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  • The Ultimate Guide to Tools for Authors


    100+ Tools to Amplify Your Writing

    ProofreadingServices.com offers several manuscript development and editing packages to help authors prepare their work for publication. Whether brainstorming ideas for a new novel or putting the finishing touches on an ebook cover, authors can benefit from websites and software designed with their unique challenges in mind. To that end, we've created a list of online resources for authors, divided into six categories:

    1. Brainstorming
    2. Inspiration
    3. Productivity
    4. Writing
    5. Editing
    6. Publishing

    Brainstorming

    The resources below offer mind mapping, notetaking, and other collaborative tools to help authors organize their creative processes.
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    bubbl.us

    bubbl.us is a brainstorming tool that allows authors to create mind maps they can save, export, and share via email. Free membership includes the creation of three mind maps, while paid memberships are unlimited.

    cherrytree

    cherrytree is a hierarchical notetaking application featuring rich text and syntax highlighting, allowing authors to store data offline in a single xml or sqlite file.

    GoodNotes

    GoodNotes allows users to create searchable handwritten notes and annotate PDF documents. Documents in GoodNotes will synchronize between iPad and iPhone automatically.

    HT Professional Recorder

    HT Professional Recorder allows writers to record and edit notes or narrative with their Apple devices.

    Mind42

    Mind42 is a collaborative online tool that allows authors to organize their ideas through mind maps, which can be made completely public or shared with other users when seeking feedback.

    MindMeister

    MindMeister offers tools for authors to create shareable mind maps completely online, with multiple formatting options and the ability to include interactive videos and images within maps.

    MindMup

    MindMup is a free mind-mapping tool that offers users the option to share their maps with others or embed them in a website for up to six months. Paid users can share their maps indefinitely.

    OmniGraffle

    OmniGraffle is an app that uses shape recognition to allow writers to create precise graphics and templates.

    Scapple

    Scapple is a freeform text editor that helps authors get ideas down as quickly as possible and make connections between them using straight dotted lines or arrows.

    SimpleMind

    SimpleMind is a mind mapping tool with several formatting options, including the ability to add voice memos to a map. It also allows authors to sync their maps across multiple devices.

    Squarespace Note

    Squarespace Note helps writers record their ideas on the fly. Notes can be sent via email or synced with a range of popular services, including Squarespace, Evernote, Dropbox, and more.

    The Literary Machine

    The Literary Machine is a dynamic archiving tool that allows users to organize information in networks and hierarchies to help them generate ideas.

    TiddlyWiki

    TiddlyWiki provides a unique nonlinear notebook for capturing, organizing, and sharing complex information. With it, authors can record their ideas or build a flexible and responsive website.

    Tomboy

    Tomboy is a desktop notetaking application that allows authors to synchronize their ideas across various devices. It also offers several formatting options and add-in features.

    TreePad Lite

    TreePad Lite is a personal information manager for Windows and Linux. It can be used to store, edit, search, organize, and browse any type of textual data, such as notes, emails, articles, links, phone numbers, addresses, scraps pasted from the web, etc.

    wikidPad

    wikidPad is a private wiki application where authors can store and organize their ideas in a searchable, cross-linkable database.

    Wridea

    Wridea is an online idea management and collaboration service through which authors can store ideas, organize them, and collaborate with friends using several brainstorming tools.

    Zim

    Zim is a desktop wiki, a collection of files on the local file system that can be edited with a GUI application. Authors can use it to organize, search, and cross-link plot ideas, chapter outlines, and other brainstorming products.

    Services for authors

    Inspiration

    These websites provide writing prompts in the form of short phrases, images, and unique scenarios to help spark authors' creativity.
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    Creative Writing Prompts

    Creative Writing Prompts provides several ideas to help authors create stories, poems, and other creative pieces. The writing prompts can even help authors come up with creative content for blogs or short stories.

