A Long-Lasting Review of yWriter (Desktop Version)
A free writing application focused on getting organised to get the job done.
yWriter was recommended to me by Trevor Noah's typist. Former typist, that is.
Before his seven years as host of The Daily Show, he was doing radio, TV and other work in South Africa. At that time his handwritten scripts were typed up by a high school friend of mine who since moved from South Africa to Australia.
She liked yWriter because it was free and was useful when things had to be finished by a deadline. That assessment gets to the essence of yWriter and the value it offers: other applications provide a wealth of options that invite you to develop and expand your literary world. yWriter is focused on just getting the damn thing done.
yWriter is the creation of Simon Haynes an author and programmer.
yWriter is completely free for use on Windows and Mac operating systems. At time of writing it has just been released for the Android operating system where it is 50% off at $2.99 (USD) or $3.99 (AUD) until the 18th of February.
The programming is handled by Oregano Apps. This review does not cover the Android version.
Although the Desktop version of yWriter is completely free, users can register their copy to basically donate a little money to Simon Haynes. The best way to do that is not through the software itself, but at the page for yWriter5 registration.
Additionally, there is a Patreon to support future development. Technical support (and extensions) are available via accessing a yWriter Google Group.
You begin with a New Project Wizard, as shown below left, which asks for the title, the author's name and the project folder. Any characters in the title that cannot be used in filenames are filtered out. It is as idiot-proof a process as it gets.
You can also take an approach more like Scrivener, where you create a new project by just specifying the Project Directory. You'll then have to fill in the details through the Project Settings.
Note: In the case of multi-author works, the use of an & is not supported for the Author Name field.
The Project Settings, shown below right, is also useful for adding extra details if you used the New Project Wizard.
Help comes in the form of tooltips, as well as a Quickstart Guide. Parts of the Comprehensive Help File in particular have gone uncompleted to this day.
Fantastic Autobackups
Let's start with one of the best points of yWriter, automatic backups, which works by default by saving zipped copies of your work into the Autobackups folder.
These backup archives are automatically named to include not just the date of the autosave, but the time. Autoupdates can be configured by going to the settings of the Backups menu as part of the Tools menu. Through this, you also have the choice to change the autobackups so that if really don't want them, it will just autosave your progress without saving additional copies.
You even have the option to send backups to an email address, a FTP site or a mail server.
By default, the scene backups occur every five minutes, which the entire project is backed up on a daily basis.
Advanced Usage: The backup to an email server or FTP site (which can then pass data on to a website more directly) could be used to create your own web-based database software. yWriter can maintain databases which will automatically upload data, as it is updated, to be integrated into a website. It has the features to be used for desktop-based database software.
You can configure an alternate backup folder and by this (or by just installing yWriter on a USB Drive), you can ensure nothing is lost if your computer goes down. Originally, this is why you could backup via email or FTP site.
Even better, you don't even need to open any of the backups up to access the data! View Autobackups is under the Backups submenu of the Tools menu. You can select each date for which backups exist and choose among them. If, as I have, you want to go back to an older edit because you accidentally deleted something you wanted to keep, or as I have also done, edited something but then changed your mind and realised it was better before, you can simply copy and paste what you had before with View Autobackups.
If there is ever a need, you can also revert to a backup via the Restore Autobackup feature under the Backups submenu of the Tools menu.
Tip: Use Backup Entire Project from the same submenu as above if you need to back up stuff like Project Notes more than once a day.
A Focus On Organisation
The mantra of yWriter is 'write first, edit later.'
This isn't how I write myself, because for the type of stories I do, that approach would lead to multiple developmental edits where huge chunks of material are thrown away. Instead, I edit as I go along and for me, I am faster that way. This being said, yWriter is still useful for someone like me.
yWriter is as much a time management and first drafting tool as it is a writing application.
yWriter is deliberately limited when it comes to features for revisions. You can set up a spellchecker and custom dictionaries, but you can't search for multiple words at the same time to help with replacing words, nor does it provide help when it comes to suggesting synonyms and the like.
If such features are important to you, other applications are likely a better fit than yWriter, unless you see enough value in the productivity features.
The Project tab includes space for a description and the Author tab has space for an Author Bio.
The other options, in the Project Settings, besides export options, relate to Deadlines and Rating Names.
