YWriter free for PC, Mac, iOS, Android APK

yWriter transforms the way you tackle large writing projects like novels. Traditional word processors can be cumbersome, forcing you to save your work in unwieldy single documents or disjointed chapter files. yWriter offers a seamless solution by allowing you to organize your project into distinct folders, each containing neatly divided chapters. But it's more than a writing tool; yWriter also lets you store detailed notes on characters, locations, items, and scenes, enriching your storytelling.

What is yWriter?

yWriter is a specialized word processor designed by Simon Haynes to assist authors in organizing and writing novels by breaking down the narrative into chapters and scenes. As it streamlines the writing process, it lets you focus your creativity without getting bogged down by plotting or content creation.

What are the key features of yWriter?

• Project-based novel organization: It creates a central project for your novel and organizes your chapters, scenes, characters, items, and locations.
• Chapter management: Facilitates the addition of new chapters with features for easy labeling, independent management, and automatic renumbering.
• Scene development: Allows adding multiple scenes per chapter, with fields for viewpoint character, goal, conflict, and outcome.
• Character, item, and location integration: Incorporate characters, items, and locations into your narrative, linking them directly to specific scenes and chapters for better organization.

• Word count tracking: Monitor the word count for each file and the project as a whole with a daily log file to track progress and word count over time.
• Automated backups: Set up automatic backups at defined intervals, ensuring that your work is regularly saved and protected.
• Storyboard view: Utilize a visual layout or storyboard view of your work, helping to visualize the narrative flow and structure.
• Flexible scene and chapter arrangement: Re-order scenes within chapters and use drag-and-drop functionality to easily reorganize chapters, scenes, characters, items, and locations.
• Automatic chapter renumbering: Automatically renumber chapters to maintain consistency and organization during edits and rearrangements.

How to use yWriter?

Once you've downloaded and installed yWriter, you can dive right into your writing project. The interface is user-friendly, catering to both new projects and imported works in progress from other apps, such as RTF files.

In yWriter, setting up chapters and scenes is straightforward, although the app limits you to focus on one scene at a time. You can view the text of each scene from the main interface, but editing requires opening a separate window, which can be a bit of a hassle if you prefer direct interaction with your text. Also, the text size on the screen is relatively small, and the lack of an easy zoom function in the main interface can be slightly inconvenient. An addition of a Zoom tool would be a welcome improvement.

Each chapter and scene in yWriter comes with numerous fields for additional details. You can specify characters in a scene, the narrative point of view, and organize notes. Scenes also have a status indicator, showing their progression from draft to various editing stages. While some data, like character sheets, are purely for reference, others contribute to comprehensive reports and tables. When viewing a chapter, for instance, you can see a list of all its scenes, the word count in each, and the narrative perspective of each segment.

Tutorials

You can consult the video tutorial promoted by the official website. For a more exhaustive explanation, consult the complete list of quickstart guides:

1. Welcome
2. Starting the program
3. New Project Wizard
4. The Main Screen
5. Project Settings
6. Setting default font
7. Chapters and Scenes
8. The Scene Editor
9. Characters
10. Items and Locations
11. Organising
12. Change font across all scenes
13. Extra Tools

Is yWriter free?

Yes, yWriter is totally free to use.

Is yWriter safe?

Yes, yWriter is considered safe to use, so no worries.