5 Best Writing Tools in 2021 to Perfect Your Work

Let’s face it—for most of us, writ­ing has nev­er been easy. And with the pan­dem­ic rag­ing over most of 2021 and our lives still upside down, becom­ing a pro­duc­tive writer has only got­ten hard­er. Whether you’re try­ing to churn out a short sto­ry, a sci-fi nov­el, or any­thing in between, the process typ­i­cal­ly involves hours of sit­ting at our desk while star­ing at a blank page until the next best­seller appears before us. And until that big moment final­ly arrives, we want to make sure we count on the right tools for the job. Whether you choose to use Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Win­dows Notepad, or even good ‘ol pen and paper, it’s crit­i­cal to uti­lize writ­ing tools that sup­port us in the process rather than get in the way.

As writ­ers, each of us approach­es our craft dif­fer­ent­ly and ben­e­fits from dif­fer­ent fea­tures in writ­ing tools; there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Per­son­al­ly, I have a very low tol­er­ance for user inter­faces. Even the most min­i­mal­ist word proces­sors like Google Docs prove dis­tract­ing to me. So, a dis­trac­tion-free mode and big font options are essen­tial when I sit down to write. It might sound high main­te­nance, but know­ing what works best for me helps me select the right tools to ensure pro­duc­tive writ­ing ses­sions. While I don’t have decades of writ­ing expe­ri­ence, I have per­son­al­ly tried dozens of apps and utilities.

This list is the result of all that tri­al and error. Hope­ful­ly, it will help save you time in find­ing the right tool for your next writ­ing project. There are no affil­i­ate links in this arti­cle, and I’m not get­ting paid to rec­om­mend any of these tools. I’ve sim­ply includ­ed them here because they have proved essen­tial to me over the years.

With that said, here are the five best writ­ing tools in 2021 to per­fect and safe­guard your work and up your game as a writer.

Grammarly

Gram­marly is an all-in-one, AI-pow­ered writ­ing assis­tant that reviews spelling, gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion, clar­i­ty, engage­ment, and deliv­ery mis­takes. It’s pos­si­bly as close as you can get to hire an actu­al edi­tor with­out actu­al­ly pay­ing for one. There are a ton of auto­mat­ed spell check­ers out there, but, in my opin­ion, Gram­marly has the most stream­lined user interface—so much so that it used to be my dai­ly dri­ver (I wrote half of my nov­el on its plat­form) before I found Scrivener.

There are also add-ons for Microsoft Word, macOS, iOS, and more to tend to your spell check­ing needs else­where if you so desire. The out-of-the-box solu­tion includes more than 400 checks, but the high­light for me is the non-native speak­er check, which warns you about awk­ward phras­ing and how to fix it. For writ­ers like me (my native lan­guage is Span­ish), such a fea­ture is priceless.

And speak­ing of price, a solu­tion of this cal­iber with all its fea­tures rarely comes free. I mean, yes, Gram­marly does have a free ver­sion with lim­it­ed fea­tures, but if you’re writ­ing a book or blog­ging often, you’ll grow out of the free ver­sion rather quick­ly. At the time of writ­ing, a pre­mi­um Gram­marly sub­scrip­tion goes for $30/month (or $12/month if you choose to pay for the year upfront).

Hon­est­ly, I feel the price is fair for the mas­sive amount of val­ue it has brought me. 

I’ve used Gram­marly for years, and there’s noth­ing I write that doesn’t go through it. In case you need proof, here’s my lat­est writ­ing report:

But hey, don’t take my word for it. Check out Grammarly’s fea­ture list and sub­scrip­tion plans if you feel like it. It doesn’t hurt to start with even the free ver­sion and then upgrade if you want to unlock more of its features.

ProWritingAid

As anoth­er AI writ­ing check­er, ProWritin­gAid is sim­i­lar to Gram­marly and is often seen as one of its pri­ma­ry com­peti­tors. In my per­spec­tive, they’re more like soul­mates. While Gram­marly pro­vides read­abil­i­ty checks that high­light long and over­ly com­plex sen­tences, ProWritin­gAid takes it to the next lev­el. The plat­form also focus­es on overused words, sen­tence struc­ture, punc­tu­a­tion issues, repeat­ed phras­es, con­sis­ten­cy, dia­logue, and pac­ing. It even checks for allit­er­a­tion and rhythm if you’re into that.

There are also add-ons for a wide range of word proces­sors and appli­ca­tions, includ­ing, notably, Scriven­er. If you’ve been fol­low­ing my blog, you know how much I love Scriven­er. I’ve been patient­ly wait­ing for Gram­marly to bless me with an add-on for it.

ProWritin­gAid offers a free ver­sion to check up to 500 words at a time. If you need more than that, and there’s a good chance you will, sub­scrip­tion plans go for $20/month or $70/year. There’s also a $399 option that grants you life­time access.

In my day-to-day life, I use both Gram­marly and ProWritin­gAid to check my writ­ing to ensure I have a holis­tic point-of-view. How­ev­er, I only find this nec­es­sary because I’m a non-native speak­er. You might not need both. I’ll leave that deci­sion to you. Go ahead and try the free ver­sion or check out their plans if you’d like.

Scrivener

Scriven­er has been my pre­ferred word proces­sor and dai­ly dri­ver for the last six years. If you’ve read my blog before, this won’t come as a surprise. 

