Have you ever seen a writer’s word processing software and wonder what that all means? After all, there are just so many kinds of writing tools and not everyone has the same resources. Many aspiring and professional writers out there would be happy if they had the tools to create the best words possible.
Here are the best tools and the most popular in the world!
Evernote
Evernote has both a free, and paid version. You can use the free version as a word processor and note-taking software, or pay for the premium version if you want extra perks.
While Evernote isn’t designed specifically for books, the tool’s organization makes it a feasible option as a book writing software.
Benefits to using Evernote as your free book writing software:
#1 – Streamlines note-taking process. At it’s core, Evernote is a writing software that’s designed to make note-taking easy and efficient. This makes it a useful book writing software because the same note-taking organization principles can be integrated into the process of writing a book.
#2 – Versatility makes for easy customization. While Evernote isn’t designed for just authors and novelists, the versatility it brings to users with multiple uses for the program come in handy, especially for those writing a book. The ability to create notebooks, tags, and sort information, as well as robust AI-suggested content means that this book writing software is a power-house for personalization. With enough tweaks and adaptability, Evernote is a super versatile program that you can adjust to fit your needs best.
#3 – A hub for your book research and inspiration. Anyone who is in the process of writing a book knows how often a random surge of inspiration, or piece of research, hits us as we write. Evernote is perfect for housing all of our inspirational quotes or research, without derailing our book writing efforts altogether.
Related: Inspirational Writing Quotes
This book writing software is free.
Ulysses
Best for productive formatting of written content.
Ulysses is a standard writing app that has so much in common with Scrivener. It is designed to make the formatting of your work easier. It offers several informative tutorials alongside its pragmatic features.
It uses the ‘Markdown’ approach in the formatting of content, thus helping writers maintain the flow of their prose while writing. It offers all of the standard features you’ve come to expect from tools like this to organize your written content effectively. The one thing that might bother users of this tool is its reluctance to appear outline friendly to its writers.
Features:
- Organize content with Keyword labels
- Intuitive sidebar to display your work
- Split view
- Track progress of content
Verdict: Ulysses is a great app if formatting is the only thing you seek from an app. It is a fairly standard writing app that allows writers with a focused writing experience at a reasonably charged cost.
Price: $4.99/month, $39.99/year
Website: Ulysses
Daily Page
You know what’s the secret to improving your writing? Writing.
The more you write, the less judgmental you become of your thoughts and the more “in the zone” you get. If you want to get into the habit of routine writing and never have to struggle with writer’s block again, Daily Page is the tool for you.
Daily Page emails you a writing prompt every morning, forcing you to start typing. You then have the entire day to write your response.
This writing tool acts as your close friend who motivates you every morning to get out of bed and start penning down your thoughts. It’s a great app to build a routine and structure to your writing habit.
Read more: Power Words To Make You Stand Out From Competition
StayFocus
Imagine- you have a great idea for your blog, you have it all mapped out in your head, and you can’t write fast enough and show it to the world.
A few seconds later, you find yourself watching cat videos on YouTube your best friend emailed you and you forget all about your awesome blog post! Sad, isn’t it?
Distractions play a huge role in hampering our progress in life, and it plays an even bigger role when you are trying to stay focused and write.
This is why we recommend you try out StayFocusd, a Chrome extension that blocks the websites you ask it to and prevents you from getting distracted.
StayFocusd increases your productivity and forces you to focus on your writing by limiting the amount of time that you can spend on time-wasting websites.
It’s highly customizable as you can set it to block entire websites, subdomains, or even specific in-page content (videos, games, images, forms, etc). Once your allotted time has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day.
Milanote
Price: Free, and premium is $12.50 per month or $119.88 per annum.
Available On: macOS and Windows.
Ideal For: Anyone who likes to digitally organize ideas in a way that makes sense for their projects.
Milanote is an easy-to-use writing tool, and it helps you organize your ideas and add your thoughts to the digital board.
You can also save text, images & links from any website to your doc with a single click.
Moreover, using this writing tool, you can share, edit, and collaborate with your team members in real-time, which helps you improve your content quality.
Features
- Status tracking.
- Task management.
- Easy drag and drop.
- Collaboration tools.
- Project management.
- Content management.
- Workflow management.
Pros
- Web clipper allows you to save text, images & links from any website.
- You can also easily add notes & photos from your phone to your computer.
- It supports all common file types, including JPGs, PDFs, Word, Excel, and many more.
- You can share, collaborate and communicate with your team members via comments.
- Quickly invite anyone to view and edit your boards or download a high-quality printable PDF.
Cons
- You cannot work offline.
- Limitations in free account.
Cliché Finder
Feel like your writing is full of one too many cliches? Don’t fret, the cliché finder is here! This nifty tool helps you find clichés in your writing.
Just paste your text in the editor and Cliché Finder will quickly point out clichés and allow you to replace it with a specific word or phrase. It’s a handy tool to make your writing more effective and unique.
Otranscribe
If you have ever transcribed some audio, you know how cumbersome it can be to keep switching between your media player and word processor and transcribe without making errors.
Otrancribe makes this process of transcription a lot easier by allowing users to upload their audio files and providing a word editor on the same page to transcribe. Even though it doesn’t transcribe the audio automatically, it still makes the process a lot more bearable!
Freedom
Price: $6.99 per month, $29 per annum, and $129 lifetime.
Available On: macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Chromebook, and Linux.
Ideal For: Writers who want to improve their productivity without any online distractions.
Freedom is the most popular writing tool for writers to increase productivity.
Using this tool, you can choose the distracting apps and websites that you want to block.
You can also select when you want to block and how long you wish to keep it blocked across all devices.
This way, you can stay focused on your writing without distracting pings, notifications, headlines, and emails.
Features
- Blocklists.
- Locked mode.
- Sync across devices.
- Advance scheduling.
- Block apps, websites, and the internet.
Pros
- You can schedule blocks in advance.
- Meet deadlines quickly without any distractions.
- Easy and simple to block the distracting apps and websites.
- You can even block the whole internet to boost productivity.
- It supports all devices such as Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, and Chrome.
Cons
- Sometimes the time tracking report can be slow.
Conclusion
Have you heard of Grammarly? If not, it’s a great tool for anyone looking to improve their writing. In fact, you can install it as a browser extension for your Chrome or Firefox which means it will be available on any website you visit. Best of all, there’s a free version, or a more advanced tier with support for 14 additional languages. It’s definitely the best writing tool I’ve tried so far.