    Creative Writing Solutions

    Creative Writing Solutions offers several prompts to help authors get started with a new story or develop characters, settings, and points of view.

    Imagination Prompt Generator

    Imagination Prompt Generator provides writing prompts at the push of a button.

    The Writing Prompt Boot Camp

    Writer's Digest offers this free download, which provides two weeks' worth of writing prompts designed to spark authors' minds and help them flex their creative muscles.

    Writer's Block Buster

    Writer's Block Buster helps writers of all genres by providing prompts and resources designed to inspire, answer common writing questions, and help authors keep track of new ideas.

    Services for authors

    Productivity

    The following resources are meant to help authors stay on task by blocking out distractions and scheduling writing time effectively.
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    Anti-Social

    Anti-Social targets and blocks any distracting websites so authors can be more productive.

    Cold Turkey

    Cold Turkey allows authors to block distracting sites like Facebook so they can concentrate on writing.

    keybr.com

    keybr.com is a web application that helps users learn touch typing, which is the ability to type with all fingers without looking at the keyboard.

    Personal Information Manager

    Personal Information Manager allows authors to manage appointments, tasks, notes, contacts, password entries, and email messages across multiple devices and cloud applications.

    Remember The Milk

    Remember The Milk is a task management app that allows authors to create to-do lists and set customized reminders.

    StayFocusd

    StayFocusd increases writers' productivity by limiting the amount of time spent on time-wasting websites.

    TeamViz

    TeamViz is a planning and task tracking tool that uses the Pomodoro technique, helping authors collaborate on projects via desktop and mobile devices.

    Tomatoes

    Tomatoes allows authors to track their writing time in short increments using the Pomodoro technique.

    Toodledo

    Toodledo offers a set of tools to help authors increase productivity and organization through long notes, custom lists, and outlines.

    Unstuck

    Unstuck is a digital coaching app that helps authors see and solve situations with fresh perspective through provocative questions, targeted tips, and action-oriented tools.

    Services for authors

    Writing

    These resources help writers create an encouraging creative environment so they can make the most of their writing time. Some offer tools to help with plotting and organization, as well.
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    Byword

    Byword is a writing app that provides just the tools writers need to create Markdown and rich text, with the option to sync documents across devices.

    Celtx

    Celtx provides an all-in-one system for video and movie planning. Authors can work together to write a script, prepare a shoot, and take the cast and crew into production.

    Compositions

    Compositions is a minimalist text editing app for Apple devices that allows writers to focus on their work.

    Dark Room

    Dark Room is the Windows alternative to Write Room. It offers a full-screen distractionless writing environment.

    Dragon Dictation

    With Dragon Dictation, authors can narrate and automatically transcribe ideas, chapters, or entire novels.

    Evernote

    Evernote helps authors share and collaborate with one another by allowing them to collect notes, manuscripts, and other material in one secure location.

    Final Draft

    Final Draft is a screenwriting program that includes over one hundred templates that format and paginate screenplays, teleplays, and stage plays, with navigation features to help writers easily search through and organize long documents.

    FocusWriter

    FocusWriter offers a simple writing environment that uses a hideaway interface accessed by moving the mouse to the edges of the screen, allowing authors to immerse themselves in their work.

    iA Writer

    iA Writer is a word processing app that offers several features for authors, including Focus Mode, which fades all but the sentence being written.

    ilys

    ilys is a subscription service that encourages authors to set a word goal and prevents them from editing until they meet it. It also offers several options to protect writers' privacy, including data encryption and Ninja Mode, where words are invisible until the author chooses to reveal them.

    Journalite

    Journalite offers several formatting and organization tools to help writers keep a daily password-protected journal.

    Marked

    Marked is a previewer for Markdown files. Writers can use it with any text editor to see updates with every save, with robust features for previewing, reviewing, and exporting documents.

    MarkMyWords

    MarkMyWords is a comprehensive markup writing tool that supports a variety of markup languages, uses plain text, and offers a live preview feature.

