You’re sitting at your desk, racking your brain thinking about what to write for the next blog post. Then it hits you like a ton of bricks: sooner or later, you’re going to have to write a book! And even worse… it’s going to have to be a best-seller. Writing a novel is difficult. You have just one shot at making a good first impression on people who would spend their hard earned money on your book.
But with free book writing software free online, you will soon realize that writing a novel isn’t as big of a deal as you thought it was. In fact, with free book writing software free online, you can start creating your fabulous novel from the comfort of your own home.
Scrivener:
Scrivener 3 is “the go-to app for writers of all kinds.” If you write alone, it will do virtually everything you need but doesn’t offer collaboration features. It’s available for Mac, Windows, and iOS. We cover it in detail in a full Scrivener review.
Scrivener’s greatest strength is its flexibility. It offers somewhere for you to gather reference material but doesn’t impose a structure on you. It offers several ways to create structure and get a birds-eye-view of your document. It offers goal-tracking features to keep you on schedule. And its Compile feature provides a flexible way to produce ebooks and print-ready PDFs.
$49 (Mac) or $45 (Windows) from the developer’s website (one-time fee). $44.99 from the Mac App Store. $19.99 (iOS) from the App Store.
AutoCrit:
AutoCrit is well organized and offers a lot of information in a clean interface. In my writing, it revealed an excess of generic descriptions, passive voice, and too many initial pronouns, names, and “ing” words. I also use too many “ly” adverbs. On the plus side, I’m great at showing and not telling, and I don’t repeat words and phrases or use a lot of filler words or clichés.
All these were easy fixes once I was made aware of them. But hey, if you’re feeling depressed about your errors, just click the “compare to fiction” tab to show how your writing stacks up against published works, including mass-market paperbacks and bestsellers. It might make you feel better.
The manuscript analysis provides a lot of constructive criticism in a clean, easy-to-read layout. I like the visual charts representing sentence length and paragraph pace, too.
AutoCrit is $29.97/month.
AutoCrit:
AutoCrit is “the best self-editing platform available for a writer.” It is an online app that facilitates self-editing, substituting a human editor with artificial intelligence. Its focus is on improving your writing, making it more engaging, and making sure it matches your chosen genre’s expected style.
Understandably, it doesn’t include any collaboration features, nor does it offer publishing or distribution features. Its word processing features are not the strongest in the bunch, either. But if you’re working on your own and want to produce the best writing you’re capable of, this app outshines all others.
A free plan is available from the official website, or you gain access to all features by subscribing for $30/month or $297/year.
Consistency Checker:
This free software will find the mistakes your spelling and grammar checkers don’t see, such as inconsistent hyphenation (part time vs. part-time) and spelling (color vs. colour). It also finds things like numerals in the middle of sentences, compound words, and abbreviations that appear in different forms.
It does not check spelling and grammar, just consistency. Note: this is the freemium version of the $99 PerfectIt app for Microsoft Office 2013 and Google Docs.
It targets long nonfiction document like proposals, grants, and how-to manuals. I wish this kind of tool had existed back when I was a Silicon Valley technical writer! I will definitely run it the next time I edit my how-to book, the Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors. What the heck, I’ll run it in my narrative nonfiction works, too.
Install Consistency Checker in Word by visiting the Microsoft Office 2013 store. To install it in Google Docs, go to the store listing, log in and click “Free,” then run Google Docs and Consistency Checker will be in the “Add-ons” menu.
Microsoft Word:
Microsoft Word is “built for the creation of polished documents.” We’re all familiar with it, and it runs online, on the desktop (Mac and Windows), and on mobile (iOS and Android). It’s the world’s most popular word processor. It’s often used for writing books and novels, though other apps are arguably better during the writing stage. Where it shines is when working with editors; many will insist you use this app.
Word also offers great collaboration features and can export your manuscript as a PDF. Because it’s a common document format, your printer is likely to accept your manuscript in a DOCX file as a starting point.
But it falls short of the writing features offered by the other apps in this roundup. It includes a functional outliner but can’t track goals and deadlines, store your research, and suggest how you can improve your writing.
Purchase outright for $139.99 from the Microsoft Store (one-time fee), or subscribe to Microsoft 365 from $6.99/month.
Draft:
Draft is a writing, editing, collaboration, and publishing tool you access online using your browser. Each contributor’s changes show up in different colors, with “accept” and “reject” options. You can mark major revisions, find and revert to previous versions, import docs from Dropbox, Evernote, and Google Drive, and publish directly to places like WordPress, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and even MailChimp. They’ve provided a handy Chrome extension that lets you turn any text area on the web into something you can write and edit with Draft. You can even hire a human editor via the program.
