Find and Replace – Sudowrite

Find and Replace lets you search for and replace text across your entire project—whether you need to rename a character, or change how a setting is titled across dozens of chapters and Story Bible entries.

How to Open Find and Replace

There are two ways to open Find and Replace:

Magnifying glass icon — Click the 🔍 icon at the top left of the editor.

Keyboard shortcut — Press Cmd + F (Mac) or Ctrl + F (Windows/Linux). If that shortcut triggers your browser's built-in search, press it a second time to access Sudowrite's Find and Replace instead.

Choosing a Scope

Find and Replace includes a scope dropdown that lets you control where your search runs. There are three scopes:

Project-Wide

Searches across every document and your entire Story Bible in the current project. This is the most powerful scope — ideal for renaming a character or setting that appears throughout your manuscript. The tool shows how many matches were found across all documents, with a clear breakdown of where each reference appears.

Story Bible Only

Searches exclusively within your Story Bible — including Characters, Worldbuilding, Synopsis, Outline, Style, and Genre fields. Use this when you need to update Story Bible entries without touching your chapter prose.

Current Document

Searches only within the document you currently have open in the editor. Best for quick, targeted edits within a single chapter or section.

Using Find and Replace

Open Find and Replace using the magnifying glass icon or keyboard shortcut.

Type your search term in the Find field. Matches will be highlighted in your text, and you'll see a count of how many were found.

By default you’ll be presented Project-Wide search results, but you can use the scope dropdown to target your Story Bible or Current Document exclusively.

To replace matches, type your replacement text in the Replace field.

Click Replace to replace the currently highlighted match, or Replace All to replace every match within your selected scope at once.

Tips

Renaming characters: Use the Project-Wide scope with Replace All to rename a character across your entire manuscript and Story Bible in one step.

Be specific: If your search term is short or common (like a character named "Al"), review matches before using Replace All to avoid unintended replacements.

Large projects: Project-wide searches across very large projects with many documents or extensive Story Bibles may take a moment to complete. The tool will still work — it just needs a bit more time to scan everything.