Word alternatives for writing your book

You cannot find your way around the manuscript

The Navigation Pane lists your chapters as long as every title carries a heading style. A scene with no title of its own never appears there, so it is only ever more paragraphs to scroll past.

• Scrivener — A Binder that holds every scene as a document of its own.
• NovelPad — Scene cards in chapter columns.
• Storyist — Index cards beside the manuscript, on Apple devices.

You would rather not pay for it every year

Word usually comes as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription. These cost nothing, or are bought once.

• Google Docs — Free in the browser, though a long novel can make it lag.
• Reedsy Studio — Free in the browser, with the formatting chosen at export.
• NEO — A free, open-source desktop app for novelists.
• Scrivener — A license you pay for once and keep.

Your versions and tracked changes are piling up

A novel goes through round after round of revision. In Word each round tends to leave another copy of the file behind, and another layer of tracked changes inside it.

• Google Docs — One live document, with suggestions and a revision history.
• Ellipsus — Branching drafts of a document, with comments and chat beside it.
• Dabble — A co-author can join the project, on a subscription of their own.

You want room to plan the story

Word has a page for the prose. It has nowhere to keep a character, a subplot, or the shape of the book.

• Plottr — Timelines and a series bible, kept apart from where you write.
• Novelcrafter — A Codex for the facts of your story, and drafting help from a model you choose.
• bibisco — Questions about your characters, asked before you start.

You are formatting your book for publishing

Literary agents often want a Word file, so you may keep Word for submissions and still want something else for the published edition. A print layout can be done in Word from a template; these make it their main job.

• Vellum — Print and ebook files from a finished manuscript, on a Mac.
• Atticus — Writing and formatting together in the browser, out to PDF and EPUB.

Reasons to stay with Word

Everyone you send the book to can open it. Track Changes is how most professional editing is still done, and you may already know the program better than anything you would move to. If one thing has gone wrong, try fixing it before you leave:

• Word freezes on my long manuscript
• Moving chapters around in Word
• Word AutoSave replaced a chapter with an older version

And Tabularia

Leaving Word does not mean leaving the Word file, which matters because so much of publishing still runs on it. Tabularia imports a .docx with its comments, and exports one whenever an agent or a collaborator asks for it. In between, your book is one manuscript that stays quick however long it runs.

Finding your way around it takes no second file. The Outline reads its chapters and scenes straight from the text, so there is nothing to keep in step, and the Minimap shows where the page you are on sits in the whole. An anchor takes you back to a passage you will need again. Working Scope narrows everything to the chapter or scene in front of you.

There is no subscription to write. The whole writing application is on the Free plan, with nothing about your writing metered, and you pay only if you want the Cloud plan for online backup, your book on every device you write on, and sharing it for review. Versions do not pile up as copies. A rewrite you are unsure of goes into a draft, which you fold into the manuscript a difference at a time or all at once, and a collaborator's changes come home the same way.

Sheets keep characters and places beside the page. Each thread of the plot can have a timeline whose markers sit on the passages that carry it, which keeps the plan honest through every rewrite. When you plan first, a story shape lays out the acts and chapters for you.

Every page is typeset as a book while you write, and the PDF it exports is ready to upload as a paperback interior. When all you want is the words, Focus Mode at the middle of the Compass clears the rest away. The Word comparison goes through the move.