You can email a document to your Draft account and create a simple presentation, then select segments of writing and the “simplify” robot catches common words and duplicate words and attempts to detect and delete unimportant sentences. More features include an audio-video transcription tool, analytics, and a website builder tool. “Hemingway Mode” provides distraction-free writing.
Draft is free, but donations unlock more benefits.
Vellum:
Vellum is a Mac app that was developed so you can “create beautiful books” and is useful at the end of the book writing process. It won’t help you do the actual writing—your first step will be to import your finished Word document—but it will create a beautiful printed or electronic book.
You can browse through available book styles to find the right look for yours, then generate print and paper editions in a single step that takes just minutes. Kindle, Kobo, and iBook formats are supported. The app offers the ability to assemble box sets for book series, produce advanced copies, and connect to social media so you can promote your book.
Use the app for free, then pay $199.99 for the ability to publish ebooks or $249.99 to publish both ebooks and paperbacks.
Grammarly:
Grammarly is my favorite electronic editor. It delivers information both line-by-line and in summary form. I bought an annual subscription in 2015, and I like the way it follows me around the web to check my WordPress blog posts, my Google Docs, Gmail, and comments and feedback forms on other people’s blog posts and articles. As I am a professional writer, it is embarrassing when I make basic spelling and grammatical errors in quick, social media posts and emails, so I appreciate this feature.
Like most robust editing tools, Grammarly offers settings for various kinds of writing: business documents, novels, creative nonfiction, medical, technical, and casual. I set mine to creative nonfiction.
A basic version of Grammarly that roots out spelling and grammar errors is free, while the full version is $29.95/month. If you need a human editor, quick, you can reach one through their site for a reasonable price.
Ulysses:
Ulysses is “the ultimate writing app” and runs on Mac and iOS. It’s my personal favorite and a great competitor of Scrivener. It doesn’t offer any collaboration features, but it’s superb in every other area. When you’re ready to work with an editor, just export your manuscript as a Microsoft Word file. Read our full Ulysses review here.
Unlock all features with an in-app subscription costing $5.99/month or $49.99/year.
Hemingway Editor:
Hemingway is a distraction-free writing tool that displays a row of formatting elements across the top for bold, italics, bulleting, numbering, headings, and links. Slide it from “Write” into “Edit” mode and you’ll get a clean, visual take on what might be wrong with your writing. The word and character counters are also very handy.
The browser-based version of the Hemingway app is free, and with the desktop app for Mac and Windows ($19.99), you can import and export your text to Word and export as HTML or Markdown language for your blogging platform, WordPress, or CMS files.
Some people like to write and edit in Hemingway and then import their work into a tool called StackEdit, a browser-based markdown editor, though you could easily use any of the other tools I’ve already mentioned.
Storyist:
Storyist is “a powerful writing environment for novelists and screenwriters.” Like Ulysses, it runs on Mac and iOS and provides just about every feature you need except collaboration. Unlike Scrivener and Ulysses, Storyist offers story sheets that help you work out the details of your characters, locations, and plot. Read our full Storyist review here.
Purchase for $59 from the official website (one-time fee) or download for free from the Mac App Store and choose the $59.99 in-app purchase. Also available for iOS from the App Store for $19.
MasterWriter:
MasterWriter is a valuable addition to any of the editors described here. It’s a thesaurus on steroids in the cloud that will improve your vocabulary and your prose. Enrich your writing with its synonym finder, rhyming dictionary, alliterations, word families, phrases, dictionary, and even a set of 11,000 icons of world culture to add imagery to your writing.
Instead of your story’s sun being “hot,” you’ll find choices like blazing, sizzling, fiery, torrid, punishing, merciless, or raging. Just put a word in the left side and click the dictionary you want to use and get results on the right side.
Check out the video tour and I think you’ll be impressed. An audio page enables you to collect your thoughts or music. There’s a free trial, with licenses offered at $9.99/month, $99.95/year, or $149 for a two-year license.
Dabble:
Dabble is “where authors go to write” and is available online and for Mac and Windows. It’s firmly aimed at fiction writers and offers tools to plot your story, develop your characters, and view it all on a timeline.
Sign up for a free 14-day trial on the official website, then choose a plan to subscribe to. Basic $10/month, Standard $15/month, Premium $20/month. You can also purchase a lifetime license for $399.
Conclusion:
If you are an author who is just starting out, you might be thinking of writing your book by hand. A lot of writers have done this for years, but the truth is that most people would rather use book writing software because it’s easier to use. A lot of these software programs are designed to help people edit their work or even hire someone to help them publish their book.
Have you ever considered self-publishing? If so, free book writing software is the next step in the process. This may sound complicated, but in reality, it’s very simply. There are online book write programs that make this easy to organize and manage.