How do I rewrite a chapter without losing the old version?

In Word

The plainest method is a copy. Select the chapter, paste it into a new file named for what it is (Ch 12 – before rewrite – 2026-09-23.docx), and then rewrite freely in the book. A single Cuts file that collects every retired version, newest at the top, works just as well and is easier to find later.

Track Changes is the other route. Turn it on with Review → Track Changes before you start, and the old wording survives as deletions until you accept them. That is handy for a line-level revision. For a chapter rewritten from the ground up it becomes a thicket of red, and on a long book it can make Word sluggish; see why Word freezes on a long manuscript.

In Google Docs and Scrivener

In Google Docs, mark the moment first. Open version history from Last edit at the top right, and on the newest version choose More → Name this version. Call it something like Chapter 12, original. Named versions are easy to find again, and you can copy from one later without restoring the whole document. If the book is split into tabs, duplicating the chapter's tab keeps both versions in view at once; Duplicate is in the tab's Tab options menu.

Scrivener is built for this. Select the chapter's documents in the Binder and choose Documents → Snapshots → Take Titled Snapshots of Selected Documents. Rewrite, then open the Snapshots pane in the Inspector to compare the new text with the old or roll back. If you want the two versions side by side as living documents, Documents → Duplicate makes a copy, and unticking Include in Compile on the one you are not using keeps it out of the finished book.

In Tabularia

Set the Working Scope to Current Chapter and create a draft in Drafts & Sharing. Name it for the attempt — told from Nell's side — and write. The rest of the book stays live and editable around it, and the original chapter is untouched underneath.

1. Compare in place. Switch the draft off and on to read the chapter each way, with the rest of the book around it.
2. Merge what won. Merging brings the draft back a difference at a time, so you can keep the new opening and the old ending, or all at once. A snapshot before a big merge costs one keystroke.
3. Or walk away. An unmerged draft costs the manuscript nothing, and a deleted one is filed under Archived rather than destroyed.

Two things catch people out. A draft copies the chapter at the moment you create it, so edits you later make to the original chapter do not flow into the draft. And if two overlapping drafts are showing at once, the canvas prints the shared passage twice, one after the other; those stacked copies take typing but refuse paragraph breaks and formatting until one is stood down.