Novelist App Review: Is It Worth Your Time?

Our Novelist App review profiles the pros and cons of this writing software for creatives.

Writing a novel requires months of distraction-free planning, so many authors quit.

Enter Novelist. With its advanced writing templates, you don’t have to worry about structuring your novel. Simply start writing.

So in this review, I’ll cover everything you need to know about Novelist. I’ll go through my favorite features, some pros, and cons, and if it’s worth it.

What Is Novelist?

Founded by Alessandro Riperi, Novelist is an app that allows you to plot, outline, and organize your book while setting writing goals to create more engaging stories since you can add categories, chapters, characters, and events.

Over 90,000 authors use Novelist to help write their next story. It’s so popular is because of the advanced templates. You don’t need to structure your novel before writing, saving lots of time. 

Novelist Pricing

Novelist is 100% free, and you access all features like the goal setter, Night Mode, advanced templates, and output compilation. This app is perfect for new writers who aren’t making much money, and it makes structuring your book less intimidating.

Who Is Novelist For?

Novelist can benefit the lives of:

• Authors
• New writers
• Screenwriters

Authors

If you struggle with structuring novels, consider Novelist. It uses a board where you can plot the entire story. The simple interface makes merging, reordering, deleting, and splitting items easy. 

Next, organize scenes into parts, chapters, and acts while setting daily goals. If you want to finish your novel by the end of the year, work out how many words per day you’ll need to write and create that goal.

New Writers

The initial plotting phase seems intimidating if you’ve never published a book before. Fortunately, Novelist contains standard templates that allow you to build a story without spending much time on structuring.

So start writing immediately. When you get more experienced, feel free to customize these templates around your story. Novelist even offers additional features like night mode.

Screenwriters

Because Novelist makes plotting, organizing, and scheduling easy, thousands of screenwriters and filmmakers use it to develop stories. When you want to send your scripts to colleagues for review, simply share them, and your team can make notes in the sidebar.

If you need to go back and restore previous versions of your movie script, Novelist makes this easy with its autosave and backup feature.

How Does Novelist Work?

Download the Novelist app by going to the Play Store or visiting the Novelist website.

Next, sign up, and Novelist will take you to the dashboard and select the blue button at the bottom.

Enter the name of your book and an optional description. Choose between the standard template with a predefined data set or a blank archive. I’d suggest opting for the standard template because it helps structure your work.

Tap on your novel to start creating scenes. A scene is a piece of text placed inside a chapter and becomes a section of your book. Create your first scene by selecting “Write” in the toolbar below and “Add new scene.”

Now that we know how Novelist works let’s cover the features that stood out to me.

Goal Setting

If you want to write and edit a 350-page novel, you’ll struggle with motivation since your goal is intimidating. 

Break your goal into smaller chunks that you can measure daily; you’re more motivated to complete your novel by hitting your goals daily.

Set the desired word count that you must reach at the end of each week or day. 

Templates

If you’re struggling to structure your story, try one of Novelist’s templates. You have to fill in the blanks, and you’re good to go. 

As you develop, you’ll need more personalized templates. Fortunately, customizing them around your story is easy. Since Novelist offers autosave, you can use previous templates. 

This feature is valuable when writing a series because it helps you stick to a theme. You could even reference old characters and events.

Output Compilation

Novelist shows you what your book will look like before publishing it. Simply press the eye-shaped button, and edit while admiring your hard work. You’ll find your output available in three different formats:

• EPUB 
• Rich text format or RTF
• HTML

EPUB is best if you’re planning to publish your book online. RTF works well with word processor editors, while HTML is a general-purpose format.

Areas For Improvement

After using Novelist to map out stories, I noticed these drawbacks:

• You can’t write your entire manuscript in Novelist
• It doesn’t have a copy and paste feature

You Can’t Write Your Entire Manuscript In Novelist

Novelist isn’t a tool designed for you to write your book; it helps transform an idea into a detailed chapter outline with character profiles and plot twists. So if you’re looking for a tool that offers distraction-free features, consider Draft.

Read our Draft review.

It Doesn’t Have A Copy And Paste Feature

If you recently learned about Novelist, you’ll want to transfer all previous writing into the app to make it easier to plot storylines and set goals. However, Novelist doesn’t offer a copy and paste feature.

This means you can’t transfer bulk work onto the app; you’ll have to type it word for word. I’d like Novelist to introduce a feature that allows users to move existing writing into the app. If you’re looking for a writing app that has copy and paste features, opt for Scrivener.

Read our Scrivener review.

Novelist Review Criteria

When testing Novelist to see if it’s a practical option for my fellow writers, I used the following criteria:

• Ease of use
• Practicality
• Affordability
• Additional features

After using Novelist on my Android and Windows devices, I found it meets these criteria to help plot stories.

When signing up, the Novelist tutorial guides you through how to use the app to its full potential. You’ll also find the dashboard is clean and easy to use.

It’s a practical tool for storytellers because organizing your novel while setting goals is simple. You’ll find additional features like:

• Night mode 
• Output compilation
• Advanced writing templates 

Night mode blocks all blue light coming from your screen so you can work long into the night. The output compilation allows you to preview your book in different formats, while the templates make your writing journey less intimidating.

But the best thing about Novelist is it’s completely free. 

Why You Can Trust Me

I’ve been writing articles and newsletters for over four years, but I recently got into storytelling. So I’ve tried Novelist on my Android and Windows devices for a few weeks to help me get better at storytelling, and I love the templates. Without thinking about structure, I can simply write and improve my skills.

But what stood out to me was the goal-setting feature. I prefer measuring my progress daily when writing a story since it keeps me motivated. Fortunately, I can set a 1000-word daily goal, and at the end of each day, I know I’m on the right track.