Top 5 Writing Apps I Wish I Knew When I Started Writing
From Scrivener to World Anvil, here’s a list of the best writing apps for all your needs to help you improve your workflow
I know many writers who see writing apps as no more than bells and whistles that get in the way of writing actual stuff. It’s fair; some are just happy with Word. But there are others, like me, who love to explore the unknown, hunting for new tools all over the internet to make their craft a lot more creative, easier, or efficient — depending on one’s needs.
If you’re reading this piece, you probably belong to the latter group. But whether you’re a Word-only person or like to explore for new options, I believe there’s a lot of value in trying out a few different tools and see if they can make your job easier. This is how I personally found some of my favourite writing tools ever.
And yes; I’ll have to admit that exploring these tools, getting lost in their settings, and working out the perfect workflow is yet another way to avoid sitting down and writing the damn thing. So to save your bum from a little bit of procrastination, I thought I’d gather below my 5 favourite writing apps ever, carefully selected after years of on-and-off use.
The Best Writing Apps to Improve Your Workflow
I’ve tried my fair share of the best writing apps over the years, and all have their own perks. Some are perfect to improve productivity, others simply give you a great place to collect, organise and implement all your research.
The first three apps on my list are taken straight from my personal workflow. I use them all the time, switching constantly between one and the other to note down this piece of information or give more substance to a note.
The last two apps are great tools for world-building, particularly useful if you’re planning a very complex novel.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top 5 writing apps I wish I knew when I started writing!
1. Scrivener ✍️
You’ve heard it, you’ve seen it, maybe you’ve even used it. If you’ve been in the writing community for a while, Scrivener is a beast that many will have to deal with at some point. There’s a reason for its fame: it’s a highly-customisable tool, priceless to keep all your novel’s material in one place, equipped with many features to help even the most chaotic writers put their thoughts in line.
Scrivener is great for outlining novels and creating centralised hubs of data for your story. Its “Binder” (nothing more than a very useful and smart sidebar) lets you nest documents within documents with incredible ease, enabling you to plan things down to the tiniest detail. If you wanted, you could structure your novel scene by scene in Scrivener, and the app makes it incredibly easy and intuitive to do so.
And then, there’s my absolute favourite feature: project settings, stats and goals. If you’re a writer who aims for a specific word count, Scrivener will help you get there by letting you set very precise goals for your entire project — even telling you how many words you need to write per day to meet a certain deadline.
There’s a lot more to discover about this app, and a few years ago I wrote a useful little comparison between Word and Scrivener to lay out all the core features. Worth a read if you’re interested in knowing more!
Scrivener is not a free app, priced at £47 for a lifetime license. But if you want to try before you buy, Literature & Latte offers a free timed trial that only expires with your usage.
2. Ulysses 🦋
Though you could write a novel in Ulysses if you wanted to, I’ve never personally tried yet. What I mostly use Ulysses for is for anything other than novel writing.
Ulysses’ sidebar may not be as sophisticated as Scrivener’s, but it does an excellent job at keeping you organised. I personally use Ulysses for short stories, social media posts, general writing projects and such. In fact, I’m writing this article in my Ulysses app right now.
One of my favourite things about Ulysses is how minimal it is. You can open Ulysses in full-screen mode and have absolutely no interface to clutter your field of view — just a text editor based on markdown language. If you only care about writing and nothing else, Ulysses is the way. I’m not a poet, but I can see why it would be great for writing verses, too!
Ulysses used to cost upward of £40.00 per year, but recently the app’s founder decided to lower the price to £36.99/$39.99 per year. With everything that Ulysses can offer (including project goals, styles, iCloud synchronisation and more), I’d say it’s a bargain!
3. Notion 📓
I’m a massive Notion nerd, so I’m definitely a bit biased here; but I can’t overstate how amazing Notion is. This productivity app is not only free for personal use, it’s incredibly customisable, it receives great updates pretty much every week, and it has become my one-stop-shop for anything in my whole life.
I use Notion to keep on top of all my projects and plan anything, from travels abroad to the next video games I’m going to play. Of course, this involves planning my novel as well.
Notion is a malleable, centralised hub for all your needs. It’s an amazing tool to gather research material and organise it in a neat, visual way. It takes a bit of work to get right (and there’s no denying you’ll have to face a slight learning curve), but the pay-off is immense. I’ve recently become Notion-certified, and it’s been one of the best feelings ever.
I can, however, imagine how writing a novel in Notion may be clunky. Notion isn’t necessarily designed for long-form writing — so I essentially use it to gather novel research, write social media posts, and organise content calendars for work.
While it’s not a word processor or a writing app per se, Notion is an amazing support for any writer. And because it’s entirely free (unless you want the few additional benefits of a Personal Pro plan), you can start using it right away!
4. Bibisco 📗
This one is a bit of an underdog, and I don’t see it mentioned too often myself. Bibisco is a simple writing app, but it’s incredibly capable in what it does. It’s a freemium novel writing software whose primary proposition is to help you write your novel as best it can.
Bibisco is riddled with writing prompts, tips, world-building and export tools to help you write your novel and plan its architecture at the same time. Its founders believe novels only work if characters are believable, so Bibisco gives you all the necessary tools to create great and memorable characters that your reader will love.
As a dystopian writer, I’ve personally used Bibisco to help me flesh out some secondary characters and some parts of my world that still weren’t clear after some time. If you want, you can write an entire novel in there.
The Community Edition of Bibisco is available for free, but if you pay a fair price, you’ll gain access to the Supporters Edition, which includes a wealth of additional features. The founder of the Bibisco project is also a fellow Italian from Bologna, so definitely give it a try!
5. World Anvil 🌎
This one’s for the nerds. As you can guess from its name, World Anvil is a stellar world-building tool mostly used by tabletop RPG players to plan their multi-year campaigns, but spend a few minutes on the World Anvil websites and you’ll instantly see its potential to help write novels as well.
World Anvil has a suite of world-building tools that any plotter would love. You can design interactive maps to guide your characters’ step; you can work on lore, characters, belief systems, law systems, regions, world maps and a lot more. It’s clearly oriented towards fantasy writers, but anyone building a complex world will want to give it a try.
I’ve personally seen a few writers plan entire novels in there, creating wars and conflicts, religions, towns, cities, myths and legends, and a lot more. Even if you’re not strictly a fantasy writer, it’s definitely worth a try!
World Anvil operates on a freemium model; the “Freeman” plan includes all the basic features and a loose “articles” limit (for each page you create in your World Anvil account), but open your wallet and you’ll gain access to a great deal of features, from increased storage to templates and collaboration tools.
The Best Writing Apps for Your Productivity
When I decided to try out Scrivener many years ago, I was growing increasingly frustrated with Word’s limited number of features tailored specifically for novel writers. It’s fair enough; Word is an excellent word-processor, but it’s designed to cover a range of business purposes, and it’s not necessarily geared towards novelists.
While many writers will be perfectly fine with that, I’m certain someone reading this article now will have found at least a new perspective to approach writing from a certain angle — be it the incredible organisation of Scrivener and Notion, or the minimal approach of an app like Ulysses.
If you think I have missed a fundamental app for you, or if you want to tell me about your own experience with any of the above, please leave a comment below!
