Novel Writing Software – Which Programs Are the Best?

The real question is how many novels have you sold using this software?

I find yWriter to be an excellent -- FREE! -- tool for organizing a novel. It has plenty of features to help you keep track of characters, scenes, locations, etc. and its "report" feature lets you easily export a synopsis of what you have written. I think it's much better than a lot of the commercial story-writing software.

Can these software products operate on a stand-alone PC, which is detached from the Internet?

I've had an experience with one of the companies mentioned in the My Writing Spot review, where my emails and password were viewable by their support staff. When factored in with that company's data mining practices, it is plausible that any use of their cloud technology could result in scanned works. Rights to one’s work might change with future TOS updates similar to how Instagram stated they would have sales rights to any photos placed on their service.

As a technical person venturing into the realm of writing, I know how easy it is for a software product to phone home and pass whatever data the vendor wants back to them. In addition, third party and malicious or unknown software can do their own data mining of your PC's contents. Whenever you place data outside of your local storage facilities, you relinquish partial control of it. Additionally, many cloud providers will not provide indemnification insurance when a client's data is compromised, especially one that is offering the service for 'free'.

These are the reasons why I would like to perform my compositions offline.

I briefly tried Scrivner, but found it too distracting.  Easier for me to simply open a Notes file and put any ideas or notes for the WIP in that.  Just finished a 98k novel on my Mac writing software, Pages, and that works perfectly for me.  Gives me a running word count or I can highlight sections to check word count there.  I was looking forward to seeing what a program like Scrivner might add creatively to my work, but found all it did was make writing more difficult and irritating.  Thanks for the post - I'd forgotten to delete it from my hard drive.

i use mynovel 4.0

are any of them good to use for language and grammer. english is not my first language so it dificult for me. tanks

I love the features of Liquid Story Binder, particularly the character generator and the dossiers, but find the software unwieldy and hard to get the knack of.  I looked at NewNovelist but was so turned off by all the grammar mistakes that I didn't think the software itself could be good.  I downloaded the demo of MyNovel but found the demo too limited to show me what it could really do.  So I've downloaded the free trial of Scrivener and hope to be able to report back favorably in a month or so.

Writemonkey.  Go get the latest "preview" version off their discussion forum.  Gives you full control over everything, including appearance of your work environment.  Allows you to do or at least approximate most of the "tricks" from Scrivener, yWriter, et. al.  Works exclusively with .TXT files for the ultimate in portability.  More importantly, can do anything its capable of without lifting your hands from the keyboard, so its a speed and ergonomic dream.  Topped off with an enthusiastic and approachable author.  Its the only game in town if you want a completely "full screen" or "distraction free" interface that actually has some power other than those two words (and yes, you can work in it just like Scrivener or yWriter with one scene/chapter per file, reorder them and merge them later; that's why you need to go get the "preview" version off the forum because that's where all this functionality has been getting added lately).

I have recently tried out StoryBook; there is a free version and the StoryBook Pro version which costs around £15 and includes more features. The free StoryBook 3.2 version was brilliant; more a way to organise and plan your novel rather than a template/guide, it was just what I was looking for and I was seriously considering buying the Pro version. But then they upgraded it to 4.0 - and that was an utter disaster. Basically, they tried to add far too many extra (and unnecessary) bells and whistles, and in the process made it overly complicated and unusable. Menus that had previously been so simple to find were now buried under layers of extraneous sub-menus, parts of the program refused to work properly at all and the whole thing became a broken mess that destroyed weeks of hard work in a novel I had created in the 3.2 version. But there was worse to come... when I finally gave up in despair and tried to load up the file in my previous 3.2 version the file was no longer compatible with it! All that work, wasted. They should have left it the heck alone - StoryBook 3.2 was a beautifully simple program that did everything it promised; StoryBook 4 tries to do far too much and fails horribly, confusing and frustrating its user in the process. Avoid it like the plague.

I'm a devoted user of Liquid Story Binder.  Very powerful, very adaptable and helpful.

@Chilari, Thanks for sharing about Pangurpad.  It sounds promising.

I was using Storymill, and had been saving my manuscript to my server and the software but when it provided an update I could not retrieve four chapters written after updating the software. It became incompatible when I tried to Import it back to the software and wasn't compatible with any other program, even Word. Hours lost, and I was furious! Starting back at the beginning, hoping an agent would have wanted a rewrite anyway. Bollocks to the Storymill!

Jers Novel Writer is very good for Macs.

I like to use the yWriter to get my thoughts in order.

I've been using Scrivener (Windows beta version) and have loved it. While I'm interested in Dramatica's use of the Campbell story arc and am intrigued by the idea of having an Android app that would allow me to work everywhere if/when I get a Smartphone, Scrivener provides a good solid structuring capability based on chapters and scenes. It also offers lots of room for scratching notes, which is good, because I do a lot of that and dislike dealing with a long list at the end or separate files. I could see myself using My Writing Spot for dry typing, but it's really just nice to have various parts of my story and related notes easily accessible, all gathered into one place. It would be hard to go back to just Word now. I'm too spoiled. :)

I've used Scrivener (both Mac and Windows), yWwriter and Liquid Story Binder XE. While they're all excellent and help a writer get writing, ideas, notes and all the stuff you might use in order, there's obviously differences and you should really try them out and see which one suits you..  Now I've found a new favourite: StoryBox  http://storyboxsoftware.com/#StoryBox This program has features  that you might recognise from the other three programs and in my opinion it's a perfect mix. Try it out. It's helped me get my writing organised.

Sorry, but I use me.  I've spent a lifetime (thus far) learning to do all of that but spell checks for my own little lonesome self.  Plus, I'm weird.  I like it that way.

Pangurpad is a fairly new online writing website which I find useful. You can eliminate all distractions, or with the stuff turned on, add notes on characters or places, work out a timetable, quickly create chapter headings. The problem is that it's not free (if you want more than one writing slot), and at the moment not complete, but it looks to be expanding within the next few months, offering new features including publishing options. I bought a founding membership and so far I like what I see, though the forums are rather quiet at the moment.