Tabularia compared with NovelPad

Where the two agree

Revision is an afterthought in most writing software. NovelPad does not treat it as one, and neither does Tabularia. Both hold that the hard part of writing a novel is the second, fifth and ninth passes through it, and both are built so that a large change does not feel like a risk: NovelPad has snapshots of the whole novel, formatting-aware diffs, and multiple takes of a scene kept side by side; Tabularia has drafts, markup mode and snapshots. Both also let you keep your work, on your own device.

Where they part

NovelPad organizes a book into scenes and gives you boards to arrange them on. Revision happens against that structure: you compare versions of a scene, or follow a plot line across the board.

Tabularia revises inside the manuscript itself, which stays one continuous typeset composition throughout. A draft is an alternative version of any part of that composition, cut to whatever the change covers rather than to a scene. When you merge it back you can work through the differences one at a time, with the surrounding writing still on the page, or take them all at once.

The other difference is what you can see. The minimap holds your position in a book-length draft, and the page is typeset as a book while you write on, down to the drop caps and the folios. Threads run through it, each marker fastened to the passage that carries it, so you can read one strand on its own and see where it actually turns.

Rearranging and color-coding

NovelPad sets a book's chapters out side by side in columns, and dragging a scene card from one column to another moves the scene.

Tabularia does the same thing in a vertical list. Drag a row in the Outline and the chapter or scene moves, prose and all; a scene dropped on a different chapter goes into it. Down in the timeline drawer, the Outline lane lets you drag sideways as well.

Both color-code with labels, and both let a scene carry several. What differs is how many you can see. A NovelPad card's border shows one color at a time. An Outline row divides its left rail into a band per label, so a scene that is on two threads and needs a pass says all three at a glance.

Plot lines on a board, and in the prose

NovelPad's plot boards set each plot line out as a column of scene cards, and one scene can stand in several columns at once. It shows clearly which scenes carry a thread. What a card cannot show is where in the scene the thread turns, because the card is the whole scene.

The timeline drawer in Tabularia works at the level of the sentence. Each marker is fastened to a point or a passage in the prose; choosing one scrolls the page to the words it holds, and when those words are rewritten or moved it travels with them. The drawer opens beneath the page rather than in place of it, so the strand and the writing are on screen together.

Why to switch

NovelPad arranges a project as a sequence of scenes on a board that you then write against. Its current version keeps the novel on your own machine and works offline, as Tabularia does, and it is sold three ways: the desktop application as a one-time license, a subscription that adds sync and sharing, or a lifetime license that includes two years of sync.

It is ahead in places. Two people can edit the same novel at once. It notices the characters, places and objects a scene mentions, nicknames included, without being told. Its goals take a deadline, keep a streak, and plan around sprints and vacations.

Switch if you want to revise inside the manuscript and still get anywhere in it fast. An anchor on the paragraph you keep coming back to is a destination that survives every rewrite, and find lights each match on the Minimap, showing how a name is spread through the book before you jump to one. When a pass is about one thread, pin it as your Working Scope and the page closes up around those passages alone. None of this slows down as the novel grows, because the page does the work of what is in view.

You also see the book typeset while you write it. NovelPad leaves print layout to another application, and its own site sends you to Atticus for it. Tabularia also dresses the workspace more than one way: where NovelPad comes light or dark, there are six light Papers, seven dark Inks, and thirteen Pigments that tint the whole interface.

Downloading from NovelPad

Export the novel from NovelPad as an EPUB. Each of its chapter files becomes a Chapter in the same order, and the title and author come from the book's own metadata.

A .docx works too, and NovelPad lets you export one even after a trial or a subscription has ended; its Heading 1 paragraphs become the Chapters instead. The boards and the codex have no route across, so carry the characters and places you still use into Sheets by hand.