Novelist

I’m normally a pantser but this app made it easy to create my own save the cat outline templates and then just write scene by scene. This is the fastest I’ve ever finished a first draft for a book. Bonus points that it’s free. I would have paid for a pro writing aid integrated version. I thought it used to have that but now they only have the free version. No obnoxious ads either. It’s an amazing app.

I find this app to be highly useful for my second large book project of my life, and I love the fact that I can “push” my updated novel and its intricacies to the cloud so I can write on my IPhone or my IPad Pro whenever I switch from one to the other and all my updated writing material is ready to continue. Makes novel-writing easy for me, as I don’t always have the ideal writing situation, sometimes when I’m at the doctors office or at lunch, or in the comfort of my home. Perfect for those on the go, and who isn’t these days? Thank you thank you!

I will say, this app is one of the best free apps for writing. You have all the basics and some advanced stuff, truly you could write a whole novel if you wanted to. I hope it stays free!!!

Let me first say that this app is incredible, I love it and use it everyday to write my book. The fact that it’s free and easy to use is awesome. The only thing I had about it is there’s no easy way to share your work with anyone, or maybe there is and I’m missing it but I don’t know. If there is let me know, if not it’s okay I’m still going to use this app it’s perfect, but that would be a cool feature to add.

I feel like this app would be great if it wasn’t so confusing. I have been trying to figure out how to use this app for a few days now but I still don’t know how to use it. I have tried to find tutorials but they are all confusing 😣. It would be great if you could make a less confusing tutorial. My dad was also confused. But I see all of the good reviews, so I am dying to learn how to use the app, thank you.

First I want to say I actually love this app but it still needs a few fixes. Otherwise this has quickly become my favorite writing app, it has everything I look for in organizing and tracking my stories and it’s laid out in such an easily usable way. It’s simplistic but perfect in that way. However, in the writing part of this app, the select tool is really frustrating. If you choose a word and try to edit in that spot, it instead edits a different word. It takes a lot of messing around with it to get it to recognize the actual place you want to edit, but that’s really the only fault I’ve found in this app. So I might do my writing using different software but keep this app for organization and plot management.

Powerful character and item customization functions,exactly what I need.

Underated. It is very good. The ui is visually pleasing, the gestures are intuitive, and the fact that it’s free is unbelievable. The ability to tag things, as well as relationships was very useful. As was the ability to pick colors and a picture thumbnail, making things stand out more. I also like how you can’t just accidentally delete things by swiping and have to actually click inside the three dots to delete them. If you have google drive, you can push the books to and pull them from google drive so that changes are cloud synced. Alternatively, you can actually make this sync everywhere. First of all, get the one drive or drop box or whatever cloud app you want. Next, go to files and keep going back until you reach browse. It should show a bunch of things like on my drive, icloud, recently deleted. If one drive/dropbox/whatever else is not visible, tap the three dots on the top right, hit edit, and then enable it so that it is. Now, whenever you are inside your book in the novelist app, hit the three dots, hit backup, and then in files navigate to where your cloud is and to the folder in your cloud that you want it. It should save the backup as a .nov folder on the cloud. Novelist has a progressive web app, meaning you can access it on any device that supports it online. So on another device, you can hit the 3 dots and hit restore backup, and then upload your cloud backup of your edited book.

Does not support hand writing with the Apple Pencil in text sections, only in note sections. otherwise the app is excellent for writing a novel.

I’ve been a writer for 20+ years. I’m constantly looking at new apps to speed up my process. This is by far the best tool for working on long format fiction I’ve ever used. And I’ve used all the big expensive apps. I still use drafts, and absolutely love it, but this is an entirely different animal. This takes all of the complexity of creating a world for fiction and makes it positively smooth! And, no ads! No In-App purchases!! If you’ve struggled to complete a novel, this app could change that forever.