Best Writing Software for Windows

Plottr

Plottr lets you easily arrange (and rearrange) your scenes, plots, and character arcs so you can quickly find your way to the end of your tale — no corkboard required. Plottr automatically generates a clean outline of your story for you to review, edit, and export as the basis of your manuscript. You don’t have to start from scratch. Plottr comes with over a dozen templates (and counting) based on proven storytelling structures to help move your story from idea to execution. The fun is just beginning. Once you've finished outlining your story, Plottr makes it easy to start writing — just export your files and let your creative muscles get to work!

338 Ratings

Starting Price: $15

View Software

Visit Website

SSuite Penumbra Editor

SSuite Office Software

SSuite Penumbra is a full featured word editor that creates rich text documents to make writing documents more convenient, efficient, and comfortable. Penumbra is an original free software application that is capable of running on any operating system. You also don't have any unnecessary functions and features hogging all your precious computer resources or overwhelming the screen like other bloated word processors. This makes it run extremely fast, is soft and gentle on the eyes (pleasantly colourful interface), and very easy to use without slowing your computer down to a crawl. SSuite Penumbra has also been designed to fit your screen more efficiently to create the correct proportions for your eyes. There is no more squinting or moving closer to the monitor to see what button or heading you are currently viewing on higher resolution monitors. New Online edition: https://carbon.ssuiteoffice.com/ Requires: . 1366x768 Display Size . Windows XP / 7 / 8 / 10 - 32bit & 64bit

Starting Price: Free

View Software

SSuite WordGraph Editor

SSuite Office Software

SSuite WordGraph is a free and very useful alternative to Microsoft's Word, OpenOffice's Writer, or anything else out there claiming to be the latest and greatest. You don't even have a need for .NET or even JAVA to be installed. This will save you a lot of hard drive space and precious computer resources. Use WordGraph for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book with embedded illustrations, tables of contents, indexes, and bibliographies. WordGraph is a complete and powerful software solution for creating, editing and viewing various types of documents. You can create simple or highly structured documents include graphics, tables, charts, and insert spreadsheets you created. A number of available features give you a fine degree of control over the formatting of text, pages, sections of documents, and also entire documents. Desktop, Portable, and Online Editions Available. Read the "Read Me" document first! Requires: 1024x768 Display Size

Starting Price: Free

View Software

Canva

Design anything. Publish anywhere. Use Canva’s drag-and-drop feature and professional layouts to design consistently stunning graphics. Design presentations, social media graphics with thousands of beautiful forms, over 100 million stock photos, video and audio, and all the tools you need for unique designs. Design with millions of stock photographs, vectors, and illustrations. You can even upload your own. Edit your photos using preset filters or get advanced with photo editing tools; you’ll never be stuck for choice. Use icons, shapes, and elements with ease. Choose from thousands of parts for your designs, or upload your own. Access everything you need to make a fantastic design for your creative needs. Use Canva Teams to support your company and foster collaboration on projects without having to switch apps. Canva integrates into all major CRM, social media, and management platforms. Magic Write in Canva Docs is your very own AI text generator.

84 Ratings

Starting Price: $12.99 per month

View Software

Microsoft Word

Microsoft

Collaborate with others without ever leaving your document or jot down an idea with your digital pen. Need to publish a newsletter or document for others to see? Easily transform your Word document into a webpage. Collaborate with others across the globe. Translate documents in your non-native language with just a click. Get creative by inserting 3D models directly in your document. Have your content read back to you with Learning Tools and easily catch any mistakes. Finding great sources just got simpler. Use Researcher to read articles in the task pane so you can stay focused on your writing. When you’re brushing up your document, it’s good to see the big picture. The Editor Overview Pane helps you find and fix any proofing issues.

16 Ratings

Starting Price: $9.99 per month

View Software

Write! App

Write! is an elegant workspace to create notes, to-do lists, writing projects and texts of any kind. It has all features of a good word processor packed into a clutter-free interface. Writing tools like configurable autocomplete, intelligent spellchecker, unlimited Ctrl+Z and productivity counters will improve your productivity. Your work will flow smoothly with the help of minimalist writing interface. Your documents will never ever be lost again. You can use Write! on any computer and continue writing from the point you left. You can store unlimited number of documents at no additional cost. Easily manage any writing project structuring it in tabs, Sessions and folders. Switching between writing sessions changes the group of tabs you are working on, allowing you to quickly change the context. Publish documents to the web with a unique URL and share a link to it via email or to social media. When you make changes to a shared document, they are immediately updated online.

1 Rating

Starting Price: $24.95

View Software

OmmWriter

herraizsoto&co.

