To quote the developer of the software, yWriter is “a word processor which breaks your novel into chapters and scenes”. The program allows you to work on scenes as a unit of a whole book. You make a project, which would be your book like novel or non-fiction, and create chapters inside the project, and then create scenes in each chapter. Each scene contains text and information like characters, locations, goals and others.

The creator of yWriter, Simon Haynes, is a programmer and published writer of several novels. He made the software out of his frustration with using a word processor to write a book. His main problem was the difficulty of moving texts between separate word files for chapters. The solution he found was to adopt the approach of module-based programming. Just like a programmer who works on individual modules and combine them to build a software, you can use yWriter to concentrate on writing scenes and later bring them together to complete a book.

The interface of yWriter is quite easy to understand. You can start using the software without reading help or manuals. Just create a project following the wizard’s instruction. make chapters and create scenes in each chapter. That’s all.

For a freeware, yWriter is very well-built and lots of thoughts have been put into the software from the perspective of a novel writer. The most recent version yWriter 5 supports Windows XP and later. It also runs on GNU/Linux and Mac OS X using Wine.

Reviews of yWriter

3. Rachelle Rea shares her experience of using yWriter in a review. She gives a brief and helpful description of major features such as projects, chapters, scenes, characters and notes. She says the note organization ability is the best feature of the software and says, “It’s like having endless post-it notes without the cluttered desk.”

2. In this review, Chandler McGrew, a novelist, shares his experience how he changed his writing tools from typewriters, WordPerfect, and finally to yWriter.

1. Jim Norris wrote a favorable review of yWriter at the PC world magazine website. He covers good features of yWriter such as clean and simple screen, daily work targets and counts of scenes and words. read the whole review here.