100 Best Novel Writing Apps for Planning, Drafting, and Revising
Novel writing involves more than a blank page: these apps support outlining, focused drafting, research, revision, and manuscript preparation.
Scrivener
Scrivener organizes manuscripts into folders, scenes, notes, research files, and customizable compile-ready documents. It helps writers manage sprawling chapter drafts without losing track of research, structure, or deleted material.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word provides document drafting, formatting, comments, Track Changes, and broad file compatibility. It helps collaborators review manuscript revisions by clearly showing edits, comments, and document versions.
Google Docs
Google Docs enables browser-based drafting with real-time collaboration, comments, suggestions, and cloud storage. It helps remote writing partners exchange feedback without emailing multiple conflicting manuscript copies.
Ulysses
Ulysses is a distraction-light writing environment that organizes sheets, groups, keywords, and writing goals. It helps writers focus on daily drafting while keeping short scenes and larger projects orderly.
yWriter
yWriter breaks novels into chapters and scenes while tracking characters, locations, items, and notes. It helps plotters monitor scene-level details when a manuscript becomes too complex for one document.
LivingWriter
LivingWriter offers cloud-based novel planning and drafting with chapters, scenes, story elements, and templates. It helps writers keep story planning connected to draft scenes across devices and browsers.
Novlr
Novlr is an online writing app with manuscript organization, writing goals, analytics, and export options. It helps writers sustain a drafting routine through visible progress tracking and accessible project files.
Dabble
Dabble combines manuscript drafting with plot grids, notes, cloud synchronization, and goal tracking. It helps novelists align plot planning with chapters rather than maintaining separate disconnected files.
Reedsy Book Editor
Reedsy Book Editor provides browser-based manuscript writing, formatting, collaboration, and export for books. It helps authors produce clean book files without manually formatting every paragraph and chapter.
Atticus
Atticus combines a book-writing editor with formatting tools for preparing print and ebook manuscripts. It helps independent authors move from a finished draft toward formatted publishing files in one workspace.
Plottr
Plottr visualizes story timelines, plotlines, scenes, characters, and locations through planning templates. It helps writers spot timeline conflicts and missing plot beats before drafting extensive chapters.
Aeon Timeline
Aeon Timeline builds detailed chronological timelines linking events, people, places, and narrative arcs. It helps writers maintain believable chronology when stories span multiple characters, eras, or parallel plots.
Campfire
Campfire provides writing and worldbuilding modules for manuscripts, characters, locations, lore, and timelines. It helps speculative-fiction writers centralize extensive world details that otherwise scatter across notes.
World Anvil
World Anvil is a worldbuilding platform for documenting fictional settings, histories, characters, and maps. It helps authors create a searchable setting reference instead of repeatedly hunting through fragmented research.
Obsidian
Obsidian stores linked Markdown notes locally, allowing writers to build interconnected story knowledge bases. It helps writers connect character, setting, and plot notes through links rather than isolated documents.
Notion
Notion combines pages, databases, templates, and collaborative notes for flexible writing-project organization. It helps teams and solo writers create customized dashboards for research, outlines, and revision tasks.
Evernote
Evernote captures notes, web clips, documents, images, and searchable research across devices. It helps writers retain inspiration and source material collected away from their primary manuscript.
OneNote
OneNote organizes digital notebooks into sections and pages with text, drawings, files, and audio. It helps writers gather freeform brainstorming material without forcing early ideas into rigid outlines.
Apple Notes
Apple Notes captures checklists, scanned documents, attachments, sketches, and synced text notes. It helps Apple-device users quickly save fleeting scene ideas before they disappear from memory.
Bear
Bear is a Markdown-based notes app using tags and nested organization for writing projects. It helps writers sort small research notes and fragments with lightweight, flexible tagging.
Hemingway Editor
Hemingway Editor highlights lengthy sentences, passive voice, adverbs, and readability issues in prose. It helps writers identify dense or overcomplicated passages during a focused self-editing pass.
Grammarly
Grammarly checks spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, tone, and word choice in text. It helps writers catch mechanical errors and awkward phrasing before sharing drafts with readers.
ProWritingAid
ProWritingAid analyzes prose for grammar, style, repetitions, pacing, readability, and consistency concerns. It helps novelists examine recurring line-level habits that are difficult to notice alone.
AutoCrit
AutoCrit provides fiction-focused writing analysis, highlighting pacing, dialogue, repetition, and word-use patterns. It helps fiction writers review genre-oriented prose signals before sending work to an editor.
