Ultimate List Of Online Novel Writing Tools
Writing a novel is a huge project, but there are a wide variety of tools available that can make the process itself much easier. This is a collection of online tools that can be accessed from anywhere.
Novel Writing / Outlining Tools
True Novelist
Yarny
Novlr
LitLift
Draft
HiveWord
World Building / Research Tools
Overcome Writer's Block
Write Or Die 2
750 Words
Ilys
Fantasy Name Generators
Mike Bradley Name Generator
Word Processors
Distraction Free Writing
Editing Tools
Writing Communities
Novel Writing / Outlining Tools
These tools are focused on helping you create and write a novel. They all allow you to organize your work into chapters, and some of them allow you to organize characters and places as well. These are all very helpful if you decide to rearrange portions of your story, since you can do it by dragging and dropping chapters, instead of by cutting and pasting like you would have to in Word or Google Docs.
Sure, I'm biased, but True Novelist has a lot to offer. It allows you to organize your novel like the popular offline Scrivener software, with scenes, characters, and places all organized in a familiar drag and drop folder structure. It also provides a wide range of statistics on your writing to keep you motivated as you go.
Your writing is saved automatically every few seconds, and is securely stored on our servers. You can also export your data at any time.
Yarny is a great piece of software. You can organize scenes in your novel by chapter or by tagging them, and can set overall novel word counts. You get automated snapshots, but have no control over when they are taken. One thing Yarny does not provide are statistics about your writing.
Novlr has a very clean interface and covers the basics. You an create multiple chapters and rearrange them, but you can't organize into folders. The only statistics at the moment are word count, but for something very simple this would work well.
Litlift is some older online software that is a gives you some nice generators (characters, names, etc) and provides some guidance about how a story is generally structured (protagonist, antagonist, etc).
It also allows you to save scenes and characters, but I think more recent online software like Yarny and Novlr handle the writing flow better.
Looking for something more collaborative? Draft allows you to share easily with other writers, and also to see changes between versions of your document in a simple manner.
Hiveword is another older writing tool. It provides all the basics (organize your book by scenes, characters, etc.), but like LitLift feels a little dated.
World Building Tools
All novels require a bit of background information, and it is handy to have that organized so you can get to it easily. Most of the novel writing tools provide this functionality, but if you are looking for something just to use for storing research these might come in hand.
A simple site to gather all your writing research in one place and take notes on it.
Evernote is great for research, you can store notes and photos and sync them seamlessly from your desktop to your phone and back.
Overcome Writer's Block
There will always be days where the words just don't seem to come. From generating character names for you to forcing you to write, these tools can all help you get some words down on the page.
Write or Die 2 lets you set a writing goal to reach in a set amount of time. It is perfect for writers who are easily distracted, since it can motivate you with flashing lights and alerts when you pause too long.
If you are feeling particularly brave, you can choose 'Kamikaze' mode, which will actually start deleting sentences you have written if you delay.
750 words is a great tool for motivating yourself to write every day. You get badges for writing "streaks" when you write a certain number of days in a row. The goal is to write something every day, regardless of what it is.
This is a bit of an odd one - like write or die, the goal is to get you to write without editing or worrying about anything other than typing. Ilys accomplishes this by just showing you one letter at a time, and letting you edit later. Since there is nothing on the screen, there is nothing to edit, and it is all about getting the words down.
Not much to say about this. Having trouble thinking up names? Give this a shot.
http://fantasynamegenerators.com/
This has some more realistic names than the Fantasy Name Generator above.
http://mikebradley.me/generator/
Word Processors
If you don't need the organizational tools of novel writing software, then a standard word processor will do all you need.
Google docs is one of the best offerings out there for general word processing and formatting. If you just want a place to write, Google Docs has you covered.
Distraction Free Writing
Does too much on the screen get you out of the zone? If so, you may want to try one of these "distraction free" writers, which don't have much more than a cursor on the blank screen, waiting for your imagination to fill it.
Simple, distraction free writing with a light and dark format.
Editing Tools
Having someone read over your work can make you a better writer. At 2am when no one is available, try these instead! They will catch most of your basic grammar mistakes, and offer helpful suggestions to make your writing more concise.
You can try this for free on their site. Give it a shot with a writing sample and see if the corrections are helpful for you.
You can also try this for free, plus they have a chrome extension so you can use Grammarly on any website.
Writing Communities
https://www.reddit.com/r/writing
Reddit Writing is a fantastic online community whose members are always happy to answer your questions or offer suggestions if you are stuck. If you are feeling down about your novel or are completely stumped about where to go next, ask for some advice here!
Some tricks of the trade for writing fiction. This is a collection of "tropes", which are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. Worth checking out.
Additional Tools
I'm sure I didn't get every great online tool here. If you know of a tool that you think I should add, let me know what it is and why it should be on this list in the comments below!