    Newnovelist

    Newnovelist is a Windows program that helps authors complete their novels. It includes creative writing advice and other elements to spur creativity.

    OmmWriter

    OmmWriter is a word processor that creates a distractionless writing environment, allowing authors to concentrate and be productive.

    oTranscribe

    oTranscribe is a free web app that provides several tools to help authors transcribe recorded audio.

    Penultimate

    Penultimate is a digital handwriting app for iPad that combines the natural experience of pen and paper with Evernote's sync and search features.

    Plotbot

    Plotbot allows users to write automatically formatted screenplays in their browsers and collaborate with other writers using tracked edits so changes can be reverted at any time.

    Q10

    Q10 offers a simple text editor designed and built with writers in mind, with live word count and page statistics and multiple customization options.

    Script It!

    Script It! helps authors create a screenplay step by step and includes a screenwriting glossary as well as story breakdowns and analyses of several popular films.

    Scrivener

    Scrivener is a powerful content-generation tool that allows writers to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives authors complete control over formatting, its focus is on helping them complete a first draft.

    Storyist

    Storyist provides a powerful writing environment for novelists and screenwriters. Unlike conventional word processors, Storyist helps authors track plots, characters, and settings and provides several options for accessible data storage.

    StoryMill

    StoryMill is a Mac word processing and story development program for fiction writers, with several tools to help authors keep track of characters, scenes, and edits over time.

    TextRoom

    TextRoom is a free full-screen text editor developed with writers in mind. It provides a distractionless environment with a familiar set of keyboard shortcuts to control its behavior.

    Write or Die

    Write or Die is an application that aims to eliminate writer's block by providing consequences for procrastination and rewards for accomplishment. It also allows authors to create an encouraging writing atmosphere using images and custom playlists.

    Writer

    Writer is a writing app that offers a distractionless environment with word count and writing goals. It saves writing automatically and works both online and off.

    Writer's Café

    Writer's Café offers a set of tools for fiction writers, including StoryLines, a powerful but simple story development tool that dramatically accelerates the creation and structuring of novels and screenplays.

    WriteRoom

    WriteRoom offers a full-screen word processing environment for Mac meant to help authors focus on writing.

    yWriter

    yWriter is a word processor that breaks novels into chapters and scenes, helping authors keep track of their work.

    ZenWriter

    ZenWriter is a meditative text editor that provides an uncluttered writing interface to encourage productivity.

    Services for authors

    Editing

    Self-editing can prove a challenge for even the most disciplined of writers. These resources include dictionaries, online spelling and grammar checkers, and other tools to help writers transform first drafts into finished manuscripts.
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    Acronym Finder

    Acronym Finder is a comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms.

    APA Style

    The online guide to APA Style offers sound guidance for writing with simplicity, power, and concision. APA Style has been adapted by many disciplines and is used by writers around the world.

    AutoCrit

    AutoCrit is an automated online manuscript editing tool enabling fiction writers to quickly and effectively self-edit their work.

    Chicago Manual of Style

    The Chicago Manual of Style Online provides completely searchable recommendations on editorial style and publishing practices for the digital age. It offers the full contents of the sixteenth and fifteenth editions.

    Cliche Finder

    Cliche Finder is a simple tool to help authors locate cliches and other overused phrases in their work.

    Copyscape

    Copyscape provides a free plagiarism checker that finds copies of web pages online, as well as two more powerful professional solutions for preventing content theft and content fraud.

    definr

    definr is a fast, free dictionary based on Princeton University's WordNet.

    Dictionary.com

    Dictionary.com provides millions of English definitions, spellings, audio pronunciations, example sentences, and word origins.

    Draft

    Draft offers a suite of tools that provide version control, copy editing and other feedback, and easy publishing to various social media platforms.

    GNU Aspell

    GNU Aspell is a free and open-source spell checker that suggests possible replacements for misspelled words.

