Every novelist can be their own story engineer.

I'm Chad Boucher. I'm a lifelong reader, writing my first novel: a fantasy about the last elf, searching for the family her late parents wanted for her. For more than 30 years I built enterprise software. Today Narrastat is my full-time, self-funded job.

Why I built Narrastat

My daughter is in an MFA program to become an editor, and I wanted to help her the way I know how: with engineering.

I have also carried a story in my head for many years without ever having studied the craft of telling one. That is why I am actively looking for authors to help define what Narrastat needs to be to support indie authors.

So I built Narrastat for the two of us, to study how stories are made. It takes a novel apart into things you can see and measure, so we can look at how the books we admire are built and then look at our own work the same way.

What it does

Narrastat is a platform that charts what your novel is doing, scene by scene: pacing, stakes, character presence and structure. Set those charts beside a masterwork, or beside your own last draft, and see what is different.

What it will never do

• It never writes, rewrites or suggests a line.
• Your story is never used to train generative AI models.
• A masterwork is a reference to measure against, never a template to copy.

Who makes it

I build Narrastat on my own, from my basement in New Hampshire.