Writing Craft Guide

Essential Writing Tools for Fiction Writers

You do not need expensive tools to write a great book. But the right three tools, chosen deliberately, can remove friction, protect your health, and help you produce more in less time. Here is what serious fiction writers actually use and why.

3 core tools

Sufficient for most serious fiction writers

60% of indie pros

Use Scrivener as their primary drafting tool

Voice dictation

Doubles output for many writers

The tools that help serious writers write more and hurt less

Scrivener vs. Vellum vs. Word

Scrivener is the drafting tool of choice for 60 percent of indie professionals. Its corkboard, outliner, and compile features make it ideal for managing complex manuscripts. Vellum is not a drafting tool but a formatting one: it takes a finished manuscript and produces beautiful ebook and print files. Word is the universal fallback and still the industry standard for submissions to agents and publishers. The practical answer: draft in Scrivener or Word, format for publishing in Vellum. You do not need all three, but knowing what each one does saves money and frustration.

Grammarly and ProWritingAid for editing

Grammarly catches spelling, grammar, and clarity issues. ProWritingAid goes deeper with reports on sentence length variation, pacing, overused words, dialogue tags, and cliche density. For fiction writers, ProWritingAid is the more useful tool. Both work as browser extensions and desktop apps and integrate with Word and Scrivener. Use them after you finish a draft, not during. Editing while drafting breaks flow and these tools are best applied to complete scenes, not sentences in progress.

Milanote and Notion for planning

Milanote is visual: a freeform canvas for mood boards, story maps, and character webs. Notion is document-based: databases, linked notes, and structured outlines. Most writers who plan extensively use one or the other. Milanote suits visual thinkers and pantsers who want to capture atmosphere and relationships. Notion suits plotters who want structured databases of characters, locations, and chapter summaries. Both are free at the entry level. Try both on a short project and pick the one that feels like thinking, not filing.

Voice dictation: Dragon and Apple Dictation

Dragon Naturally Speaking remains the gold standard for dictation accuracy, especially for non-standard vocabulary like fantasy names. Apple Dictation (built into macOS) has improved dramatically and is free. Both require you to speak punctuation aloud ('comma', 'full stop', 'new paragraph'). The learning curve is real: expect two weeks before it feels natural. The payoff is significant for writers whose typing speed is a genuine bottleneck, or those who find walking and speaking more generative than sitting and typing.

Ergonomic keyboards and noise-canceling headphones

A writer's two most important hardware investments after a monitor are an ergonomic keyboard and noise-canceling headphones. Repetitive strain injuries end writing careers. Split keyboards, tenting keyboards, and mechanical keyboards with low actuation force all reduce wrist and finger strain. Noise-canceling headphones serve two purposes: blocking distraction and signaling to anyone nearby that you are unreachable. Sony WH-1000XM5 and Bose QuietComfort 45 are the most recommended options among working writers. Neither is cheap. Both pay for themselves in sessions recovered from noisy environments.

The 2-monitor setup

Constant alt-tabbing between manuscript and reference breaks flow more than most writers realise. A second monitor eliminates this. Keep the manuscript on the primary screen and research, outline, or a character sheet on the secondary. The typical cost of an entry-level 24-inch monitor is lower than most writers spend on software in a year. If you write on a laptop at a desk, adding an external monitor is the single cheapest hardware upgrade with the highest productivity return. It takes about one afternoon to feel indispensable.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need Scrivener to write a novel?

No. Many successful novelists write in plain Word or even Google Docs. Scrivener is powerful but has a steep learning curve. If you are starting out, write in whatever tool removes friction, not the one that feels most professional. Graduate to Scrivener when you have a project complex enough to need its corkboard and compile features. Tools should serve your writing, not become a project in themselves.

Is Grammarly good enough for fiction editing?

Grammarly is useful for catching surface errors but it is not a fiction editor. It will flag stylistic choices as errors, misunderstand intentional fragments, and miss the things that matter most in fiction: pacing, voice, scene structure. ProWritingAid has better fiction-specific reports including a pacing report, a cliche detector, and a readability analysis. Use either as a first-pass check, not a substitute for a human editor or your own critical rereading.

Does voice dictation really double output?

For some writers, yes. Dictation removes the bottleneck of typing speed and engages a different part of the brain, one that tends to be more conversational and less self-censoring. Authors like Kevin J. Anderson have used Dragon to dictate entire novels while hiking. That said, dictation has a learning curve: you have to train yourself to speak punctuation, manage audio quality, and revise differently. Try a 500-word dictation experiment before committing to the workflow.

What is Milanote used for in writing?

Milanote is a visual planning tool often used for storyboarding, mood boards, and character mapping. Unlike Notion, which is document-based, Milanote uses a freeform canvas where you can pin cards, images, and notes spatially. Writers use it to map story structure visually, build aesthetic mood boards for books, and organise research in a way that mirrors how the brain actually holds a project together. It is not a writing tool but a thinking and planning tool.

Do I need two monitors to write?

You do not need two monitors, but many writers find them transformative. The typical setup: manuscript on one screen, research, outline, or reference on the other. The alternative is constant alt-tabbing, which breaks flow. If you write on a laptop, an external monitor costs less than most people spend on coffee in a month and dramatically reduces context-switching friction. A two-monitor setup is one of the cheapest and most impactful upgrades available to a working writer.