between the tabs at the top of any Library page:

Favorite stories and Bookmarks are reader lists. A favorite saves a whole story, while a bookmark saves one chapter. They do not grant authoring access.

Find a story you work on

My stories includes every story where you have an Owner, Editor, Assistant Editor, Reviewer, or Author role. Use its filters to narrow by role or by publication status:

• Published is available to readers.
• Under review has been submitted and is waiting for approval.
• Not published is still a draft.

Use Map to open the Story Map. Use the story actions to Edit story when you are the Owner. A collaborator who no longer wants their role can choose Leave story; this removes the role but leaves their existing chapters in place.

Find a chapter you wrote

My chapters contains your chapters across all stories. Filter by Published, Under review, or Not published, or sort by update date, creation date, title, likes, or views.

This page follows chapter authorship rather than story-wide editing access. An Editor may be able to edit someone else's chapter without that chapter becoming part of the Editor's personal My chapters list.

Open a chapter to view its publication notice and available actions. Draft and returned chapters provide a route back to the editor.

Save a real draft

Select Save as Draft on a chapter form when the work is not ready for readers or review. The draft is saved to your account, appears under My chapters, and can be opened from another device after you log in.

A new story is always saved as a draft first. It appears under My stories after you finish its first chapter and select Save Story. Additional chapters created while that story remains a draft are published with the story after the complete story is approved.

Use drafts for unfinished prose. Publishing a chapter named “Placeholder,” “Draft,” or “In progress” is unnecessary because a parent chapter may have any number of branches.

Understand the local recovery copy

The new-story, new-chapter, and edit-chapter forms keep a recovery copy while you type. If the page closes or you navigate away unexpectedly, returning to the same form in the same browser may show Local draft restored and the time it was saved.

The recovery copy:

• covers prose and supported form settings, but cannot restore an uploaded cover and may not recreate newly added poll rows;
• belongs to the current browser and signed-in account;
• stays with the same form address;
• is kept for up to 14 days;
• is not synchronized to another device;
• does not appear in My stories or My chapters;
• is ignored when the saved chapter has since been changed elsewhere.

Select Discard draft in the notice to remove the recovery copy and reload the saved form. Do not rely on local recovery for planned work: select Save Story or Save as Draft regularly.

Follow an item under review

After Submit for approval or Submit Chapter for Approval, the item is marked Under review. You can still open and edit your work while it waits.

If the item is approved, it becomes published. If it is returned, CHYOA marks it Needs Revision and preserves the feedback.

Open Needs revision to see returned stories and chapters together. Read the displayed feedback, edit the item, and review the finished result before submitting again:

• a returned story has Submit for approval on its story page;
• a returned chapter has Submit Chapter for Approval in its editor.

Saving changes alone does not resubmit the item. Use the submission action when the revision is ready.

Review chapters in a story you help manage

Review chapters lists contributions waiting for your approval when you are an Owner, Editor, or Reviewer with review access. If nothing currently needs a decision, the page shows an empty state. Open each listed chapter in context before approving or declining it.

• Approve publishes the contribution.
• Decline returns it to the author with the feedback you enter.

Assistant Editor and Author roles do not include review access. See Story Modes, Roles, and Review for the full permission table.

Manage your polls

My polls lists the polls you created. Use it to separate active and closed polls, see closing information, and return to the chapter containing a poll.

A poll can also be managed by editing its chapter. Once it has votes, its options, option order, voting type, and maximum selections are locked, and it cannot be removed. You may still close it or update settings that do not rewrite existing votes.

See Polls and Interactive Blocks for poll creation and result choices.

Recover deleted work

Deleted stories and chapters remain under Recently deleted for 30 days. Each item shows its deletion date and remaining recovery time.

• Select Recover on a chapter to return that chapter.
• Select Recover on a story to return the story and its associated deleted chapters.

Recovery is available only during the displayed period. After it expires, the item is permanently deleted.

A chapter must have no follow-up chapters before it can be deleted. This prevents deleting a branch while leaving its descendants without a path. Move or delete the following branches first.

A practical writing routine

For longer work:

1. open the item from My stories or My chapters;
2. use Save as Draft at meaningful checkpoints;
3. view the saved chapter as a reader;
4. use the Story Map to check branch placement;
5. test polls, links, variables, and game state;
6. submit or publish only when the chapter is ready;
7. watch Needs revision for any returned work.

Related Guide chapters

• Create and Publish a Story
• Write and Publish Chapters