LanguageTool
LanguageTool checks grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style across multiple languages and writing contexts. It helps multilingual writers find language errors while drafting or revising manuscripts in supported languages.
Storyist
Storyist is a Mac and iOS writing app combining manuscript pages, outlining, and formatting tools. It helps authors avoid juggling separate files by keeping scenes, notes, and manuscript text together.
WriteItNow
WriteItNow provides novel-writing tools for chapters, characters, locations, events, and manuscript organization. It addresses scattered story details by linking planning records directly to a book project.
Wavemaker
Wavemaker is a browser-based writing suite with planning boards, timeline tools, and manuscript drafting. It helps writers who switch devices keep project materials accessible through a web-based workspace.
Manuskript
Manuskript is an open-source writing application offering outlining, character tracking, and chapter-based drafting. It gives budget-conscious writers structured long-form planning without requiring a proprietary writing platform.
bibisco
bibisco is a novel-writing application centered on character development, story architecture, and manuscript chapters. It helps solve thin characterization by prompting writers to document characters' backgrounds, motivations, and relationships.
Quoll Writer
Quoll Writer is a Windows desktop application for organizing novels, notes, research, and writing goals. It reduces project clutter by separating manuscript content from supporting research and planning materials.
FocusWriter
FocusWriter is a distraction-free word processor with customizable themes, daily goals, and full-screen writing. It helps writers overcome attention drift by minimizing interface clutter during focused drafting sessions.
WriteMonkey
WriteMonkey is a Windows writing tool built around a minimal full-screen editor and Markdown support. It addresses distracting desktop environments by giving writers a stripped-down space for uninterrupted prose.
iA Writer
iA Writer is a Markdown-focused editor with clean typography, document organization, and export options. It helps authors concentrate on sentences by removing complex formatting controls from the drafting process.
OmmWriter
OmmWriter is a minimalist writing application that pairs a sparse editor with ambient visual and audio themes. It supports writers who find conventional editors overwhelming by creating a calmer drafting environment.
SmartEdit Writer
SmartEdit Writer is a Windows manuscript editor with project organization and built-in writing analysis tools. It helps writers spot repetitive wording and organizational issues before moving into later editing stages.
Fictionary
Fictionary provides story-coaching tools for examining narrative structure, characters, scenes, and pacing across manuscripts. It helps authors diagnose structural weaknesses by reviewing story elements at scene and chapter levels.
Sudowrite
Sudowrite is an AI writing tool that offers brainstorming, descriptive prose, rewriting, and continuation suggestions. It helps writers move past blank-page moments by providing optional prompts and alternative phrasing.
Novelcrafter
Novelcrafter combines scene planning, a story codex, and AI-assisted drafting through connected language models. It helps authors maintain continuity by storing characters, places, and story facts alongside their scenes.
Milanote
Milanote is a visual workspace where writers arrange notes, images, links, and cards on flexible boards. It helps visual planners make sense of sprawling ideas by mapping research and story concepts spatially.
Miro
Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard for creating diagrams, sticky-note boards, timelines, and project maps. It helps co-writers coordinate early story planning by letting everyone contribute to one shared board.
Causality
Causality is a visual story-planning app for mapping plot events, character arcs, and narrative timelines. It helps writers untangle complex chronology by showing how events connect across a story timeline.
Story Planner
Story Planner is a writing app for organizing scenes, characters, places, and plot points. It helps authors turn loose ideas into workable outlines by arranging story components before drafting.
MyStory.today
MyStory.today is a writing platform for drafting stories in chapters while storing characters and notes. It helps writers keep chapter work organized by providing dedicated areas for story reference material.
Fortelling
Fortelling is a writing application that helps authors plan, draft, and organize fiction projects. It addresses fragmented creative workflows by bringing plot planning and manuscript drafting into one project space.
Scribbook
Scribbook is an online writing environment with chapter organization, notes, goals, and manuscript export. It helps writers track progress on long manuscripts by breaking work into manageable chapters and goals.
Typora
Typora is a Markdown editor that displays formatted text while writers work in a clean document view. It helps writers who prefer plain-text files avoid distracting syntax while retaining portable document formatting.
Zettlr
Zettlr is a Markdown writing application with file management, citation support, and project-oriented organization. It helps research-heavy fiction writers manage source notes and draft files within a single workspace.
ghostwriter
ghostwriter is a free Markdown editor featuring distraction-free mode, themes, statistics, and document export. It helps writers maintain drafting momentum by offering a simple editor with visible session statistics.
Manuscripts
Manuscripts is a Mac writing application for structured documents, outlines, references, and export formats. It helps authors manage lengthy structured drafts by keeping document sections and supporting materials organized.
