Free Writing Software Review: yWriter!
Updated: Sep 4
[NOTE: Updated as of September 2026. The original post was written in November 2016.]
Welcome to the 7th part of my “Free Writing Software Review” series. (This is a companion series to my earlier post, “Free Scrivener Alternatives.”)
Today’s topic: yWriter!
The original yWriter I reviewed was version yWriter5. The latest version now appears to be yWriter7, which you can download at the link at the end of this post.
The basic functionality of the software hasn’t changed much since my original review, but I did update the screenshots to better reflect the current features (and for better quality images than the original post had). You can see those updated screenshots under the original review below!
(Want to check out a software I've review more recently (and love!)? Be sure to catch Part 8 of my software review series!)
Continue reading about yWriter below!
Original review (with updated screenshots):
yWriter starts off with a wizard to guide you through the process of setting up a new project.
yWriter has a lot of cool visual analytics functions, and allows for in-depth tracking of all-important intangibles in your story, such as timelines, and even levels of tension/humor/writing quality/etc in each scene, so that you can see a visual of how the tension, humor, etc builds throughout your story. It also allows you to track characters, locations, and even important items throughout your story, and to differentiate between main plots and subplots. Because of this, there are a lot of prompts to fill in about characters, locations, etc., to enable the tagging.
The character templates include a bio, notes, and goals for each character, and even allow you attach relevant images. You can tag characters as protagonist, antagonist, etc. The program also prompts you to provide specific information about each scene, including the scene’s goals and outcomes, whether the scene is action or response, what characters are in the scene and whose viewpoint it’s in, etc. Unlike Bibisco, this program allows you to tag a specific character as POV rather than generic “first person” or the like. You can also add images to Locations, and add tags to your Locations.
yWriter also provides this same functionality for items, which is useful for tracking key objects that might be important to your story. I could see this being really helpful for object “clues” dropped in a mystery novel, since you could easily use the tag to see where exactly a particular item has been mentioned in your story.
yWriter has a lot of really good visuals — charts, timelines, etc. — including a storyboard that lets you see how the characters and locations line up with chapters and scenes.
I like the visual analytics and how it allows you to input the basic story elements and track them easily. It also allows you to set and track daily wordcount goals.
Some of the analytics are really interesting, like this line graph that shows ratings for relevance, tension, etc., in the story (based on settings you can control within each individual scene). I could see this being really helpful for identifying where the story might need more conflict, more humor, etc., in order to keep readers engaged.
However, all the organization is still outline-based, navigated by a left menu that breaks things down by chapter and scene. While this works fine for me, if you’re a spatial thinker, you may find the lack of spatial organization a little frustrating (though maybe combining yWriter with something like Papel might give the balance you need!).
You can write your draft directly into yWriter (similar to Scrivener), and export it when you're finished.
A fun bonus feature: some editing help with tracking how many times you use certain words!
When you're ready, the finished project can be exported in a variety of formats.
Overall, I really like this program, and it was probably in my top 2 or 3 out of all the ones I originally reviewed. Best of all, yWriter is completely FREE. You can access it here: https://www.spacejock.com/yWriter7_Download.html
Want to explore some more software options?
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