OmmWriter is a tool which makes it easier for you to concentrate. Based on a natural setting, it effectively insulates your mind from distractions and sets up a direct line between your thoughts and your words. As if you were alone, you'll hear your inner voice clearer than ever and you'll be able to delve deeper into your creative process. OmmWriter opens up in full-screen mode, so nothing disrupts your creative process. An ideal setting for focusing solely on your words, thanks to its minimalist design and its having only the basic functions required for your writing. It feels as though each word flows from you naturally. Enjoying the plenitude of the structure when inspiration and creativity have come knocking at your door. Each and every element in OmmWriter is designed to stimulate your creativity. Create the ideal setting for you by selecting from among the different environments, music and typefaces. To maintain your concentration and inspire your state of mind.

1 Rating

Starting Price: $6.11

View Software

Mark Text

Mark Text is an MIT licensed open source project, you will always be able to download the latest version from GitHub release page. Mark Text is still in development, and its development is inseparable from all sponsors. Support GFM table block, you can remove/add rows and columns. Support flowchart, sequence diagram, gantt diagram, vega chart. Support CommonMark and GitHub Flavored Markdown Spec. Realtime preview (WYSIWYG) and a clean and simple interface to get a distraction-free writing experience. Markdown extensions such as math expressions (KaTeX), front matter and emojis. Support paragraphs and inline style shortcuts to improve your writing efficiency. Paste images directly from clipboard.

1 Rating

View Software

Etherpad

Etherpad allows you to edit documents collaboratively in real-time, much like a live multi-player editor that runs in your browser. Write articles, press releases, to-do lists, etc. together with your friends, fellow students or colleagues, all working on the same document at the same time. All instances provide access to all data through a well-documented API and support import/export to many major data exchange formats. And if the built-in feature set isn't enough for you, there's tons of plugins that allow you to customize your instance to suit your needs. You don't need to set up a server and install Etherpad in order to use it. Just pick one of the publicly available instances that friendly people from everywhere around the world have set up. Etherpad is an open source project.

1 Rating

View Software

Scrivener

Literature & Latte

Typewriter. Ring-binder. Scrapbook. Scrivener combines all the tools you need to craft your first draft, from nascent notion to final full stop. Scrivener is the go-to app for writers of all kinds, used every day by best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more. Scrivener won't tell you how to write—it simply provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing. Tailor-made for long writing projects, Scrivener banishes page fright by allowing you to compose your text in any order, in sections as large or small as you like. Got a great idea but don't know where it fits? Write when inspiration strikes and find its place later. Grow your manuscript organically, idea by idea. Whether you plan or plunge, Scrivener works your way: hammer out every last detail before typing a word, or carve out a draft and restructure later. Or mix your methods and do a bit of both.

3 Ratings

Starting Price: $49 one-time fee

View Software

WordPad

Microsoft

WordPad is a basic text-editing app you can use to create and edit files, include text with different fonts and colors, insert pictures, and add links to other files. You can use WordPad to open and save text files (.txt), rich text files (.rtf), Word documents (.docx), and OpenDocument text files (.odt). Files in other formats will open as plain text files and might not appear as expected. Some features, like headers, footers, and annotations, aren’t supported in WordPad. If you open a file with these features and then save the file in WordPad, you’ll lose the content in these features. If you want to change such a file, but don’t want to lose the original content, tap or click Save as and save the file with a different name. That way you can make changes to a copy of the file while keeping the content in the original file intact. For more info about what each button does, press and hold the button for a description (or if you’re using a mouse, point to the button).

3 Ratings

View Software

Calmly Writer

Traditional word processors include dozens of options for formatting text, distracting you from what really matters, writing. Calmly Writer is an editor designed to focus on what you want to tell, with a simple, unobtrusive, and easy-to-use user interface. Calmly Writer has been designed to help you focus on writing. As you start typing, all the distracting options disappear from the user interface. The "focus mode" option highlights only the paragraph you are editing at the time. Format your text simply by selecting and clicking on the desired style. If you prefer, you can also do it with keyboard shortcuts or markdown. As long as you do not close a document tab, that document will be opened every time you start the application. If the document was not saved, its backup will be loaded. Calmly Writer displays the number of words and characters written, and allows you to set a target. You can choose between light, dark, dark blue, dune and old-school mode.