The Deadlines are one of several productivity features that yWriter has that other alternatives lack. You can set separate dates for Outline, Draft, 1st Edit, 2nd Edit and Final Edit stages or just ignore this entirely, just as you can for the option to numerically rate scenes for four different categories of your choice. By default, these are assigned to Relevance, Humour, Tension and Quality.
Personally, I haven't used either feature thus far. The Ratings feature can be used in multiple ways, however. For instance, so as to represent scores given by beta readers or groups of beta readers to help you to better edit your work according to feedback, or to self-assess the appeal to different target audiences.
You can generate a chart of these ratings with the Scene Ratings Chart under Tools.
If you make a note and have each number for a rating refer to something different, ratings can be used to keep track of up to ten different plotlines/subplots or types of conflict/obstacles, or combinations of major characters in a scene, etc. which can be useful to help make sure the work has the desired balance.
This can also be useful to write up branching dialogue paths for a video game, as the ratings can be used to refer to different narrative branches.
yWriter has the very useful Daily Word Target and Daily Progress Log.
The Daily Word Target lets you select a span of time and the number of words to be done and will then show a daily target and a progress bar. It will recalculate depending on the number of words you actually do.
The Daily Progress Log places emphasis on the progressive word count or in other words, the change in the total words written. Compared to how Scrivener focuses on presenting the words or characters written each day, yWriter's approach is relatively more professional in highlighting progression towards the end goal.
There is also a Words Per Minute counter which appears when you write more quickly. It can act as unspoken encouragement for just letting the words flow out, even if they are in a terribly rough form.
Simplicity Is The Biggest Strength of yWriter
yWriter has a minimalist design. Along the top are all the menus outside of the tabs that relate to the chosen section.
yWriter is arranged into Chapters which contain one or more Scenes. It is very easy to create new chapters and new scenes for all you need to do is right click in the general area to find the option. More than one Chapter or Scene can be merged together or created at once.
There are multiple Chapter Types. By right-clicking, Chapters can be marked for Notes, as To-Do or as Unused. They do not need to be used, but if you have a lot of Notes, having Note Chapters is a way of keeping those notes more organised and to prevent having a long list to scroll through.
A To-Do Chapter can be used to keep track of what chapters are undergoing revision, or for writers who have already planned out the total number of Chapters and want to be able to go from chapter to chapter to outline stuff before properly writing those parts. The Unused type can serve the same purpose, or to mark Front Matter and Back Matter, as you can choose to still include Unused Chapters when exporting Ebooks, while they still remain uncounted for the progressive word count.
When it comes to the Scenes, there are several fields that show up. You can hide any you don't find useful by clicking and dragging to change the size. If you wait until the cursor changes, you are also bring back hidden fields if you so desire.
Scenes can have a Viewpoint Character, be assigned Characters, Locations and Items and can also have a Status and/or be given tags and a Date/Time.
While each Chapter has its own Scenes, the Project Notes, Characters, Locations and Items are the same across the Project. There is no way to rename Items or to add additional such categories but the workaround is to use Chapters that are given the Note category instead.
If you right-click the scene window you can access options for a full-screen view or a full-screen view with margins.
Each Chapter has a description at the bottom-left. Each Scene has its own set of tabs, covering a Scene Description, a list of the assigned Characters, Locations and Items, as well as scene-specific Notes section and a Goal section where you can list a Goal, Conflict and Outline. If you would rather hide this tab, you cannot.
One of the biggest issues yWriter has is that although surprisingly versatile if you make fuller use of the included features, this simple design means it is also rigidly inflexible on certain points.
Simon Haynes, the developer, has acknowledged various common requests, but compatibility issues and technical difficulties due to the way in which yWriter is programmed that complicate or prevent this. The lack of income from yWriter is also a factor.
Certain features or lack thereof can be a source of bother, but it is key to remember yWriter is absolutely free. It isn't even a web application that is free to use but pays for itself by selling ads or user data. It is simply, totally, free-to-use and that can be worth putting up with certain inconveniences, especially if yWriter for the most part meets your needs.
An Old-Fashioned But Practical Mindset
Although by default yWriter is wide white space, you can change the colours by going to Edit Colour Scheme/Edit Color Scheme under Tools. You can only choose solid colours, with no option to use gradients or images. It isn't immediately apparent from options change what part of the interface, but if this is a feature you are into it doesn't take too long to get the hang of it.
