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What is yWriter?

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.

Who designed it?

I'm Simon Haynes, the designer and programmer. Because I'm an experienced programmer AND a published author, yWriter contains a bunch of tools a working novelist will find useful, but you won't find any features some marketing expert dreamed up just because they sounded cool.

yWriter may look simple, but as the author of almost thirty novels written with this tool I guarantee it has everything needed to get a first draft together. Without yWriter, I would never have become a published author.

What's so special about yWriter?

As a programmer I'm used to dealing with projects broken into source files and modules, and I never lose track of my code. I decided to apply the same working method to my novels ... and yWriter was the result. Your work is broken down into chapters and scenes, and you can drag and drop them around to reorganise your novel.

I realise Word, OpenOffice and other modern word processors have outlining features, but they don't have snapshot backups to sequential files like yWriter does. Roll back scenes to where they were half an hour ago, or re-read a version from four months ago - yWriter stores them all, automatically.

Video Tutorials/Feature rundowns:

In English (K.M. Weiland)

In German (Robert Corvus)

Why focus on scenes instead of chapters?

A scene is a pleasant chunk to work on - small and well-defined, you can slot them into your novel, dragging and dropping them from one chapter to another as you interleave strands from different viewpoint characters and work out the overall flow of your book. You can also mark a scene as 'unused' if you've written yourself into a dead end, which will keep it out of the word count and exports without deleting the content.

yWriter is a standalone application which runs on Windows PCs and MacOS. It doesn't need or use an internet connection, and all data is stored on your own computer. The only time it uses the internet is if you use the inbuilt 'check for update' routine (in which case yWriter simply checks the latest version number from spacejock.com), or the 'backup to ftp' feature (in which case you have to provide the server address and login details.)

Best of all, yWriter is free.

You won't pay anything to download yWriter, and my software contains no adverts, unwanted web toolbars, desktop search programs or other cruft. You can register your copy to encourage me to keep working on the software, but this is optional.

yWriter Support

You'll find the yWriter facebook page here.

The yWriter Google Groupis here

Feature list:

Organise your novel using a project.
Add chapters to the project.
Add scenes, characters, items and locations.
Display the word count for every file in the project, along with a total.
Saves a log file every day, showing words per file and the total. (Tracks your progress)
Saves automatic backups at user-specified intervals.
Allows multiple scenes within chapters
Viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome fields for each scene.
Multiple characters per scene.
Storyboard view, a visual layout of your work.
Re-order scenes within chapters.
Drag and drop of chapters, scenes, characters, items and locations.
Automatic chapter renumbering.
... And many more

Users of earlier versions: You can install later versions (e.g. yWriter 4 and 5) at the same time as versions 2 and/or 3, and each version of yWriter has an importer which will read in any earlier yWriter project, right back to yWriter 2. The only thing you can't do is re-export your project back into very old versions. yWriter5, 6 and 7 can all load and save yWriter 5, 6 and 7 project files, converting between them as you wish.

Every major version of yWriter uses different installation folders and start menu entries, and they won't interfere with each other.

Are you upgrading from yWriter5 or 6?
YW5 and YW6 projects load and save from yWriter7 just fine. No importing, no converting.

When you install ywriter7 it goes into a new folder and uses its own settings. If you want to keep all your ywriter6 settings, you will have the option to import them on first startup.

However, if you double-click a YW5 or YW6 file it may still open in ywriter5 or 6. Just be sure to tick 'associate .yw5 files' when installing yWriter7.

Categories:

Free writing software

Novel writing software