2 Ratings

Starting Price: $11.45 one-time payment

View Software

WhiteSmoke

WhiteSmoke Writing Solution. We produce an all-in-one English writing tool that provides grammar, spelling, punctuation and style checks. Our software is activated in a single click from any text application and browser, pointing out potential errors for consideration and offering suggestions for improvement. We believe that users that have little or no experience with WhiteSmoke software can use our solution to quickly begin writing, editing, translating and enhancing their English documents. WhiteSmoke renders you with the highest quality proofreading abilities available, correcting not only simple spelling mistakes like old-fashioned word processors but everything from grammar, word choices and even style mistakes, all without breaking a sweat. Grammar plays an important role in what kind of impression you give.

Starting Price: $6.59/month/user

View Software

LivingWriter

Start your book, plot your book, write your book, organize your book, and export it for publishing all in one place. Simple drag and drop organization for all your chapters, subchapter, and elements. LivingWriter stores your story elements and suggests them as you type. Organize your story with time-tested outlines used by best-selling authors. Spend less time organizing and planning. Spend more time growing your ideas into books. Order and reorder your chapters and story elements without the hassle of copying and pasting. Jot down your chapter notes quickly on the sidebar. Everything on one screen means never leaving your story. We don't believe in reinventing the wheel, but we're fans of greasing it a bit. You can now use the same outlines used in world-famous stories and movies right in LivingWriter. We'll lead you through each step with detailed guidance. No other writing app out there will do that for you.

Starting Price: $8.99 per month

View Software

Effie

7S2P Inc.

Effie, a light, clean yet powerful mind mapping and writing software for Mac, iOS, Windows. Features: All your work is in one place and within reach. So there’s no confusing file management. Autosave and sync all your work in the cloud, so you can access anything from anywhere. An immersive writing environment to keep you away from distractions. One tap to convert an unordered list into a mind map, and vice versa. Edits on the unordered list will be synced with a mind map, saving you from jumping the hoops from one app to another. Flexible export to a PDF, DOCX, Markdown, EffieSheet, and JPEG file. Simplified markup language allows you to finish your writing without lifting your fingers away from the keyboard. Markup Insight panel woken by a “/” makes it much easier to use the markup language. You can choose to write in the dark or light theme, whichever drives your creativity and productivity. Different styles are available for your mind maps. Built with native code.

Starting Price: $4.99/month

View Software

Dabble

Dabble is an easy-to-use online writing tool, packed with helpful features that allows beginning novelists and published authors to create amazing stories. Dabble organizes your manuscript, story notes, and plot. Dabble simplifies story, leaving more room in your brain to create, which is what being a writer is really about. If you’re sick of using sticky notes, plotting on a piece of paper, and using elementary word processors, then you’re going to love Dabble. Dabble was created for two reasons - Simplicity and organization. Other tools are either way too complicated and require a course to teach you how to use them...or too elementary lacking basic tools and organization. That's where Dabble shines! Shape your story with Dabble’s unique plotting tool. Plot like J.K. Rowling. Dabble provides a plot grid, plot lines (subplots), and plot points (the events in your subplots) to supercharge your plotting.

Starting Price: $5 per month

View Software

iA Writer

iA

Get focused. The simple, award-winning design of iA Writer delivers the essential writing experience. Used by half a million people worldwide, its minimal interface is crafted to cut out noise. It’s just you, your thoughts, and the words on the page. No rulers, no formatting bars. iA Writer provides the crisp, uncluttered environment you need to write well, supported by discrete, powerful features, from content blocks, to syntax highlighting. Focus is the key to good writing, and the guiding principle behind iA Writer. With shortcuts and simplified settings, you can keep your hands on the keyboard and your mind in the text. We think every craftsperson should own their own tools, so when you download iA Writer, you own it. No forced subscriptions, microtransactions, or compatibility concerns. Your work, your files, your app.

Starting Price: $29.99 per license

View Software

PageFour

Bad Wolf Software

In December 2017 we released PageFour as free software. We did this because it is no longer under development and no new versions will be released. It’s now available as-is for anyone to download, install and use at no cost. You do not need a license key. All you need to do is download the software by clicking the button below, and run the installation program. PageFour is Windows software and will run on most Windows operating systems. Organize your work in a way that suits you. Place your character summaries and plot outlines wherever you wish. Chapters and notes are all at your fingertips. PageFour's powerful Search tool helps you quickly find that paragraph you wrote last week. No more Windows Search, or frantically opening document after document. Password protects those sensitive pages or chapters. Spell-checker dictionaries are available in many languages, including German, French, Spanish, etc.

