100 Best Apps for Novelists
Novel writing involves more than drafting chapters. These first 25 picks cover focused writing, manuscript organization, story planning, and editing support.
Scrivener
Scrivener organizes long-form manuscripts into sections, research folders, corkboards, and customizable compile formats. It helps novelists manage sprawling drafts without constantly navigating one unwieldy document.
Atticus
Atticus provides browser-based manuscript writing, formatting, and export tools for print and ebook files. It reduces the friction of preparing a polished manuscript for multiple publishing formats.
Ulysses
Ulysses is a distraction-light writing app that organizes sheets, groups, goals, and publishing exports. It helps Mac and Apple-device writers maintain focus while keeping chapters neatly structured.
LivingWriter
LivingWriter is an online writing platform with chapter organization, story elements, and planning templates. It helps writers connect characters, locations, and scenes without maintaining separate reference documents.
Novlr
Novlr is a web-based writing workspace offering project organization, writing goals, and manuscript exports. It gives writers a simple place to draft from different computers without file-transfer hassles.
Dabble
Dabble combines cloud-based manuscript drafting with plotting tools, notes, goals, and character sheets. It helps authors keep story planning close to the draft instead of scattered across applications.
Google Docs
Google Docs provides cloud documents, commenting, suggestions, version history, and real-time collaboration. It makes sharing chapters with editors, critique partners, and coauthors straightforward and trackable.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a document editor with styles, comments, revision tracking, and extensive formatting controls. It helps writers exchange manuscripts using a widely recognized format for professional editorial review.
LibreOffice Writer
LibreOffice Writer is a free desktop word processor supporting long documents, styles, comments, and exports. It offers budget-conscious novelists robust manuscript editing without requiring proprietary office software.
Apple Pages
Apple Pages is a document editor for Apple devices with templates, collaboration, and document export. It gives Apple users an accessible drafting tool for clean manuscripts and basic collaborative feedback.
Notion
Notion lets writers build connected pages, databases, outlines, checklists, and shared project workspaces. It helps organize research, character records, and production tasks in one flexible knowledge hub.
Obsidian
Obsidian creates linked local notes using Markdown, graphs, folders, and community-developed plugins. It helps worldbuilders discover connections between lore notes without losing ownership of local files.
Evernote
Evernote captures notes, web clips, documents, images, and searchable notebooks across supported devices. It helps writers preserve research discoveries before useful details disappear into browser tabs.
Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft OneNote provides digital notebooks with sections, pages, drawing, clipping, and searchable notes. It helps writers separate research categories while retaining a familiar notebook-like workspace.
Plottr
Plottr visualizes stories through timelines, scene cards, character information, and plotline views. It helps novelists spot pacing gaps and conflicting events across complex multi-threaded narratives.
Aeon Timeline
Aeon Timeline maps events, people, places, and dependencies across customizable chronological timelines. It helps historical and fantasy writers prevent chronology errors involving ages, travel, and overlapping events.
Campfire
Campfire offers modular tools for planning fictional worlds, characters, timelines, maps, and manuscript material. It helps expansive fiction projects centralize worldbuilding details that otherwise become inconsistent.
World Anvil
World Anvil is a worldbuilding platform for creating linked articles, maps, timelines, and character records. It helps authors document deep fictional settings with relationships between people, places, and history.
Milanote
Milanote provides visual boards for arranging notes, images, links, checklists, and project materials. It helps visually oriented writers assemble mood, plot, and research references into coherent boards.
Miro
Miro is an online whiteboard for mapping ideas, diagrams, sticky notes, and collaborative workshops. It helps writing partners brainstorm story structures together when linear outlines feel restrictive.
ProWritingAid
ProWritingAid analyzes prose for grammar, style, readability, repetition, and other writing patterns. It helps novelists identify recurring line-level habits during self-editing before outside feedback.
Grammarly
Grammarly reviews text for grammar, spelling, punctuation, clarity, and tone-related writing suggestions. It helps writers catch common mechanical errors while drafting emails, pitches, and manuscript passages.
Hemingway Editor
Hemingway Editor highlights dense sentences, passive voice, adverbs, and readability concerns in prose. It helps writers notice overcomplicated phrasing when revising scenes for greater immediacy and clarity.