    Graviax

    Graviax is an English grammar checker for XML files containing regular expressions.

    LanguageTool

    LanguageTool is an open-source proof­reading program for English, French, German, Polish, and more than twenty other languages. It finds many problems that a simple spell checker cannot detect.

    MediLexicon

    MediLexicon offers a comprehensive free online medical dictionary with over one hundred thousand medical terms. Search results display an exact match for the search term as well as phrases that contain the whole search term within a medical context.

    OneLook

    OneLook offers several search options and operators to help writers find words according to various criteria.

    OneLook Reverse Dictionary

    The OneLook Reverse Dictionary lets writers describe a concept in a few words or a question and retrieves a list of words and phrases related to that concept.

    ProofreadingServices.com

    ProofreadingServices.com (the people who bring you this list) offers several packages for authors, providing constructive feedback on narrative, character development, and plot as well as editing and proofreading.

    Purdue OWL

    The Purdue OWL resources provide an overview of journalistic writing with explanations of the most important and most often used elements of journalism and the Associated Press style.

    Readability-Score

    Readability-Score measures the readability of written material according to several reading ease and grade level scales.

    RhymeZone

    RhymeZone allows writers to search by word and find rhymes, synonyms, definitions, and more.

    Symbols.com

    Symbols.com is a unique online encyclopedia that contains everything about symbols, signs, flags, and glyphs arranged by categories such as culture, country, religion, and more.

    Tech Terms

    The Tech Terms Computer Dictionary offers definitions for various IT terms alphabetically, by category, and by tech factor.

    Urban Dictionary

    Urban Dictionary is a crowdsourced online dictionary of slang words and phrases.

    Visual Dictionary Online

    The Visual Dictionary Online is filled with stunning illustrations labeled with accurate terminology in up to six languages to help writers find the right word at a glance.

    Visuwords

    With Visuwords, an online graphical dictionary, writers can look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts.

    Word Counter

    Word Counter is a word and character count tool. Writers simply copy and paste prewritten text or begin typing in the given field, and Word Counter will automatically count the number of words and characters entered.

    Wordcounter

    Wordcounter ranks the most frequently used words in any given body of text. Writers can use it to see which words they overuse or to find keywords in a document.

    WordWeb

    WordWeb offers a full dictionary and thesaurus for American, British, Canadian, Australian, Indian, and global English.

    Write rhymes.

    Write rhymes offers an interactive dictionary that provides rhyming matches for words typed into a given field.

    YourDictionary

    YourDictionary provides tools to help writers choose their words precisely and confidently and avoid usage pitfalls.

    Services for authors

    Publishing

    These resources offer tools for authors to convert their manuscripts into ebooks, create compelling covers, and track sales and other metrics after publication.
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    calibre

    calibre is a free and open-source ebook library management application developed by ebook readers for ebook readers.

    FastPencil

    FastPencil is a writing and publishing platform that offers authors multiple tools to preview print and ebook formats, track sales and revenue, and promote their titles.

    Kindle Direct Publishing

    Kindle Direct Publishing is an Amazon service that allows authors to self-publish their books on the Kindle Store.

    Markdown

    Markdown converts plain text written according to its formatting syntax to structurally valid HTML.

    MyEcoverMaker

    MyEcoverMaker is an intuitive point-and-click online tool to create ebook covers without the need for expensive software like Photoshop.

    Penflip

    Penflip is a collaborative writing platform that offers a minimalist editor, document sharing and version control, and ebook formatting tools.

    Sigil

    Sigil is a multiplatform EPUB ebook editor that offers authors complete control over editing EPUB syntax using its Code View feature.

    To ePub

    To ePub converts PDFs and other types of documents to a variety of ebook formats, including EPUB, Kindle MOBI/AZW3, and FB2.

    Txt2tags

    Txt2tags is a document generator that reads text files with minimal markup, such as **bold** and //italic//, and converts them to several formats, including HTML.

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