Working with the chat
Phantom Memory is the chat, the room where you talk about your book. It will read your book, notes and worldbuilding to help you work on your next draft.
Your conversations are listed down the left. Every new one opens on a few suggested questions. They’re a good way to see what it can do, but you can ask it anything.
What you can ask
Roughly, four kinds of question, and you can mix them in one conversation.
- About the whole book. Where does the pacing sag? Which characters disappear for too long? List the threads I open and never close. Does the ending pay off what chapter one promised?
- About one chapter or one scene. What is this chapter doing that the one before it didn’t? Is the argument in chapter 9 earned? Whose point of view slips in the dinner scene?
- About the plan. What do you think of my outline? Which beats are still empty, and which matter most? Where does my plan go “and then” instead of “therefore”?
- About the facts of your world. What colour are Mara’s eyes, and where did I say so? When did Tom first meet the Duchess? It searches the manuscript by exact words or by meaning, and checks the world bible.
It can also handle tasks when you ask, like save a note, add or update a card in your world bible, change a passage, or start a line edit. If it notices something missing, it offers, and then waits for your answer.
If you want to know how Ghostkey works, ask it that too, for example where do I put my magic system? or how do drafts work? It knows the app.
The view beside the chat
On desktop and on the web, the chat can open part of your book beside the conversation: a chapter, your outline, a board of cards, or the Chapters page. Ask for it (let’s work on chapter 3, show me the board) and it slides open next to the chat. Drag its edge to make it wider or narrower, and close it with ✕.
It isn’t a copy. It’s the real chapter, outline or board. You can type in it and it saves as you go, exactly as it does in Apparition. While the chat is answering, the view is briefly locked so you can’t both write to it at once. It unlocks as soon as the answer is done.
This is where the three kinds of editing happen.
Chapter feedback
Open a chapter beside the chat and talk about it. It reads the chapter you both have in front of you, so you can say this scene or the second paragraph and it knows what you mean. Ask what’s working, what isn’t, what a reader will expect next, whether a character sounds like themselves.
When you want a specific passage changed (cut the weather from the opening, make her answer shorter and colder), say so. The chat replaces that one passage in the chapter and tells you what it changed. It changes passages, never whole scenes, and it doesn’t draft over prose you’ve already written.
This depends on the Manuscript setting under Settings in the message box:
- Write in the manuscript (the default) lets it change a passage when you ask.
- Read only means it reads and advises, and never touches the text. A padlock on the Settings button reminds you it’s on.
Pick read only when you want a reader, not a pen.
Changed your mind about an edit? See Going back to an earlier version. Before a long session, it’s worth tagging a project version.
Line edits
A line edit is a close pass over the prose itself. It catches word choice, filtering, repetition, sentences that run too long or don’t parse, small continuity slips inside the chapter, and everything a proofread catches.
The notes come back under the chapter open beside the chat. Each one quotes a passage, says what the problem is, and usually offers other wording. Apply takes the suggestion, Dismiss leaves your words as they were. Nothing in the chapter changes until you apply a note. The line edit respects your point of view, and it leaves deliberate voice alone. If you apply one and regret it, Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) undoes it.
How to start one is further down.
Structural edits
Structure is about the order and shape of chapters, not sentences. Ask for it the way you’d put it to an editor: merge the two funeral chapters, the middle needs a reversal, where would it go?, move the reveal earlier.
It answers on the Chapters page beside the conversation. Over a book that already has chapters, it proposes changes, not a new book. Each change sits under the chapter it touches, marked as removed, rewritten or new. You can skip a change or keep it, and retitle or renote any new chapter in place. Nothing reaches the manuscript until you commit the proposal, and committing makes a new draft, so your current one stays as it was. To go back to it, switch drafts (see Drafts).
For the plan itself (the outline, the cards, planning a book from scratch), see Interactive plotting.
Pointing it at a chapter or a note
Chapters. Name one in your message, either by number (chapter 12) or by title (the chapter called “Low Tide”). The chat reads it before it answers. You don’t need to ask it to. To be exact, click Chapters under the message box, find the chapter by name or number, and attach it. It rides along with that message.
Notes. Name the note in your message: read my note “Magic rules”, check chapter 4 against the “Timeline” note. The exact name is best, but a distinctive word from it works too. If two notes match, it will ask you which one you meant.
Files from outside the book. Upload attaches a .docx, a .pdf or a text file, like a beta reader’s comments, an editor’s letter or research. The chat reads it alongside the manuscript.
The open view. Whatever is open beside the chat is already in the conversation, so you don’t need to name it again.
How to ask for a good answer
The chat is at its best with the context you’d give a human editor. Four things help most.
- Say what you want. What do you think of chapter 5? gets general notes. Chapter 5 is meant to be the turn where she stops trusting him. Does it land? gets an answer about the thing you care about.
- Name the text. A chapter, a scene, a character, a note. The book is fine for questions about the whole book, but narrower is sharper.
- Say what to leave alone. The dialogue is where I want it, look at the description. Don’t worry about the prologue, it’s getting cut. It will take you at your word.
- Say what you want back. A list, a verdict, three options, one question to think about. Give me the three weakest scene transitions, worst first.
A before and after:
Loose: Is my middle okay?
Better: Chapters 10 to 16 are the middle. I’m worried nothing changes for Ines between the ball and the fire. Read them and tell me where she makes a real choice, and where she’s just carried along.
It’s a conversation, so keep going. If an answer is close but not right, say what’s off: shorter, less about the romance, you missed that she already knows. That usually works better than starting again.
Standing instructions don’t need repeating in every message. The chat keeps a long-term memory of what it has learned about you and your book from your saved conversations. Open Memory at the top of the chat to read it, and edit it to add things like this is a cozy mystery, don’t push it darker. Then you only have to say it once.
Trigger a line edit
There are three ways to start one. They all start the same line edit, and the notes show up wherever that chapter is open.
- From the chat. Ask for it: line edit chapter 3, proofread the opening chapter, give me notes on the prose in “Low Tide”. The chat opens the chapter beside the chat, starts the pass, and tells you it’s running. You can keep talking while it works. Anything you settled in the conversation, like watch the tense, leave her dialect alone, goes into the brief it writes for the pass.
- From the view beside the chat. A chapter or the outline open beside the chat has a Line edit button in its header. It opens a short dialog where you say what to watch for and what to leave alone.
- From Apparition, in the chapter panel on the right, and from Wisp, whose Line editing page lists your chapters with a line edit button on each.
You can line edit your outline the same way: tighten my outline, or the button over the outline when it’s open beside the chat.
The same dialog holds the Style sheet. It’s your standing instruction for every line edit (spellings, house rules, what’s intentional), and it learns your book’s habits as it goes. See Line edits and your style sheet for how to keep your own rules from being rewritten.
A padlock on the Line edit button means your plan doesn’t include it yet.
The short version: ask the chat what you’d ask a person who has read the book, name what you mean, and open the text beside you when you want to work on it together.