Simplistic writing program

You can find lots of free writing software online, but you want writing apps that work best for you and your writing process and style. With online writing software, I always start with a free version to make sure a new app does what I want it to do.

Very often, a free app will do everything I need. But yes, sometimes I opt for a premium version to get all the features if it is really a fantastic tool. Choosing the best tools for your writing needs will save you time, effort, and lots of money.

Free apps and writing software for students are a huge bonus. They will help you at school, college or university. For every type of writer, here are some of the very best free to use and freemium apps for you to make your choice. Scan through my list of the best free writing software and apps below. See if you can find a few new favorites to download for your laptop or to use online.

Please note that this page contains some affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you purchase a product from this page. The most essential writing app you always need must be a reliable grammar corrector and a spellchecker.

For every writer, the options will be different depending on your writing style and needs. There is no one best or better choice. But for a content writer or author, it is different. You are probably looking for more developed programs and options. I use one for grammar and spelling and another for writing style and readability.

It always pays to check and double-check your writing and sentence structure before you publish it online. Here are six of the most popular free grammar apps to get you on your way.

Each one will help you improve the quality and accuracy of your writing. Try them all to see which one or two work best for you and your style or type of writing. You can use the free version of ProWritingAid. It offers you a lot of functionality to help you write more accurately online using a simple Chrome extension to check your grammar and spelling.

Are you an author? Then you should consider all the editing and checking tools that are available with this app. There are over twenty different writing analysis tools and reports in the premium version. These will give you a huge range of suggestions to improve your writing. It is my number one go-to editing tool when I need to work intensively on very long documents such as long-form articles or book manuscripts. You can also read my full Prowritingaid review.

Without a doubt, Grammarly is the number one online grammar checker. It is one online writing tool that I always have switched on in Chrome to use with my WordPress editor. It works with so many sites, platforms, software, and applications.

So it is always on and always helping me correct my writing in real-time. You can use it in any web browser, with WordPress, and even on your social media sites. It also works on mobile devices as well as with an iOS Grammarly Keyboard app. No matter what, when, or where you are writing, Grammarly is always helping you write better and more accurately. The browser version of Grammarly works very well for most users.

But for more advanced features to help you in your writing process, there is a premium version available. You can read more in my Grammarly review. Ginger Grammar is another very popular grammar checker. There is a free Chrome extension, and it works similarly to most of the other popular online checkers.

But where Ginger shines is in its ability to find and fix incorrectly spelled or spelt words depending on the context. The negative is that it always tells me to simplify my writing. But if you are looking for a free writing assistant , it is one of the handiest tools a writer can have at their fingertips. The online version is very convenient for checking up to a page or so of text. It gives helpful hints to improve your writing. Read more about this app in my Hemingway Editor review.

Slick Write is a worthy grammar and writing checker. You can check for sentences starting with the same word, misplaced conjunctions, and long sentences. There is a limit of , characters, which is approximately 30, words. But this should be ample for most writers. However, I noticed it works a little slowly for long texts. It is better to work with smaller chunks of less than 5, words.

Grammar Lookup is another good choice for an online grammar checking app. It started checking for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors almost immediately.

It is a good app for checking short-form writing, such as blog posts and short stories. The first name writers associate with word processing is almost always Microsoft Word. It is the default writing tool for many writers, bloggers, and authors. But it is definitely not cheap. Microsoft Office is, as its name implies, software for office use. It includes Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint, and other programs. You will never use these software programs for creative writing.

Do you need to pay for all these extra programs to have a word processor to write a blog post, article, or short story? What is the best word processor for writers? Are there free writing software tools equal to Word? If you want to write, you can always find great word processors that cost you nothing to use.

Often they come with many other options and tools that are better suited for writers. Most of them will be suitable for your writing goals and any form of short creative writing project. But you should note that a word processor is not the best app for writing a book.

You can find better programs for authors in the next section of this article. Like Microsoft Office, Google Docs is a suite of office tools. The big difference, of course, is that Google Docs is available for free online. If you are familiar with Word, you will have no problem at all adapting to Docs, which is the word processor component.

Unlike some word processors, Docs has a word count so you can keep track of your word count goal. I know that many writers, particularly content writers, use Google Docs because of the simplicity of sharing documents online.