Starting Price: Free

View Software

Typora

Typora gives you a seamless experience as both a reader and a writer. It removes the preview window, mode switcher, syntax symbols of markdown source code, and all other unnecessary distractions. Instead, it provides a real live preview feature to help you concentrate on the content itself. Typora allows you to manage your files easily, providing both file tree panel and articles (file list) side panel, allows you to manage your files easily. Organize your files your way, including putting in sync services, like Dropbox or iCloud. Automatically see the Outline structure of your documents in outline panel, which allows you to quickly go through the document and jump to any section with one click. Export to PDF with bookmarks. Go further and export or import. More formats, including docx, OpenOffice, LaTeX, MediaWiki, Epub, etc, can be exported or imported. See how large your document is in words, characters, lines, or reading minutes.

View Software

bibisco

bibisco is a novel writing software that helps you to write your novel, in a simple way. Organize chapters and scenes, manage revisions, export novel in pdf, docx, epub. Write with a fully-featured text editor also in distraction free mode. Create a novel structure, define premise, fabula, narrative strands and settings: geographic, temporal and social context. Design characters, locations, objects useful for the development of the story. Attach their images and keep an eye on them while writing. Analyze chapters' length, time and locations in which characters appear, their distribution across chapters, see your entire novel in a timeline. Characters that are completely good or completely evil are stereotypes and therefore are not believable. bibisco is the novel writing software that helps you to know everything about your characters, in an unusual and funny way: an interview!

View Software

WritePro

The New WritePro® is an updated and improved version of the original highly acclaimed WritePro® which has over 100,000 users in 38 countries. It contains changes that another 20 years of experience brought to the program's author, Sol Stein, along with technological improvements that have become possible with newer programming languages like Java®. Java has allowed us to keep the program small so that it is highly transportable and easily delivered via the internet, and it makes our program compatible with every modern PC. We have kept WritePro simple so anyone can use it and benefit from its unparalleled expertise. WritePro® contains the guidance that you need to become your own best editor and to truly gain an understanding of the craft of writing. The original WritePro® is being used successfully by many tens of thousands of writers in all 50 states and in 38 countries.

View Software

Notepad

Microsoft

Notepad has been the fast and simple text editor on Windows for over 30 years, and now it’s available in the Microsoft Store! View, edit, and search through plain text documents and source code files instantly. Edit text-based files and source code instantly. Customize your view with font options. Save in multiple encodings including UTF-8, UTF-16, and ANSI. For Windows 10 version 19541.0 or higher. Notepad offers only the most basic text manipulation functions, such as finding and replacing text. Until Windows ME, there were almost no keyboard shortcuts and no line-counting feature. Starting with Windows 2000, shortcuts for common commands like "New", "Open", and "Save" were added, as well as a status bar with a line counter (available only when word-wrap is disabled.) Notepad can print files. It allows customizing headers, footers, and margins before printing. The date, file name, and other information can be placed in the headers and footers with various codes.

View Software

SmartEdit Pro

SmartEdit

SmartEdit Pro is an expanded version of the SmartEdit for Word Add-In. It contains a number of extra features of use to professional editors. We define a professional editor as someone who edits the work of various different writers, often working on multiple books from assorted writers. SmartEdit Pro contains report-generating capabilities that allow you to generate Word and PDF reports based on the results generated by SmartEdit, as well as full report printing functionality. It also allows you to create Projects (one for each writer, book, or genré of the book), and to apply different rules to these projects when running SmartEdit checks. The SmartEdit pro menu toolbar contains all the buttons and options you might be familiar with from SmartEdit for Word, along with the “create report” and “projects” sections. A trial version of SmartEdit Pro is not available, but sample reports are shown and linked for you to download and examine.

Starting Price: $139.95 one-time payment

View Software

Zettlr

Writing is an essential part of our everyday life. Why make it complicated? Zettlr redefines what writing means. It is slim, fast, and versatile. Focus on what matters to you. Publish, not perish. In modern times, getting a hold of the flood of information is almost as hard as inserting a USB drive the right way on the first attempt. Zettlr allows you to connect pieces of information using state of the art Zettelkasten methodology. And the best is: Unlike many competitors, Zettlr never locks you in. Zettlr supports almost every conceivable way to create links and identify your files. In other words: No matter where you come from — all Zettelkästen are beautiful and supported by Zettlr. Out of the box. Due to its designing flexibility, Zettlr supports dark mode out of the box, as well as many different themes, suited to your needs. Switching is as easy as pressing a button.

