37 thoughts on “The Best Software to Plot or Outline Your Book”

1. Dave, I’m confused. Why is there a yearly price and a lifetime price per year? Wouldn’t the lifetime price be a one-time fee because it’s for life?

   • Whoops…great catch. Fixed. It’s just $99 for life.

2. Great recap, Dave, thanks. I use Scrivener and Plottr, and am still trying to figure out how to make Plottr easier to use than just doing it in Scriv. My only comment is that I bristle at the generalized “Scrivener has a steep learning curve” idea. It has an easy-medium learning curve for the basics–anyone can get started writing and using the index cards and such right off the bat. It’s using the full capabilities of the program that is very steep. I even took a class on formatting and compiling and it’s still difficult–no wonder I jumped to Vellum as soon as I heard about it! But overall, just to write and edit, Scrivener isn’t hard.

   • True…but if you were to compare the ease of Vellum as to the ease of Scrivener, I’d say one is very easy to use, and the other…not so much. I think Scrivener made way too many things too difficult to do and so they get a mark for it. It’s got a lot of capabilities, but most of those extra parts are not very intuitive.

3. 1. Scrivener also has a name generator (as you mentioned it as a plus on other software).
   2. The Snowflake method is now in Plottr, I believe.

4. I’m one of those who loves my iPad and a BT keyboard, so accessing Scrivener is great. And like a previous commenter, I find Weiland’s outlining software good but the ‘he’ issue is driving me mad. My protagonist is definitely a ‘she’.

   • Ah and yes…very good point.

5. I have written three books with the software package yWriter from Spacejock Software by Simon Haynes. I absolutely favor the clean software, user interface, and very extensive plotting and information handling features.

   It is a highly worthy alternative to Scrivener, is absolutely free, and Simon is personally responsive to any queries and questions.

   The software is invisible between my creative writing and my manuscripts. It works flawlessly with taking dictation from Nuance’s Dragon 15.3.

   You should check it out.

6. I use Plottr and love it. I write a lot of details on my scene cards, so that when I switch from Timeline with all the great graphics to Outline, I end up with a detailed scene-by-scene outline to export to Word. This software works very well for non-fiction, too.

   • Nice!

7. Thanks for giving us a look at the different options for plotting, etc. I’m a die-hard panster, have always thought that heavy outlining and plotting would stifle creativity. The flip side of panster-writing is, I frequently write myself into a hole and spend forever digging my way out. ????

   So, I recently tried Plottr on my MAC and I’m loving the simple user interface. You definitely nailed the pros! Although I have to say that I disagree with one of the Plottr Cons listed: No space for writing the actual draft. This is a plotting/planning software, not a word processing program.
   Writing software (I use Word) lets us set most of the formatting parameters ahead of time, such as Drop Caps, margins, different styles, headings, insert scene break images, etc. I wouldn’t want to bog down the planning process with all of that.

   Thanks again for for showing us some viable software options.

   • Haha…I know what you mean. As for the con, true… BUT when I was testing the others, many of the others allow for such. Therefore, in a ‘relative’ manner, this was a con. However, I also see that they are working to integrate with Scrivener, which would be awesome. Thanks to my article, it caught the attention of their team and I’ll be meeting with them next week to discuss improvements and such…yah!

8. Hi Dave
   Thanks for this (as always).

   Have you heard of Subtext? It’s a more user-friendly ‘version’ of Dramatica Pro (which, while excellent, can be tough to comprehend for emerging writers)

   Cheers and thanks for your informative emails.

   • No I haven’t but I’ll have to check that out.

9. Writeitnow5 is supposed to be good. Made by the same company that makes Jutoh.

   • That is a good thing and a bad thing then…haha. Jutoh, amazing capability…but poor user experience (UX) and user interface (UI). However, I’ll give that a try. Thanks for the suggestion.

10. I still love Scrivener for everything! And there are plenty of fiction templates people have created (just search “novel templates for scrivener”) if you need some sort of plot/outline format to get going. That said, if The Novel Factory created software for mac’s, I might have to take a look! (Yes, bite me! I love my mac!!)

