My Writer's Toolbox - A Brief Overview

A peek into my writer's toolbox: 6 tools I use as a fiction author

We're well into 2024 now, and I've had the chance to work with a range of different programs - some old (to me), some new (to me) - and I'm currently using a very specific set of software and non-digital tools that I believe help me create a balance that allows for a fairly good writing productivity.

I thought I'd share my list of tools - all of which are free and/or open source - in the hopes that it might help some writers out there find helpful programs and tools to add to their own toolbox. I should note here that these are the tools to help me with the specific writing/management of my projects. Graphic design, social media/blogging, and other kinds of tools are not included to cut down on the length of this post. But I might share other lists soon!

 

1. Kanri for task management

This is a new addition to my toolbox this year! I mentioned it briefly in my monthly writing update for February. I usually make to-do lists, checklists, and other planner/organization documents by hand, either on paper or in notebooks. Sometimes this works. Other times, I get fed up with them and need a change. This time around, Kanri is that change, and so far I am loving it.

Kanri is a free, open source, offline program (three things I love love love) that allows you to create different boards for projects and break down the tasks you need to complete in order to get your work done. By default it starts you off on a Kanban board, but you can edit the titles of the columns and add columns as needed. Take a look at my Kanri board for Murder in Heliopolis:

You can set a background of your own choosing for your boards, color-code your task cards (you can have different colors in the same column if you prefer) and include descriptions and further sub-tasks in each card. I've made two more Kanri boards, too - one of my blog posts, and one for productivity bites to help me feel more productive on off days.

Learn more about Kanri here.

2. LibreOffice Writer for drafting my stories

It may not look as pretty as Microsoft Word, but it does everything I need it to do, is reliable, and is free, open source, and offline. Be still, my beating heart!

 

LibreOffice Writer is where I do a lot of my drafting. If I'm writing a story for the first time, that's usually where it's done. It's also where I format my PDFs and ePUBs. There's really not much else to say about it - it's a great alternative to Microsoft Word and since I started using it, I've never looked back. A solid tool for writers which I highly recommend.

Learn more about LibreOffice Writer here.

3. yWriter for editing my stories

The first major edit of a book usually requires some pretty major changes. It can be a bit difficult to keep all of these changes in mind and keep it all organized in a document. In fact, this can get so overwhelming for me that I'll just move on to another project instead - just so that I don't have to deal with editing that particular manuscript!

I played around with writing a story from scratch in yWriter, and while that works really well, I did find that I moved back to LibreOffice Writer most of the time in the drafting stage. So, I started using yWriter instead as a tool during the editing stage, first with The Pirates of Sissa, and currently with Murder in Heliopolis.

What I find the most helpful about yWriter is the ability to break down each chapter into different scenes and work on them specifically. It comes with a range of features - for example, you can put together a rating system for 4 factors in your story, and you can decide whether a scene is in the Outline, Drafting, 1st Edit, or other stages. You can add characters, settings, and items. You can define timelines - when a scene takes place and how long it lasts. You can choose which character is the POV character in a scene, and keep track of what and who is in each scene. 

It generates storyboards for you, and shows you your daily word count progress since the start of your project. You can check out which words are most used in your manuscript, and which characters have the most scenes. You can set a word count target. You can have your scene read aloud for you. You can have it generate a working schedule for you to meet a specific deadline. And there's so much more.

Its robust functionality can really help you buckle down and get to work. It might not be as pretty as Scrivener, and I'm sure the latter has a lot of features this doesn't have, but it does literally everything I need it to and so much more, so I'm a happy chappy with my yWriter. And you know what else I love about it? Free and offline. No clouds, no shady hidden entity scraping your work, no lagging when a document gets too long - none of that nonsense! Well worth the download.

Learn more about yWriter here.

4. Twine for drafting my interactive fiction

As I made very clear in my latest issue of Scrittorio, I'm very interested in interactive fiction (IF) these days. I've been working on a few different IF stories of my own, though it is a very different kind of storytelling and work is going a bit slow on that front. 

Nevertheless, Twine is an amazing free, open-source, offline (💙) program to help you write and create your IF that makes the technical aspects of writing IF much easier to handle! Not sure if you can code an IF? Not a problem! Twine does a lot of that work for you, and all you have to do is figure out how to use one of its story formats. There are also a lot of amazing tutorials out there, since the Twine community is huge and always sharing their knowledge and methods.