Writing projects can be quickly and easily shared using Google Drive, which comes with 5 gigabytes of storage. It is usually plenty of storage space for writers. You can also use Docs offline. If you are writing every day and working with other writers, content editors, proofreaders, or editors, Google Docs allows you to collaborate with ease.

If you are a Mac user and all you need is a word processor, Apple Pages can handle everything you could possibly need to do. Word processing in the page layout document view is easy to work with. All the text formatting, fonts, and writing tools are easy to find and use. It also auto-saves directly to your hard drive or your iCloud drive when you are online. There is also the file duplicate function.

It gives you very easy version control of your revisions and edits. It is difficult to think of a standard feature or function in Word that is not available in Pages documents.

There is one other area where Pages shines. It has a lot more control over images compared to Word. One other big plus with Pages for authors is that you can export directly to epub. You can download it from the Mac App Store. These two writing programs are already under your noses. They are installed by default on Windows and Apple computers. However, they are both worthy of mention because of their usefulness in converting to plain text. Most word processors can add a lot of background code over the time you take to write a long document.

Cut and pasting, saving, deletions, forgotten tabs and spaces, and formatting changes all add up to a lot that can go wrong. Because of all this code, there is a chance that the text might have issues when you use it online. It can be especially true if you use WordPress and also in publishing in ebooks. The quickest and easiest way to clean a document, big or small, is to copy all the text into a basic text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit.

QuollWriter is a free and open source writing software. It lets you create projects with multiple chapters by adding information like description, goal, tags, plan, etc. You can then write content in those chapters. If you are writing a fictional project, you can add characters, locations, research items, and other items with specific details to your project.

You can then link these items to specific chapters. You can also add notes for reference purpose. Also, you can see statistics of a project like total word count, chapter word count, session length, etc. To modify content of your project, you can select a desired font type, size, and color, align text, fix text border width, highlight line, change background color of editor, etc.

You can also create a backup of your projects. FreeWriter is a free writing software which can be used for general writing as well as creating a novel or story. It lets you add multiple sections to a project and then write content in them.

You can set status of a section as In Progress , Draft , or Completed and see the word count progress too. You can also create a novel and story by adding chapters to them. It also lets you decide the fore matter introduction, acknowledgement, preface, etc.

It provides Dictate tool which lets you speak content through microphone to add it to the project. FreeWriter provides standard tools of a word processor. It provides different interface skins to select from. DocPad is yet another free writing software. It can be used for general writing purpose. It lets you insert a TXT file in the current project. You can also use Calendar and Calculator while writing, and add a date too. It also provides a Macro-record tool which lets you enter combination of keystrokes, record a macro, and then play it.

You can also see statistics of a document. DocPad supports Text documents. You can also import a HTML file as text to the current writing project. To export a file as PDF, you can use Print option. DocPad comes in various interface skins to choose from. It has a simple user-interface with basic as well as advanced tools to write. To create any of these projects, you just have to change the mode of the program. You can add text or sentences to a project as a title, header, sub header, body text, or typewriter.

You can also insert date within a project. It lets you format a whole paragraph or specific text by using some standard tools. You can modify font, add typographical emphasis, align text or a paragraph, add superscript and subscript, and apply text and background color. In addition to that, you can adjust line spacing, add bullets, numbering, alphabetic numbering, and roman numbering, increase or decrease indent, etc.

RoughDraft provides basic functionalities of a word processor like navigation options, spellcheck options, etc. Manuscriptor is a basic writing software for Windows.

It provides some other tools for smart quotes, dictionary, etc. You can also enable Scientific Writing option. It provides a Flow Analysis feature to show a graph with paragraphs and sentences fingerprinting.

It also shows statistics of your writing project in an adjacent section with readability and count of paragraphs, sentences, and words. Manuscriptor supports only RTF format to import in the current writing project. Dark Room is a free writing software with limited formatting options.

Lucy shouted and Cassie said are examples of dialogue tags. Readability : This report provides a score for your piece in 4 different ways based on certain guidelines. You can compare it to the specific guidelines and see how it stacks up. Vague and abstract words : Identifies words that are abstract, vague, or otherwise ineffective. Depending on your intended audience, it may be better to stick to simpler words that are easily identified and understood by all.