View Software

yWriter

Spacejock Software

yWriter is a word processor which breaks your novel into chapters and scenes, helping you keep track of your work while leaving your mind free to create. It will not write your novel for you, suggest plot ideas or perform creative tasks of any kind. yWriter was designed by an author, not a salesman! yWriter7 is free to download and use, but you're encouraged to register your copy if you find it useful. If you're just embarking on your first novel a program like yWriter may seem like overkill. I mean, all you have to do is type everything into a word processor! Sure, but wait until you hit 20,000 words, with missing scenes and chapters, notes all over your desk, characters and locations and plot points you've just added and which need to be referenced earlier ... it becomes a real struggle. Now imagine that same novel at 40,000 or 80,000 words! No wonder most first-time writers give up.

View Software

Script Studio

Plan your story beat by beat, drag 'n' drop scenes or chapters to re-organize your narrative, and color-code your structure. Let Script Studio professionally format your script as you type to industry standard so you can focus on the story. Create in-depth three-dimensional character profiles, analyze dialogue and develop their story arcs step by step. View scene-by-scene breakdowns and analyses of successful Hollywood movies like Die Hard and compare your story structure with the pros. Keep track of character ideas, plot points, draft script scenes and research, and build a checklist of story objectives. International text support for diacritics and right-to-left scripts. Script Studio was developed by a produced screenwriter and its intuitive and unique design helps you break your story down into sequences so you can build your script or novel step by step, chapter by chapter or scene by scene.

View Software

WriteMonkey

Writemonkey is a Windows zenware writing application with an extremely stripped down user interface, leaving you alone with your thoughts and your words. It is light, fast and free. With an array of innovative tools under the hood and full Markdown support, it helps you write better. This version features new language tools and can run even more cool plugins. Plugins are locked and will only work with a writemonkey donor key. Donors will receive a key (via e-mail) which will enable personalized name tag in splash screen and access to many plugins that are available as separate download. Full-screen editing, get free from your computer and its distractions. Writemonkey's full-screen mode hides it all away leaving just you and your text behind. Do more with less! Just copy files and directories in any folder on your machine, Writemonkey is very fast and responsive. The main executable is less than 1,6 MB in size.

View Software

Draft

You don't need writing software; you need someone's feedback on your writing. You don't need version control software; you need to find all the things you've written without fear. You don't need distraction free text editors; you need to find ways to write more concisely, more clearly. You don't need real time collaboration software; you need a bigger audience for your writing. We're working on Draft to provide what you need. When I share a Google Doc, collaborators overwrite my master copy. It's insanely difficult to accept individual changes they've made. However, when you share your document using Draft, any changes your collaborator makes are on their own copy of the document, and you get to accept or ignore each individual change they make. With Draft, as you go along, you can mark major versions of your work. When you want to compare your old drafts, you have a powerful view to see how your document changed over time.

View Software

ghostwriter

Enjoy a distraction-free writing experience, including a full screen mode and a clean interface. With Markdown, you can write now, and format later. The built-in light and dark themes provide an aesthetic writing experience out of the box. If the these are not enough, you can create your very own! Preview your Markdown document in HTML. With the live preview, you can copy the HTML to paste into your blog, or export to another format. The live preview is optimized for large documents, so you can work carefree without worrying about the application freezing as you type. In addition to displaying a live word count at the bottom of the window, ghostwriter displays even more live statistics in its Document Statistics and Session Statistics sidebar tabs. Easily create image URLs within your Markdown document by dragging and dropping an image from your file system into ghostwriter's editor.

View Software

JotterPad

From reed and papyrus to pen to keyboard, to now our smartphones, our way of writing has evolved. With JotterPad, you can make your writing process streamlined, fluid, flexible, and highly personalized to writers of all kinds, Regardless of whether you’re an aspiring novelist, screenplay writer, journalist, or blogger. Equipped with a versatile editor, JotterPad supports both Markdown and Fountain syntax and has a “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) element. For beginners, you are able to change from plain text to rich text format with a simple click or highlight. For experienced users, you will find it more convenient to write by using syntax. Additionally, with the WYSIWYG element, you will get a better representation of the final outcome and look of your work. JotterPad is the only writing assistant you’ll ever need. Search up word definitions, synonyms, and antonyms with our built-in dictionary and Thesaurus.

View Software

Compare the Top Writing Software for Windows as of December 2024

What is Writing Software for Windows?

Plottr

SSuite Penumbra Editor

SSuite WordGraph Editor

Canva

Microsoft Word

Write! App

OmmWriter

Mark Text

Etherpad

Scrivener

WordPad

Calmly Writer

WhiteSmoke

LivingWriter

Effie

Dabble

iA Writer

PageFour

Typora

bibisco

WritePro

Notepad

SmartEdit Pro

Zettlr

yWriter

Script Studio

WriteMonkey

Draft

ghostwriter

JotterPad