Themes can be saved and loaded. The font size can be changed by going to Set User Interface Font Size under Tools.
It is fairly easy to set up themes that provide greater control or larger sizes for those who need larger print, but editing the highlight colours is either trickier to use or not yet implemented.
One of the best strengths of yWriter, as shown in the image above, is emphasis on word count, scene count and the progressive word count of each chapter. These essential details are more visible here than in most alternatives and sees yWriter, despite being less flashy, having a more professional approach.
There are other options to help with editing. The space-sensitive and case-sensitive Global Search and Replace can be used to remove accidental double spaces (as in Scrivener) as well as change the names of characters, places, etc.; plus two features which do not appear to be implemented, one for mismatched Double Quotes and one to replace user-defined Problem Words.
Normally, future features in yWriter are hidden until it is ready, but in a few cases features have been accidentally left visible and if Simon Haynes forgets that the code is blank, this is how features which don't work can be left in.
yWriter7 and previous versions integrated Text-To-Speech using a few voices that have been around for quite a long time. The feature is currently unavailable in yWriter8, which is technically a Beta. You can toggle typewriter SFX. They're lo-fi sounds which aren't properly looped, so it yet another old-fashioned touch.
yWrter has a variety of 'Reports'. Using them, you can keep track of word counts and number of scenes for each POV character, track how many scenes characters have appeared in, list the characters, location or items which fit a user-defined tag and also generate a summary of various details of characters, locations or items.
These Reports generate as HTML pages in a web browser, which is a more old-fashioned way of doing things. Even more old-fashioned is the Storyboard in its appearance.
When it comes to the Characters, Locations and Items, there is also a minimalist approach here. For both Locations and Items, you have a Details tab with fields for a Title, one or more Alternate Names and a Description. An image can be attached in the Picture tab, but there is no way to zoom in on the image.
For Characters, the Details tab has fields for a Short Name, Full Name, Alternate Names, an option to select if a character is either Major or Minor, space for a description and further space for character tags.
There are also tabs for a Bio, Notes and Goals, all without any pre-set fields. You basically make your own by adding a word folowed by a colon, an old-fashioned method compared to optional or renamable fields. Again, there's space for a picture.
Formatting Limitations
At first, yWriter has a massive issue. You can't do headings or choose the font ... Actually, you can choose the font for each scene (or a default font), it just isn't where you might expect it to be.
yWriter's Project Settings includes export settings, but the usual approach for non-programmers who use yWriter is to export or paste from yWriter into a different application used to do the formatting.
Although this two-pronged approach can sound like an unneccessary extra step, it is by no means unique to yWriter. Manuscripts written in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer, or for that matter applications like Scrivener, lack the finer control over typesetting that is only seen in more specialised desktop publishing programs like Adobe InDesign and Affinity Publisher.
yWriter can be seen one of two ways: either it is frustratingly limited, or it knows it can't do proper typesetting without use of code and has chosen not to limit you by trying.
Would you rather use something that will leave it at almost-but-not-quite-perfect formatting? Programs that do this can lead writers to end up doing what isn't the best fit for their writing, but rather is a fit for limitations of the program they use.
Still, there are formatting options available. More immediately, you can use bold, italics, underline and strikethrough. You can highlight text. You can also align text. You can also select 'Allow TAB in editor window' if desired.
Reflecting a programmer's mindset, you can also add HTML style comments not included in the wordcount. These can be used for leaving notes related to edits or planning.
Tip: If you want to locate and remove comments but aren't sure where they all are, you can also use 'Find' to locate the /* and */ used to mark these comments.
If you go to the Settings of the Scene Window, you have the choice of a few Line Spacing options and can additionally set Paragraph Indentations and Paragraph Spacing, which is to be used with Line Spacing to access a much larger range of choice with line spacing.
The ability to mark known Characters, Locations and Items can be used as a prompt to make new entries as needed.
Ease Of Use
What does it feel like to use yWriter? It is very easy-to-use but also, it feels focused on just getting the words out.
The simple interface means when you start a new project, the screen will look almost entirely blank and I find this invites me to start filling it in.
The simple interface malso means that I can tell my overall progress at a glance as it is easy to see how many Chapters and Scenes I have done, or how many Characters, Project Notes, etc.
The lack of text formatting is for me is actually an advantage as it encourages me to set that aside and just write, without worrying about how it looks on a page in terms of paragraph length or how many pages are used for a particular section.