Thesaurus : A report that will suggest possible replacement words — it is only programmed for shorter pieces, however. Alliteration : Alliteration is when multiple words in a row begin with the same letter. It can be effective in some instances but it should not be used excessively. This report highlights all uses of alliteration. Homonyms : Checks for words like break and brake — they sound the same but actually spelled differently.

Corporate wording : Language that is complex and fancy. Too much of this can sound pretentious and unnecessary. Complex words : It identifies words that contain three or more syllables.

You can then decide if any should be simplified or replaced. Combo : This simply allows you to pick which of the reports are most helpful and relevant to you so you can more easily use them. House style : This is a feature that allows you to create your own rules within ProWritingAid. For example, you can tell it to check for a word you know you have a habit of overusing. Plagiarism : Points out any duplicated material so you can change it or properly credit the information to the source.

However, if you take the time to pay proper attention to each one, it will benefit you in many ways. You will be able to optimize your novel and improve it to a great extent. If you make a habit of using and reading these reports, you will become a better writer. You will begin to take notice of the mistakes you make repeatedly. You will learn what makes your writing sound great and what makes it sound clunky.

AutoCrit is an incredibly useful editing software with a unique purpose. This novel writing software analyzes your for originality.

It begin by checking for simple grammatical errors that are crucial for great writing:. AutoCrit is special in the sense that it goes beyond these basics and focuses on the overall success of your book. It takes your genre into consideration and compares your work to that of professional authors who are already published.

If you have a particular well-known author whose style you really enjoy and wish to emulate, AutoCrit will help you with this too. Select from a list of highly recognized authors and receive customized recommendations for your writing. Do you like taking notes during the process? Do you like to keep things organized? If so, you need to use Evernote. It helps you take notes on the go.

It is simple, feature-rich, easy-to-use, and an effective note taking app. You can keep multiple notes in a single notebook with Evernote. This is ideal for novelists as you can create multiple notebooks each for a different project. You can create a separate notebook for each novel that you are working on. The notes you can create with Evernote have a lot of different options and capabilities. In addition to all the usual formatting options font, bold, italics, bullet lists, etc.

Character development is a crucial element of any novel. It is generally recommended that you create your main character s well before you begin writing. Adding character sketch in the outline will help too. Dramatica is a novel writing software that focuses on characters and their development.

It helps you stay consistent with your characters in terms of their personality, actions, and decisions. The software allows you to map out the narrative for each individual character with in-depth detail. You can plot their milestones and crucial moments and keep track of how they relate to the theme of your story. The idea is to let you create and follow your story from the perspective of your main character.

These detailed but flexible character profiles help eliminate plot holes and inconsistencies as you are able to see the whole picture from all sides. Their algorithm can quickly identify what elements of the story and the structure are most important for the writer. Microsoft Word is a word processor that offers a suite of productivity features. Most writers are already familiar with this tool. That means the learning curve maybe non-existent for you.

In Word, you can use headers to organize your chapters and a navigation pane to go through them. Moreover, Microsoft Word offers many templates and basic grammar correction functionality.

With the online version, you can collaborate with co-authors and editors, making this an exceptional tool to use for a novel. Better yet, most writers and editors still prefer Microsoft Word. This means you're more likely to find an editor who will want to work with you if you started your novel on the platform.

Grammarly is a grammar checker and one of the best programs for ensuring your grammar is mistake-free. It's free to use with unlimited documents. It works through a Chrome extension that enables these corrections anywhere you write on the web whether that be on another platform like Squibler or Google Docs.

Ulysses has one Library for all of your documents, full version history of revisions, and the ability to strip away menu options for distraction-free writing. The downside is there are no templates and collaboration features. As a result, many writers may favorite it for note taking over using it as a novel writing software. These are a list of the best novel writing software which are sure to help you write your first novel that readers will fall in love with. The purpose of using these writing software and tools is to get organized, improve speed, and get things professionally done.

Download your favorite novel writing software form the list above, sign up for a free trial, explore their features, figure out how it will help you in the writing process, and if it turns out to be a decent match, switch to a premium plan.

The best novel writing software is Squibler. Squibler is a word processor with built in outlining and writing tools that are perfect for novel writers. It has the ability to compile all of your ideas into an easy-to-follow outline, which will help you stay on track as you write your book. It also comes with other features like brainstorming templates, comprehensive formatting options, research panels, and more.