Long story short: livingwriter is the best writing app out there right now.
It’s a daunting process trying to find the best writing apps for your books. To separate the useful from the useless, we’ve had to spend quality time with all of them. What we were looking for here was an app or software that helps you write. Not just something that checks your spelling, or turns off other apps to keep you focused. We’re talking about a full circle word processor (like Google Docs) that’s tailored to writing something more than just a document. Something like a book or screenplay.
With all the technology in the world, we were trying to figure out why that could be. We realized an all-encompassing app for writers would have to be built by a writer, but the cost of development would be tens of thousands of dollars, and most writers don’t have that kind of cash lying around. So for that reason, there are only a few writing apps that include everything you need for writing.
LivingWriter is actually new to the scene (2018). It seems like they gathered all the best features of the best writing apps and melded them all into one. LivingWriter made is our favorite writing app of 2021 because it has all the features (and more) of Scrivener with a really modern and clean user interface. It also tops Scrivener in its ability to live edit and share your stories with friends/editors and the fact that it’s a cloud-based application rather than a desktop one.
LivingWriter is not tailored for screenwriting, but it’s our top pick for writing novels and other books. It also works very well for organizing blog posts and other types of professional or school work.
Features
- Sidebar separates your chapters, subchapters, and story elements
- Drag and drop chapters and subchapters to reorganize
- Easy access, organization, and detailing of all your story elements (characters, themes, locations, etc)
- Detailing of story elements includes photos, description, notes, and history
- Smart Text Feature that recognizes your story elements and auto-suggests them as you type. This also hyperlinks the word to pull up all your notes and descriptions of the story element
- View and edit all of your notes and descriptions on the right sidebar
- Option to collapse sidebar for a full-screen view
- Import from Docx and Doc files
- The option to view all of your scenes and chapters on a “virtual corkboard”
- Pre loaded template of time tested novel writing outlines such as (Three Act Structure, 27 Beat Chapter Plotting, Dan Harmon’s Story Circle, etc) with easy guidance on how to fill them in with your ideas
- Share the whole story or separate chapters
- Live collaboration with anyone you share your story with
- Auto save every keystroke to the cloud with exponential storage and backup
- Revision history saved every few 10 minutes
- Name each revision history
- Export to Amazon manuscript templates, PDF, docx
Pros
- The cleanest interface of all the writing apps with the most user-friendly (modern) UI UX design
- Easy free trial and sign up process. There’s no downloading a program, you just sign in and start
- Feature dense for writing books with smart text, outline templates, story elements, etc.
- Cloud-based and autosave every keystroke
- Easy live collaboration with anyone you share your story with
Cons
- Not tailored to screenwriting.
- Only available on Web, iOS and Android. Their desktop won’t be out until February 2021.
To Recap
If you’re looking for a writing app that has all the bells and whistles of Scrivener in a nice and clean package, look no further than LivingWriter. If you’re looking for book writing software in general and are still using Word – you’ve got to try it! It’s tailored to novelists and authors and you’ll love the organization, world-building and goal setting features it has to offer.
Pricing
LivingWriter is free for 14 days, no credit card required – so I’d suggest you give that a shot first to see if it’s to your liking. After the 14 day free trial LivingWriter is $9.99 a month. Which is reasonable, at least in my opinion, because the folks over there seem to update their application every week. All upgrades, features and enhancements are free forever.
