The best online tools to write a novel or a book.

Microsoft Word remains, in 2026, the most used writing software in the world. Present in most French publishing houses, it still sets the reference format — the famous .docx — that editors ask for when you send them a manuscript.

Its strength is paradoxical: it does almost everything, but nothing specific to long-form writing. You will find advanced formatting, footnotes, automatic table of contents, change tracking. You won't find character management, scene cards, or native chapter management.

For a novel, it's typically used for the last stage: passing the manuscript to a professional proofreader, formatting the submission to the editor. But as a first-draft tool on 90,000 words, it tires quickly.

LibreOffice Writer is the great open-source alternative to Microsoft Word. Coming from the long OpenOffice tradition and maintained by The Document Foundation, it offers most of what Word provides — without paying a euro or depending on a Microsoft account.

The interface, slightly dated, may surprise those coming from Word 365. But behind this 2015 aesthetic, the software is solid, complete and compatible with the .docx format: you can open a file from your editor, edit it, send it back, without anyone noticing the difference.

Like Word, it offers nothing specific to novel writing — no character sheet, no scene map. It's a generalist word processor that will serve writers who want to avoid the subscription and keep their files local.

Google Docs has become the default tool for all multi-handed writing: screenwriting duos, co-authors, collective editorial projects. Its real-time collaboration remains, six years after its competitors, the smoothest: you see others' cursors, you comment in the margin, you track changes.

It's also a tool accessible everywhere: from any browser, from the phone on the subway, from a friend's computer. You lose nothing — Google saves with every keystroke.

The flip side: your texts live on Google's servers. For an intimate novel, for a sensitive investigation, for a work you want to keep confidential, the question really arises. Google Docs offers no end-to-end encryption.

FocusWriter is a minimalist text editor built around a single idea: remove anything that isn't the text. On opening, you get a background, a sheet, your words. No toolbar, no sidebar, no chat, no notifications.

It does include a few features essential to writer comfort: daily goal tracking (in words or minutes), session statistics, typewriter mode, automatic backups. It's the perfect tool for NaNoWriMo.

But FocusWriter can do nothing else. No chapters, no project management, no organization. It's a first-draft companion, to be complemented by another tool for structure.

Ulysses is the absolute reference for text editors on Mac. Designed for writers who love Markdown and assumed minimalism, it offers an interface of beauty and consistency rare in the literary software world.

Its organization by sheets rather than files really changes how you work: each chapter becomes a sheet, groupable in groups, in dynamic filters, in libraries. iCloud synchronization is instant between Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Three limits slow its adoption: it's exclusively Apple (nothing for Windows or Linux), it works only on subscription (≈ €6/month), and it offers nothing for the community or for publishing.

Released in 2007, Scrivener has become in two decades the global reference for long novel writing. No tool has pushed as far the structuring of a complex narrative project.

You'll find the virtual corkboard with synopsis cards for each scene, the hierarchical outliner, fine version management per chapter, per-scene metadata (characters present, location, point of view, status), word count target per chapter.

The downside is as famous as the rest: the learning curve is steep. You spend the first weeks understanding how not to get lost. The interface is dense, the EPUB export — though present — remains imperfect. Scrivener is a power-user tool.

yWriter is the well-kept tool of the novelist who doesn't want to pay. Developed since 2002 by Simon Haynes — a SF author himself — it was designed by a writer for writers.

The approach is radically novel-oriented. You open yWriter and immediately understand: a project, chapters, scenes, characters, locations, objects. No graphical overload, and everything stays local.

The interface, inherited from another era, puts off some users. But it does the essential, freely and without advertising. It's a heart choice for those who prioritize function over form.

WriteControl is a French online tool aimed specifically at French-speaking writers and novelists. It offers classic structuring (chapters, scenes, characters, places) in a modern web-designed interface.

Its strength is its domain focus: unlike Notion or Google Docs which are generalist, WriteControl does nothing other than accompany book writing. The experience is consistent and clean.

The tool remains however recent and niche: the user community is still modest, advanced modules aren't all at the competition's level, and the mandatory subscription deters some beginner authors.

Scribbook is another French-speaking web tool dedicated to writers. Its promise: gather in one browser writing, planning, character management and daily goal tracking — with a free version to test without commitment.

The organization is clear: chapters, scenes, characters, places, main plot and subplots. Daily goal tracking motivates regular authors.

Like WriteControl, Scribbook suffers from the absence of a real community dimension: no live courses, no writer circle, no integrated beta-reading system.

Notion is not, strictly speaking, writing software. It's an all-in-one productivity tool that many writers successfully repurpose: nested blocks, relational databases, shared templates, kanban or table views.

Its strength is absolute personalization. You can create a character database linked to a chapter database linked to a timeline. The Notion community shares hundreds of writer templates.

Its weakness is the flip side of its strength: everything is to be built yourself. Notion doesn't know, by default, what a novel is. The text editor is less pleasant for long-form writing, EPUB export doesn't exist natively.