Free web novel / fanfic release planner. Enter completed chapters, writing speed, and target update frequency; get the exact day your buffer runs dry and a sustainability rating.
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software
Use at the start of each writing month to sanity-check your buffer. Especially valuable on Royal Road or Wattpad where algorithm consistency matters.
Excel-based release schedulers do this with formulas; this is the same math in 30 seconds without setup.
Net backlog change per week = chapters-written − chapters-published. Positive grows your buffer; negative burns it.
Dry date is the day you run out of buffered chapters at your current rate.
Most successful serial authors keep 6–12 weeks of backlog — enough to absorb life events without missing an update.
Most serial authors keep 6–12 weeks of backlog. Less than 4 weeks risks missing an update during life events.
Not directly. Reduce your weekly writing rate manually to simulate vacation weeks.
The buffer is your stockpile of finished but unpublished chapters. It absorbs weeks when you write slower than you publish, and it runs dry when your release rate outpaces your writing speed.
Your buffer shrinks every week until it hits zero, after which you are writing each chapter just before it is due. The planner pinpoints that depletion date so you can slow releases or build backlog before missing an update.
Input
20 chapters backlog, write 5/wk, publish 3/wk.
Output
Net +2 chapters/week — safe.
You're building backlog at 2 chapters/week. As long as your writing rate stays above your release rate, the buffer grows.
Serial fiction lives or dies on consistency, and consistency comes from a buffer of finished chapters rather than from discipline. The tool defaults to a 20-chapter backlog at 2,000 words per chapter, released three times a week while writing five.
The arithmetic matters more than it looks: writing five chapters a week and releasing three adds two chapters of buffer a week, so the backlog grows. Release at the rate you write and it never does, which means the first illness or busy fortnight breaks the schedule. A gap is the single most damaging thing that can happen to a serial's readership.
Platform algorithms reward frequency, which pushes writers toward release rates they cannot sustain. The tool will show you how long a backlog survives at a given pair of rates, and that projection is the useful output — a schedule that burns the buffer is a schedule with a deadline on it.
The rate that beats a fast one is a slower rate held indefinitely. Readers forgive three chapters a week forever; they do not forgive five a week that stops.
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