 

Not everyone writes interactive fiction, but you don't necessarily have to use Twine in a storytelling way. You can use it to plot out your story, if you prefer, or try out different "routes" it could take before deciding on the best one and continuing with the drafting. Or you can use it as a way to create character webs. These are just a couple examples of how Twine could be used in ways other than its intended use.

Learn more about Twine here.

5. Boosted for tracking time spent on my projects

This one is a phone app that I've been using for years now. Boosted allows you to track a range of projects and tasks that fall within those projects. For example, if I decide that today I'm going to work on editing Chapter 4 of Murder in Heliopolis, I'll open my Murder in Heliopolis project, go to the task titled "Ch 4 First Edit", and hit the play button. It's essentially a stopwatch, tracking how long you work on a project over time.

It's extremely helpful for the analytical writer who wants to know how to divide or plan their time when working on their projects. I will admit that I often forget to turn it on, but I hope that my other apps cover for me a bit. yWriter, for example, also tracks how long you've been working on a project, and LibreOffice tracks how long a document has been opened for. Boosted allows you to go back and input a session long after the time has passed, so if you remember to update it, you can still get accurate tracking of your project even if you forget to use the app every single time you work on a project.

The Boosted app then creates graphs and reports for you, so you can see what your most productive days are, which projects/tasks took up the most amount of time, and so on. A great tool for keeping track of your productivity - but an even better one for understanding how long a project will truly take you. 

Boosted is not open source, but it is free, and it does work without an internet connection.

Learn more about Boosted here.

6. Notebooks and good old-fashioned pen & paper!

Sometimes, the digital screens can be a real nuisance. My eyes get tired. I need to do something else with my hands. Something more... crafty? More involved? More natural? So I'll move to a notebook, a printed version of my manuscript, or even a random piece of paper. I might write down a scene, plan out how to continue my story from there, or try to solve issues I'm facing that are creating a writer's block situation.

At the end of the day, you can't throw away a good notebook or pen & paper solution. It remains one of the most helpful ways to change things up, get away from the digital noise, and focus on what really matters without distraction. 

7. YouTube for ambient pieces and setting the scene

If I'm writing a horror novel, I might want some eerie or suspenseful music in the background to get me in the mood. Similarly, if I'm writing scifi, I might want ambient spaceship sounds in the background - of, if it's a fantasy, maybe I'll settle for a tavern ambience! It's amazing what you can find these days on YouTube - hours-long videos that give you the perfect backdrop for any scene, book, or tasks in general.

For example, here's a sci-fi workshop ambience that I listened to a bit while working on Murder in Heliopolis recently:

 

There are a plethora of other amazing ones, too, like:

• this space settlement ambience
• this enchanted forest piece
• this magician's study ambience
• this abandoned city ambience
  

I also sometimes listen to video game soundtracks, because they're usually made to keep you focused and engaged, so it's kind of perfect. I stay away from songs with lyrics - even instrumentals of songs with lyrics that I know - so that my brain doesn't veer off the path and get distracted. It's extremely helpful because it can help you fall into a flow state more easily.

A great piece that I really enjoyed listening to is this one from the Xenoblade Chronicles soundtrack:

 

Some writers also create soundtracks for their projects or characters. I can't make these kinds of playlists for the life of me, so that could never be me, but if you have character/WIP playlists or soundtracks - this could help you dig deeper into them in a way that allows you to develop them more.

Final Thoughts

I have a lot of tools that I switch to and use for a variety of different kinds of projects and tasks. I've used Google Docs and Google Sheets before, I've tracked word counts using LibreOffice Calc, I've used Google Drive to help manage my files across different devices, I've used Google Calendar and other calendar apps to help me manage my days and keep to deadlines, and I've used note-taking apps or voice note apps to help me keep ideas that I don't want to lose, or work through a problem I just can't seem to solve.

All in all, there are a huge number of amazing apps and programs and tools out there. It's a lot of trial and error to find the ones that work for you - and I'll let you in on another secret, too: sometimes, the tools that work for you now won't work for you with another project! Tools that I used when writing Project A may not lend themselves too well to Project B. And I've even switched up tools in the middle of a project, because I reached a stage in my writing where another tool gave me what I needed more so than the tool I had been using up to that point. 

Nothing is set in stone. All tools have their advantages and disadvantages. Use them as needed, and don't worry about it too much. In my experience, there's no such thing as a static writer's toolbox.