AutoCrit
AutoCrit provides fiction-focused manuscript analysis for pacing, dialogue, repetition, and word usage. It helps genre novelists conduct structured self-edits across a full manuscript before submission.
LanguageTool
LanguageTool checks spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style across numerous languages and writing environments. It helps multilingual writers review drafts where language-specific grammar tools are especially useful.
Reedsy Book Editor
Reedsy Book Editor is a web-based writing and typesetting tool that exports book files. It reduces formatting friction for authors preparing manuscripts for ebook and print publication.
yWriter
yWriter organizes novels into chapters and scenes while tracking characters, locations, and items. It helps writers maintain continuity when story details become difficult to find across drafts.
bibisco
bibisco is a novel-writing application that organizes chapters, characters, locations, and narrative structure. It helps writers track story details when scattered notes make continuity difficult.
Manuskript
Manuskript is an open-source writing tool with outlining, character sheets, and manuscript organization. It gives planners one workspace for developing a long manuscript's structure and references.
Quoll Writer
Quoll Writer is a desktop writing environment for organizing projects, notes, research, and scenes. It helps authors avoid switching between separate files while managing a complex novel.
Wavemaker
Wavemaker is a browser-based writing suite with planning cards, timelines, and manuscript sections. It helps visual planners connect plot ideas without losing access to their draft.
Storyist
Storyist combines a word processor with project outlining tools for novels and screenplays. It helps writers keep manuscript pages and planning materials together in one project.
WriteMapper
WriteMapper creates mind maps that writers can turn into structured text documents. It helps writers move from non-linear ideas toward an organized outline or draft.
FocusWriter
FocusWriter is a distraction-free word processor with customizable themes, timers, and daily goals. It helps writers sustain focused sessions when notifications and interface clutter interrupt concentration.
iA Writer
iA Writer is a minimalist writing app centered on plain text and Markdown documents. It helps writers concentrate on sentences instead of formatting controls during early drafting.
Bear
Bear is a note-taking app that organizes Markdown notes through tags and nested tag structures. It helps writers retrieve research snippets and ideas that would otherwise remain scattered.
Zoho Writer
Zoho Writer is a cloud word processor for creating, editing, and collaboratively reviewing documents. It helps coauthors and editors work on shared manuscript files without exchanging versions.
Dropbox Paper
Dropbox Paper is a collaborative document workspace for writing, comments, tasks, and embedded media. It helps small creative teams centralize feedback and planning around a developing book.
Craft
Craft is a document and note-taking app that organizes content into linked blocks and pages. It helps writers build accessible research collections without relying on long, unstructured notes.
Vellum
Vellum formats book manuscripts into professionally styled ebook files and print interiors. It helps self-publishing authors produce consistent book layouts without manually styling every chapter.
Kindle Create
Kindle Create formats manuscripts for Kindle ebooks and paperback publishing through Amazon. It helps authors prepare publishing files when converting a word-processing manuscript feels complicated.
Calibre
Calibre manages ebook libraries and converts files between common ebook formats. It helps authors inspect and convert digital book files before distributing them to readers.
Sigil
Sigil is an open-source editor for creating and editing EPUB ebook files. It helps technically inclined authors correct ebook formatting issues directly within EPUB structure.
Fictionary
Fictionary is an editing platform that analyzes fiction manuscripts and supports story-level revision. It helps novelists identify structural weaknesses when revising a complete but unwieldy draft.
Sudowrite
Sudowrite provides AI-assisted brainstorming and prose suggestions designed for fiction writing. It helps writers generate possibilities when they are stuck on descriptions, scenes, or plot directions.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a conversational AI tool that can assist with brainstorming, outlining, and revision prompts. It helps writers explore alternatives quickly when they need a responsive sounding board.
Claude
Claude is a conversational AI assistant that can discuss drafts, research questions, and story ideas. It helps writers examine narrative choices when they need feedback before sharing work externally.
Ginkgo Writer
Ginkgo Writer is a tree-structured writing tool that organizes text into branching cards. It helps writers develop arguments or scenes incrementally without losing their larger structure.
WriteFreely
WriteFreely is a publishing platform for creating minimalist blogs and serialized writing online. It helps authors share chapters or essays publicly without a feature-heavy publishing interface.