    • Hey, I hear you on both fronts. I’m a Scrivener guy and I even have my own Template that I designed 🙂 As for Novel Factory, yup. I actually used to work for Apple so I’m a Mac guy as well.

11. What are your thoughts about Dabble?

    • I’ve had a couple of people ask about Dabble. I’ll look into it and update my article on that so as to include it.

12. Dave,
    Thanks a bunch! Thorough, thoughtful, truthful, and as always professional. Great stuff!
    Enough for a lazy panster to head over to Plottr. My gut leads me to being a panster, but
    my head pushes Plottr. The reason being it’s cheap … no seriously, it seems to tick all the
    boxes a non-techie octogenarian, would be writer of childrens adventure novels, could
    possibly cope with.

    • THat’s my overall feel too. Visually its ‘comprehensive’ and very beneficial. Plus for me, I am a Scrivener pro, and this feels like the scrivener components of outlining but on steroids. Furthermore, I love that it isn’t a subscription base.

13. I use Dabble – it’s available on laptop and phone and syncs across all your devices. Easy to use, well laid out. Have a look.

    • Will do. I’ve seen a couple of people bring that up.

14. As always, you’ve got great information! I’ve got two software tools that you haven’t mentioned, though, both of which are linked to existing fiction outlining methods.

    1. Snowflake Pro is based on Randy Ingermansson’s Snowflake Method.
    2. Outlining Your Novel is essentially a digital version of a workbook for KM Weiland’s brilliant Outlining Your Novel book.

    Authors these days are really spoiled for choice! 🙂

    • Katie Weiland is a genius – I will have to look into that. I love her website and her information so I’m sure that is amazing. As for Snowflake Pro, I’ll look into that too. I know that a couple of the Outline Softwares have a Snowflake template in them.

      • Totally agree about Kate Weiland. She is a true mentor for me, as are you.

    • I’ve just brought OYN software. It’s nice because it has directions. I don’t have much time, so I don’t know it well, but it looks promising. Weiland admits it has a clumsy print option. It’s rich on character and worldbuilding part and has a good template on basic story structure.
      The Snowflake method I know,but I haven’t tried the software. I guess it’s for the authors who know some story structure already.

      • I’ll have to try that.

      • I have tried the OYN software and although the concept is AMAZING, the interface and options are very clumsy and limited. (It may be a little thing, but having the main character always labeled as “he” drives me bonkers.) I really like Weiland’s books and methods, but wish the software was better. I started using Novel Factory recently and have found it really helped me plot out a book that had me stumped for a year.

        • Huh…didn’t know than on OYN – I can understand that.

15. Thank you, Dave. Your hammer always hits the nail. Best wishes, your Fan, Daniel.

    • Thank you Daniel. That made my morning to read.

16. Interestingly, I started using Scrivener for fiction. Coming from a training background, I’ve always outlined my training and nonfiction writing using Word (or a word processor). While working on a nonfiction project, I was having a difficult time remembering if/where I had used specific examples. I didn’t want to use the same ones too many times, and finding and tracking each example in Word was a PITA. So I broke up the Word document and put the content into Scrivener, which I think does a great job separating chapters and lets you jump around when necessary. I was amazed at how much easier the process became. I now use it for a lot of other things also, not necessarily manuscript driven.

    And while there are minimal plots installed, you can find several online (including some through NaNo).

    Thanks for the comparisons. You’ve piqued my interest and I will look at a couple of them. I also didn’t realize there was an iOS version of Scriv, but I seldom write on the iPhone.

    • Yeah, it saved my life when I was writing my master thesis when I was at Naval Post-graduate School. As for iOS, I know what you mean. I didn’t think that was a big deal but apparently there are a lot of authors who us the iOS version. Using an ipad and a wireless keyboard is their jam.

17. Have you heard of Campfire Technology? It’s an outlining/plotting tool. I don’t know much about it. Saw it in a NaNoWriMo email.

    • No, I haven’t. But I’ll check it out.

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