LibreOffice Writer
LibreOffice Writer is a desktop word processor with styles, comments, templates, and document export tools. It helps writers avoid subscription dependence while producing structured manuscript files in common office formats.
Apple Pages
Apple Pages is a word processor for creating formatted documents with templates, styles, collaboration, and export options. It helps Apple-device writers turn drafts into polished pages without managing complex desktop publishing software.
Zoho Writer
Zoho Writer is a cloud word processor offering document editing, comments, version history, and collaborative review. It helps distributed collaborators review manuscript passages without exchanging multiple conflicting file attachments.
WPS Writer
WPS Writer is a word processor with formatting tools, templates, cloud storage integration, and file compatibility. It helps writers open and edit common document formats when collaborators use different office suites.
ONLYOFFICE Docs
ONLYOFFICE Docs provides browser-based document editing with real-time collaboration, comments, revisions, and office-format support. It helps small editorial teams coedit chapters while retaining visible feedback and revision records.
Dropbox Paper
Dropbox Paper is a collaborative document workspace for writing, comments, tasks, and embedded media. It helps authors consolidate chapter feedback, research links, and next steps in shared working documents.
Craft
Craft organizes notes into linked documents, cards, collections, and shareable pages across supported devices. It helps novelists keep character notes and research interconnected instead of scattered across separate documents.
UpNote
UpNote is a note-taking app with notebooks, tags, rich text editing, and cross-device synchronization. It helps writers quickly capture scene ideas and retrieve them later through organized notebooks and tags.
Joplin
Joplin is an open-source note app supporting Markdown, notebooks, tags, attachments, and synchronization services. It helps privacy-conscious writers maintain portable research notes without locking material into a proprietary format.
Simplenote
Simplenote is a lightweight note app featuring plain-text notes, tags, search, synchronization, and version history. It helps writers capture prose fragments quickly while preserving earlier versions of short notes.
Standard Notes
Standard Notes is an encrypted notes application with synchronization, tagging, organization tools, and multiple editors. It helps writers protect sensitive draft ideas and personal research with encrypted note storage.
Logseq
Logseq is a local-first outliner for linked notes, daily journals, references, and knowledge organization. It helps authors trace connections between plot research and evolving ideas through linked outlines.
TiddlyWiki
TiddlyWiki is a customizable personal wiki that stores interconnected notes in a self-contained web document. It helps worldbuilders create a portable reference system for locations, history, and recurring characters.
Workflowy
Workflowy is an infinite nested-list app with search, tags, sharing, and collapsible outline structure. It helps writers break sprawling story plans into manageable levels without losing the overall hierarchy.
Dynalist
Dynalist is an outlining app with nested lists, search, tags, bookmarks, and collaborative sharing. It helps planners rearrange chapter beats and story arcs without repeatedly reformatting traditional documents.
MindNode
MindNode is a visual mind-mapping app for arranging ideas, connections, tasks, and outline branches. It helps visual thinkers explore character relationships before committing those connections to a linear outline.
XMind
XMind creates mind maps and diagrams using branches, themes, notes, markers, and presentation layouts. It helps authors map complex subplots when a conventional chapter list obscures narrative relationships.
Freeplane
Freeplane is an open-source mind-mapping application with customizable nodes, links, attributes, and filters. It helps detail-oriented writers organize large story worlds using flexible visual categories and connections.
Scapple
Scapple is a freeform brainstorming tool for placing notes and drawing connections between them. It helps novelists untangle plot possibilities by moving ideas freely across an open visual canvas.
MindMeister
MindMeister is an online mind-mapping tool for collaborative idea mapping, comments, and presentations. It helps coauthors discuss story structure visually when text-only planning conversations become difficult to follow.
Write or Die
Write or Die is a writing tool that encourages continuous drafting through configurable consequences and rewards. It helps procrastinating writers maintain drafting momentum by making long pauses immediately noticeable.
The Most Dangerous Writing App
The Most Dangerous Writing App is a browser writing tool that deletes text after extended inactivity. It helps writers overcome perfectionism by rewarding uninterrupted drafting rather than constant sentence-level revision.
Cold Turkey Writer
Cold Turkey Writer is a distraction-free editor that can lock sessions until chosen writing goals are met. It helps writers finish focused drafting sessions when web browsing and app switching interrupt concentration.
Freedom
Freedom is a distraction-blocking app that can restrict selected websites and applications during scheduled sessions. It helps authors protect dedicated writing time by reducing access to habitual digital distractions.