The simple interface when it comes to Characters, Locations and Items means it doesn't feel like there are any details I HAVE to put in, unlike some other programs with set fields.
The more free-form nature combined with the prominence of the sections for Project Notes, Characters, Locations and Items keeps the planning sections of a project within easy reach but also in part due to the small windows, means that you can just put in a few sentences and it won't feel like its really empty.
At the same time, the Bio and Goals sections easily accomodate a large amount of material if you wish to write a lot.
The way I do things, as soon as I'm finished writing I paste it into Affinity Publisher and make edits so that it properly fits, but still, I've found yWriter useful for getting the ball rolling so to speak.
The minimalism of yWriter distills writing to focus on a few essentials: the words, the word count in a scene, word count in a chapter, the total word count and the setting and characters.
I do dislike how the Project Notes will have [1,1] and so forth after each note's title. I find it distracting.
I do also feel stifled for projects with a lot of worldbuilding, as it is harder to directly visuals maps and the like.
I find that the editor windows, which are easy to resize, makes it easy to write in a split-screen view, so I can write with reference images alongside, for example. In various other programs this is harder as various interface elements I use may be harder to access, or the text may be harder to see.
When writing a scene, you can quickly flip across to check the details for included Characters, Locations and Items as well as any Scene Notes you've left in.
If you're a writer that likes to plan or outline, yWriter is actually really useful for being able to quickly check up on your plans and outlines as you draft your scenes. This can really boost the ease of of writing compared to some other alternatives.
Otherwise Unseen Depths
yWriter is less limited than it first appears to be, if you know code. yWriter supports HTML and CSS code (and other scripts by extension). You can use code to export properly formatted eBooks by converting HTML files in the free Calibre software. You can even set yWriter up to have different content across that appear differently across ePub, MOBI and other versions.
To support CSS, go to Project Settings then HTML/Ebook and click on 'Create a project.css file'. You can modify that file. Alternatively, create a 'project.css' file in the main folder to start afresh.
One of the most significant limitations of yWriter is that it cannot directly embed images.
... But they will appear if you export with HTML or LaTex code. An option to do it for RTF exports appears non-functional.
Not only that, but while you cannot directly embed images, you CAN link to any file on your computer (or online).
So if you want to have images in your Project Notes, for example, what you can do is to link to the various files, which will open when you click on them.
How do you do this? For files on your computer, the easiest way is to go to a web browser and type in file:///C:/ which will give you a browsable index of C Drive. If you want a G Drive, then substitute C for G and so forth.
Copy and paste the address of the desired file. This will work for any file format or path your computer knows how to open, whether it be an image, a video, a document or a folder. It will open with the default program.
For stuff online, just copy the URL address.
Tip: If dealing with URLs and links to files, should you need to edit them, you can turn clickable hyperlinks off to make it easier to edit them without clicking on the link instead by going to the Settings of the Scene Editor.
So while in terms of direct embedding of files yWriter is limited, when you add in the support for links it can support files that a lot of other writing applications won't open. This can be very helpful in organising notes.
Tip: Links to online and offline files will not work if done in the profiles for Characters, Locations or Items.
Advanced Usage: yWriter can be used to help manage webpages. You can change menu elements or other elements across a site by copying an existing space-sensitive text string and then entering your addition with Global Search and Replace.
Project Variables can also be set to update a News or Latest Updates section, for example, by saying changing the value given to a variable like [Latest].
LaTex is also supported. LaTex is a mark-up language commonly used in mathematical and scientific fields. If you are familiar with LaTex, then yWriter lacks the limitations regarding text formatting which otherwise exist to those who don't use code.
Below shows the result of copying and pasting HTML and CSS code from an older version of this page into yWriter, without adding in any of the files needed to make stuff like the header appear.
Who's It For?
yWriter has long been among the more frequently recommended writing applications and with good reason. It is completely free and many of the alternatives don't have the same focus on productivity which yWriter has.
Nevertheless, as more and more years have passed since the debut of yWriter2 in 2002 (the original yWriter was privately used by Simon Haynes and never released) yWriter has become in some respects more dated.
Still, it has a focus on productivity that sees it continue to be a standout from amongst other options.
Looking at the below statements, where you best fit gives an idea of the extent to which yWriter is or isn't a fit for you.