@ScrivenerApp is the true Swiss Army Knife of writing

— A.C. Louis (@aclouisauthor) Octo­ber 5, 2021

Scriven­er is a word proces­sor specif­i­cal­ly designed for authors. It pro­vides tem­plates for fic­tion and non-fic­tion and includes a sto­ry out­lin­er, dis­trac­tion-free mode, progress track­ing, export­ing to sev­er­al for­mats (PDF, Word, ePub, etc.), screen­writ­ing mode, and more.

I’ve tried a bunch of word proces­sors, and so far, none have come close to what Scriven­er can do and for such a mod­est price tag. I appre­ci­ate that Lit­er­a­ture & Lat­te, its devel­op­ers, don’t rely on shady sub­scrip­tion mod­els. A life­time Scriven­er sub­scrip­tion can be yours for a one-time $49 pay­ment. There’s also a macOS and Win­dows bun­dle for $80 and an iOS (iPhone, iPad, etc.) ver­sion for $19 if you’re into writ­ing on your mobile devices. (I can’t do that, so props to you if you can.) 

If you’d like to try it first, the plat­form includes a 30-day free tri­al. You can down­load the app for free or check out the full pric­ing mod­el if you’re inter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing it. I’d be sur­prised if you weren’t!

Google Keep and Evernote

Two of the lead­ing note-tak­ing apps, Google Keep and Ever­note, let you quick­ly and eas­i­ly jot down and save your thoughts dig­i­tal­ly. When a new sto­ry con­cept, the solu­tion to a plot hole, or an excit­ing char­ac­ter idea pops into my head, I must write it down before I for­get. (I have an abysmal mem­o­ry.) To ensure I don’t for­get, I always imme­di­ate­ly open Google Keep and write down every­thing as it comes out. The thought doesn’t need to be ful­ly fleshed out; it just mat­ters that it’s writ­ten down. 

You nev­er know when that idea you just for­got would’ve turned you into a best­selling author. My entire writ­ing process starts with these two apps. Ideas even­tu­al­ly turn into text, and the sto­ry devel­ops from there.

Like Gram­marly and ProWritin­gAid, I use Google Keep and Ever­note as a com­ple­ment to each oth­er. I start my sto­ry out­lines in Ever­note as free-form text and lists that rarely make sense. Once I’ve writ­ten enough to devel­op a start­ing point, I con­tin­ue on to Scriven­er. I also con­tin­u­ous­ly take notes through­out the entire writ­ing process, from keep­ing a back­log of ideas and changes to writ­ing down valu­able feed­back from beta read­ers. In both apps, every­thing is backed up to the cloud so that I can seam­less­ly switch between desk­top, web, or mobile and con­tin­ue from anywhere.

The good news is that Google Keep is free, and all you need to access it is a Google account. It should pro­vide almost every­thing you’d require for your note-tak­ing needs. If you’d like to try and pair it with the more fea­ture-rich Ever­note, you can try out the latter’s free ver­sion or upgrade for a fee depend­ing on your needs.

Dropbox

Last in this list of the best writ­ing tools for 2021 (but cer­tain­ly not least) is Drop­box, the world’s lead­ing cloud stor­age ser­vice. You can have all the best tools in the world and your next best­seller already writ­ten, but (unless you’re using Google Docs) all of that can be gone in an instant if your com­put­er sud­den­ly dies. We’re talk­ing about days, months, or even years of hard work van­ish­ing into thin air because we didn’t back it up.

As a soft­ware engi­neer, I can’t think of a more reli­able place to back up my work than in the cloud. Drop­box is my ser­vice of trust and hasn’t failed me once over the decade I’ve used them now. I have the desk­top exten­sion installed and save all my man­u­scripts to a fold­er that syncs auto­mat­i­cal­ly to the cloud each time I save my changes. The more auto­mat­ed every­thing is, the less I have to wor­ry about what might hap­pen. I can instead just focus on the writ­ing itself.

Drop­box is free and comes with 2GB of stor­age, which might be enough for all your writ­ing needs as text doc­u­ments are among the small­est types of files there are in terms of size. If you’re a writer extra­or­di­naire and find your­self need­ing more capac­i­ty, the $9.99/month plan comes with a mind-numb­ing 2TB of space. In all hon­esty, I only upgrad­ed from the free ver­sion because I start­ed writ­ing a graph­ic nov­el, and the art files weighed in at about 300MB each. Feel free to try out Drop­box for your­self or check out their plans and fea­tures list.

As a final note, although I’m loy­al to Drop­box, there are dozens of oth­er options for cloud stor­age in this day and age. Maybe you’re a heavy Apple user and would pre­fer to use iCloud. There’s also Google Dri­ve, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, and count­less more. Whichev­er you choose is fine, but please, please always back up your work.

Final thoughts

And there you have it—my list of the five best writ­ing tools for 2021! I tried my best not to give you one of those gener­ic lists that are seem­ing­ly omnipresent across the web and chock full of pro­grams that the authors them­selves have nev­er even used. Instead, this list is actu­al­ly based on my own expe­ri­ence using these tools in my day-to-day writ­ing. I know how con­fus­ing it can get when putting togeth­er your tool­box. Hope­ful­ly these pro­grams will help make your writ­ing process just a bit eas­i­er, allow­ing you to both per­fect and safe­guard your work.

Final­ly, as I men­tioned ear­li­er, I’m not spon­sored by any of these apps. I only use them every day as part of my writ­ing process, and they have allowed me to focus on the only thing I should be spend­ing my time doing: writing.

So, how about you? Do you have any pre­ferred tools you could rec­om­mend to fel­low writ­ers? Have you tried any of the ones I list­ed here? As always, don’t hes­i­tate to reach out by email or share your thoughts in the com­ments below.

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