Vellum
Vellum is a Mac application for formatting ebooks and print-ready books from manuscript text. It helps self-publishing novelists create consistent book layouts without manually styling every ebook section.
Sigil
Sigil is a desktop editor for creating and editing EPUB ebooks with code-level control. It helps authors fix EPUB structure and metadata when automated exports produce inconsistent ebook files.
calibre
calibre manages ebook libraries and converts documents between common ebook formats, including EPUB and MOBI. It helps writers test format conversions without manually rebuilding files for different e-readers.
Kindle Create
Kindle Create formats manuscripts into Kindle-ready ebooks and print books using guided layout tools. It reduces the difficulty of preparing a manuscript for Amazon publishing without advanced typesetting skills.
Kindle Previewer
Kindle Previewer displays how Kindle ebooks appear across supported devices, screen sizes, and orientations. It helps authors catch layout problems before readers encounter awkward page breaks or formatting.
Blurb BookWright
Blurb BookWright is a desktop layout tool for designing print books and photo books. It helps novelists create print-ready interiors when they need more control over page design.
Canva
Canva provides browser-based templates and design tools for book covers, promotional graphics, and documents. It helps self-publishing authors create visual marketing materials without learning professional design software.
Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is professional page-layout software for designing print books, ebooks, and publication assets. It helps teams manage complex typography and print layouts that basic word processors handle poorly.
Affinity Publisher
Affinity Publisher is desktop publishing software for arranging text, images, styles, and print-ready pages. It helps authors produce polished book interiors when manuscript formatting requires precise visual control.
Scribus
Scribus is open-source desktop publishing software for creating layouts with professional print production features. It gives budget-conscious writers a way to build print layouts without subscription-based publishing software.
Pressbooks
Pressbooks is a web publishing platform for formatting books into EPUB, PDF, and print outputs. It simplifies multi-format book production for authors who otherwise manage separate files manually.
Kotobee Author
Kotobee Author creates interactive ebooks with multimedia, quizzes, and navigation for digital reading platforms. It helps writers package interactive fiction or educational narratives without manually coding ebook features.
Jutoh
Jutoh is ebook creation software that converts manuscripts into EPUB, Kindle, and other formats. It helps authors generate multiple ebook editions from one manuscript instead of maintaining separate versions.
Atlantis Word Processor
Atlantis Word Processor is a Windows writing application with document formatting and ebook export tools. It helps Windows writers turn formatted drafts into ebooks without moving between several applications.
Nisus Writer Pro
Nisus Writer Pro is a macOS word processor with advanced typography, styles, and text tools. It helps Mac-based authors manage long documents requiring detailed formatting beyond simple notes apps.
Mellel
Mellel is a macOS word processor designed for long documents, multilingual text, and structured styles. It helps writers handle complex manuscripts with nonstandard languages or demanding typographic requirements.
Drafts
Drafts is a quick-capture writing app that sends notes and text to other services. It helps authors preserve fleeting dialogue or scene ideas before they disappear during daily work.
JotterPad
JotterPad is a mobile writing app offering distraction-free drafting, document organization, and export options. It helps writers continue drafting on phones or tablets when a full computer is unavailable.
Pure Writer
Pure Writer is an Android writing app focused on simple drafting, backups, and text recovery. It helps mobile writers avoid losing unfinished passages after interruptions or accidental app closures.
Writer Plus
Writer Plus is a lightweight Android editor with markdown support and basic writing organization. It helps writers draft plain-text scenes quickly without navigating feature-heavy mobile office applications.
Byword
Byword is a minimalist Apple writing app supporting Markdown documents and focused composition modes. It helps writers concentrate on prose when visual clutter and formatting controls disrupt momentum.
WriteRoom
WriteRoom is a full-screen Mac writing app designed around distraction-free plain-text composition. It helps authors create a focused drafting environment when notifications and interface clutter break concentration.
Airstory
Airstory organizes reusable research snippets, notes, and content blocks for writing projects. It helps writers retrieve researched details and saved passages without repeatedly searching scattered sources.
Quip
Quip combines collaborative documents, spreadsheets, comments, and chat for shared project work. It helps coauthors coordinate manuscript feedback when discussions and document edits become disconnected.
Nuclino
Nuclino is a collaborative knowledge base for organizing linked notes, documents, and project information. It helps writing teams centralize character references and project documentation previously scattered across folders.
Coda
Coda combines documents, tables, automations, and collaborative pages in a customizable workspace. It helps authors track submissions, revisions, and research in one flexible project hub.
The strongest choice depends on your process: select tools that reduce friction in the specific stage where your novel tends to stall.