Cold Turkey Writer
Cold Turkey Writer is a full-screen writing application designed to limit computer distractions. It helps writers protect dedicated drafting time when other applications repeatedly break their focus.
Scapple
Scapple lets writers arrange connected notes on a freeform canvas for exploring ideas. It reduces the friction of organizing scattered character, setting, and plot notes visually.
MindNode
MindNode creates visual mind maps that expand branches into structured outlines and notes. It helps novelists turn an initial premise into organized story threads without linear drafting pressure.
XMind
XMind builds mind maps, concept maps, and outlines from linked ideas and branches. It gives writers a flexible way to spot relationships between subplots, themes, and characters.
Workflowy
Workflowy provides infinitely nested lists for outlining scenes, chapters, research, and revision tasks. It solves unwieldy outline documents by letting writers collapse and expand story details quickly.
Dynalist
Dynalist organizes notes and tasks in hierarchical, expandable lists with search and tagging. It helps authors manage complex chapter plans without losing smaller notes inside long documents.
Todoist
Todoist manages tasks, deadlines, recurring reminders, and project lists across devices. It helps writers maintain consistent drafting and revision habits amid competing personal responsibilities.
Trello
Trello organizes cards on customizable boards for planning workflows, scenes, and production stages. It makes manuscript progress visible when a novel has many chapters awaiting different revisions.
Asana
Asana manages projects through tasks, due dates, dependencies, and shared project views. It helps small author teams coordinate editing, cover production, and launch responsibilities clearly.
Freedom
Freedom blocks selected websites and apps across devices during scheduled focus sessions. It addresses online distraction by limiting tempting interruptions while writers work on manuscripts.
Forest
Forest uses timed focus sessions represented by virtual trees that grow while users stay focused. It gives writers a simple visual incentive to avoid checking phones during drafting sprints.
Toggl Track
Toggl Track records time spent on projects, tasks, and clients through timers and reports. It helps freelancers understand how much time drafting, editing, and administration actually require.
RescueTime
RescueTime tracks digital activity and summarizes how time is spent on devices. It reveals unproductive screen habits that may be quietly reducing available writing time.
Zotero
Zotero collects, organizes, cites, and stores research sources, notes, and attached files. It prevents research materials from becoming disconnected from their source details and citations.
Mendeley
Mendeley organizes PDF documents, annotations, references, and bibliographic information for research projects. It helps research-heavy novelists keep historical or scientific source materials searchable and orderly.
Pocket
Pocket saves articles and web pages for later reading across supported devices. It prevents useful research links from disappearing into browser tabs or social media feeds.
Instapaper
Instapaper saves web articles for distraction-reduced reading and offline access. It helps writers review research without navigating cluttered webpages or unreliable internet connections.
Readwise Reader
Readwise Reader collects articles, PDFs, newsletters, and highlights in one reading workspace. It centralizes scattered reading material so useful passages are easier to revisit during research.
OneLook
OneLook searches multiple dictionaries and reference sources for definitions, translations, and related words. It speeds up vocabulary research when writers need nuanced meanings beyond a single dictionary.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Merriam-Webster Dictionary supplies definitions, usage examples, audio pronunciations, and word-of-the-day material for reference. It helps writers verify word meanings and usage before committing language to a manuscript.
Dictionary.com
Dictionary.com provides definitions, synonyms, pronunciations, and example usage through searchable dictionary entries. It resolves word-choice uncertainty when a draft needs precise meanings or alternatives.
RhymeZone
RhymeZone finds rhymes, near rhymes, synonyms, definitions, and related words for queries. It helps writers refine poetry, lyrics, names, and stylized prose without repetitive phrasing.
WordHippo
WordHippo searches for synonyms, antonyms, rhymes, translations, definitions, and word forms. It helps authors find a fitting word when a sentence feels vague or repetitive.
Google Drive
Google Drive stores files in the cloud and synchronizes them across devices. It protects manuscripts from device loss and keeps current files available while traveling.
Dropbox
Dropbox synchronizes folders across devices and supports securely sharing files with collaborators. It eases version handoffs when editors or beta readers need manuscript files.
Otter.ai
Otter.ai automatically transcribes recorded conversations and spoken notes into searchable text with timestamps. It helps writers capture interview material and spontaneous ideas without manually typing everything.
