Planning, overview, progress bar, drag/drop scenes and chapters, summarize and plug in scenes you don’t want to write yet. ( those little blighters can be a pain the neck apparently … LOL)Ĭan you list the top 5 advantages to using yWriter when starting a new novel? You’re trying to drive them through a little gate and instead the little blighters run every which way. Keeping track of everything! Seriously, if once you hit the 25,000-40,000 word mark your novel turns into a gang of hyped-up guinea pigs. If there was 1 reason to recommend this program to writers, what would it be? ( ok, so how many of you have had this problem! What about all those little subplot twists, or the description of someone who changes, but you need to find all the instances in your novel … augh) I had my novel in a long Doc file and I couldn’t keep track of everything.

Here is an example of what yWriter looks like. For the characters – everything you know about them can be saved in their profile. I go back and look all the time to make sure I have all the details right. ( but I strongly recommend that you do … I have a picture of the house that is a main setting saved in this. There are other features like character and location records, but you don’t have to use them. For example, instead of having a long Doc file with your novel in, yWriter keeps it in chapters and scenes.

There are programs out there which make wild claims about writing your novel for you, but yWriter is simple an organizational tool. It’s project management software for authors. Several people have asked for more information on this program, and since I’m fairly new to it still who better to share with you the program than the creator itself! I had the privilege of interviewing Simon Hayes, the creator of yWriter and other fabulous programs. >In a recent post I mentioned a program that I am using for my latest novel.

Ywriter for mac computer