Writing together in real time

Real-time editing lets you and a collaborator write in the same piece at the same time. You each see the other’s cursor and watch the words land as they type. Setting one up is a paid Pro feature: turning on a live room and inviting collaborators come with a paid Pro plan (not the trial). But joining is free. Anyone you invite can accept and write in the room with you, on any plan, so the writers you work with never need their own Pro plan to help.

This is the live end of working together. The other end is track changes, where a collaborator proposes edits and you accept or reject them one at a time. Real-time editing is for writing side by side; track changes is for reviewing a suggested edit. The roles below decide which one a given collaborator gets.

Turning it on

Open the piece, open the Collaboration pane from the More menu, and on its Changes tab invite a collaborator with the Editor role. Once they accept, a Real-time editing switch appears. Turn it on and the piece becomes a live room.

The switch only shows after you have an accepted editor, because there is no one to write with until then. Until you flip it, editing works exactly as it always has.

Joining a piece someone shared

When a writer invites you to a piece, it shows up on your Shared with me page at /shared. Accept the invitation there, then open the collaborative editor. You land in the live room and can start writing. Joining is free on any plan, so you only need an invitation, not a Pro plan of your own.

Who can do what

The role you give a collaborator decides how they edit:

• A commenter can leave inline comments, nothing more.
• An editor writes in the live room, but their changes arrive as suggestions. You review each one on the Changes tab of the Collaboration pane and accept or reject it, the same as track changes. This keeps an invited editor from changing your words directly.
• A co-author writes directly, with no suggestion layer, the way you do. Co-authors come from shared worlds (see below), not from per-piece invites.

So an editor you invite to a single piece suggests; a co-author on a shared world writes alongside you.

Editing a world’s pieces together

If you build a world with other writers, the pieces set in that world open for direct co-editing automatically. Everyone who collaborates on the world is a co-author on its pieces and can write in them live, no per-piece invite needed.

You will find these under Pieces in worlds you build on your /shared page, and from the Pieces list in the World Bible, where a piece you can co-edit shows an Edit together option. If you would rather a particular world piece not open for live editing, turn its Real-time editing switch off and it goes back to solo. See The World Bible.

What you see while editing

Up at the top of the editor, small avatars show who else is in the document right now. Each writer has their own color, and that color follows their cursor through the text, so you can tell at a glance who is writing where. A status pill reads Live when you are connected, and Reconnecting if the connection drops for a moment.

Chatting with your co-writers

Open the Collaboration pane from the More menu and switch to the Chat tab for a private back-channel about the work. It is a simple message thread for the people on the piece: the owner and anyone they have invited and who has accepted. Use it for the quick notes that do not belong in the writing itself, like “I moved the scene break, take a look” or “your turn on chapter three.”

It is separate from two things it might look like. It is not a comment, which pins to a passage of the text; chat is a free-floating conversation. And it is nothing public: forum threads and a piece’s public page are for readers, while this stays between collaborators and no one else can open it. Press Enter to send, Shift+Enter for a new line, and you can delete your own messages. Joining the chat is free, the same as joining the room: anyone invited can take part on any plan.

How it saves

There is no Save button to hit. Your changes sync to everyone in the room as you type, and Inkbreaker writes them back to the piece for you in the background. The published version of the piece is never touched while you draft; only the working copy moves. If two people type in the same spot at once, the editor merges both rather than picking a winner, so no one’s words get dropped.

If you own the piece, the live editor still gives you everything the solo toolbar holds: the Manage piece menu in the collaboration bar opens version history, settings, and delete, and the publish control sits right beside it. Readers only see your updates when you publish, even though the room saves continuously. Collaborators do not see these controls; only the owner publishes and manages the piece.

If the live connection ever fails, the editor tells you plainly and your changes stop syncing until you reload. Reloading rejoins the room and catches you back up.

What you need

Owning a live room is a paid Pro feature: turning it on and inviting collaborators need paid Pro, not the trial. Joining is free, though. Anyone you invite can accept and write in the room and take part in the co-writer chat on any plan, so the writers you work with never need their own Pro plan to help. If you would rather not subscribe yet, you can still collaborate at your own pace with track changes, which your trial includes: an editor proposes edits and the owner accepts or rejects them, no live session required. See Free vs. Pro.