Descript
Descript transcribes recordings and lets users edit audio or video by editing text. It helps novelists turn spoken brainstorming into usable notes without repeatedly replaying recordings.
Dragon Professional
Dragon Professional uses speech recognition to convert dictated words into text within compatible desktop applications. It addresses hand fatigue and slow typing by enabling authors to draft aloud.
Rev
Rev provides transcription and captioning services for uploaded audio and video recordings. It reduces time spent converting interviews or dictated scenes into referenceable text.
MacWhisper
MacWhisper transcribes audio files on macOS, turning recordings into editable and searchable written text. It helps writers mine voice memos for dialogue ideas, research details, and scene revisions.
Google Keep
Google Keep captures short notes, checklists, images, and voice memos across synced devices. It solves fleeting-idea loss by making quick scene reminders easy to save anywhere.
Simplenote
Simplenote provides fast plain-text note taking with synchronization, tags, and version history. It helps writers retrieve character or plot notes without navigating complex workspaces.
Joplin
Joplin organizes Markdown notes, notebooks, tasks, and web clippings with synchronization options. It addresses scattered research by collecting clipped material and draft notes into searchable notebooks.
Standard Notes
Standard Notes stores encrypted notes and synchronizes them across devices through its note-taking service. It helps authors protect sensitive ideas, personal research, and private early drafts.
Logseq
Logseq is an outliner for linked notes, journals, and task management stored in local files. It helps writers connect research and daily observations without losing relationships between ideas.
Roam Research
Roam Research organizes networked notes through bidirectional links, daily pages, and searchable references. It solves nonlinear research organization by revealing connections among characters, themes, and sources.
Tana
Tana organizes notes as structured nodes that users can tag and filter with Supertags. It helps novelists turn loosely captured ideas into sortable character, setting, and research records.
Airtable
Airtable combines spreadsheet-style tables with relational databases for organizing structured information. It addresses unwieldy story bibles by linking characters, locations, timelines, and research records.
Coda
Coda combines documents, tables, and formulas for building customized planning and tracking systems. It helps writers replace disconnected planning files with a tailored manuscript production hub.
ClickUp
ClickUp manages tasks, documents, goals, and project views within a single workspace. It solves missed revision deadlines by organizing writing, editing, and publishing tasks visibly.
TickTick
TickTick manages tasks, reminders, calendars, habits, and focused work sessions across devices. It helps authors maintain consistent writing routines while tracking research and revision commitments.
Sunsama
Sunsama is a daily planner that brings tasks and calendar events into one schedule. It addresses overloaded workdays by helping writers assign realistic time to creative work.
Pomofocus
Pomofocus is a browser-based Pomodoro timer that pairs focused intervals with simple task lists. It helps novelists start intimidating chapters by breaking drafting into manageable timed sessions.
Noisli
Noisli mixes background sounds and ambient noise to create customizable listening environments. It reduces distracting surroundings by providing steady audio during drafting or revision sessions.
Brain.fm
Brain.fm provides music designed to support focused work, relaxation, and sleep sessions. It helps writers establish a concentration cue when home or shared-office environments feel disruptive.
Endel
Endel generates adaptive soundscapes intended for focus, relaxation, sleep, and movement. It addresses inconsistent work environments by supplying an adjustable audio backdrop for writing.
Scribophile
Scribophile is an online writing workshop where members exchange critiques on submitted work. It helps novelists obtain structured reader feedback before sending manuscripts to professional editors.
Critique Circle
Critique Circle is an online workshop where writers share fiction and receive peer critiques. It solves isolation during revision by connecting authors with readers who can flag unclear passages.
The Next Big Writer
The Next Big Writer hosts online writing workshops for sharing work and reviewing peers. It helps authors build a feedback routine through ongoing exchanges with other fiction writers.
QueryTracker
QueryTracker provides agent information and tools for recording literary-agent query submissions. It reduces submission confusion by helping authors organize outreach, responses, and agent research.
Duotrope
Duotrope lists publication markets and provides tools for tracking manuscript submissions. It helps writers avoid duplicate or forgotten submissions while researching suitable publishing opportunities.
The right stack depends on your process: start with a drafting home, then add planning and revision tools where friction appears.