There are myriad helpful tools for writers out there, and I’ll be honest: I haven’t tried most of them. But I have picked up and abandoned a fair few tools, systems and platforms in my life! So, if I’m still using something today, it’s typically because I think pretty highly of it.

I wanted to put together a post that highlights some of my favourite writing tools. As well as some of the things that I think make the biggest difference to my comfort while writing. You’ll see what I mean when I get there! First of all though, I want to start with one that I know can be controversial:

When it comes to physically writing, I love Scrivener

The first thing that comes to mind for me when I consider helpful tools for writers is Scrivener. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s perfect. But I do think it has some tools that make it particularly useful when it comes to drafting or revising.

It’s so easy to use it to write in chunks of whatever size make sense to you. Scenes, chapters, fragments of dialogue. You can write a key conversation and then move it around easily, to wherever makes sense within your story’s structure.

I discovered for the first time last November the joy of writing out of order. Part of what made that so easy was the fact that I could start a new scene, write whichever part took my fancy, and leave it in a folder of ‘unassigned moments’ to be doled out to relevant chapters later down the line.

Now, admittedly, Scrivener can be intimidating. I’ve been using it for a couple of years, and I’m pretty sure I’m not using most of the features! But what I do use I’ve found incredibly intuitive and easy to pick up.

I’m also aware that it hasn’t been updated for Windows in a while, and apparently Mac users have all manner of fancy new features yet to be rolled out to the rest of us. Personally, since I know I’m already not using Scrivener to its fullest extent, that doesn’t bother me too much!

If you’re looking for transcription software, I’d recommend Otter.ai

I mostly use this for interviews rather than writing. If I have an interview and I want to be able to grab quotes from it later, I’ll record it in Zoom and then run the audio file through Otter.ai. It provides a decent free service, up to a time or file limit, and makes it really easy to get chunks of text without having to type it out yourself.

For a while at university, I did freelance audio transcription to help cover my rent… never again.

On a more serious note, I sometimes recommend it to authors who are struggling to find time for writing as well. You can record yourself talking through story or scene ideas, then put that file through a transcription service and use it as the basis for some new writing.

Yeah, it might need some cleaning up. There will be the odd mis-transcribed word, and some of your ideas might need a bit of working out. But it can also be a great way to get ideas down quickly for working on later, and I’ve worked with several authors who’ve found it really useful.

No list of helpful tools for writers is complete without Grammarly

I’ll confess, I don’t always use Grammarly for my own writing. That is, writing destined for my website, or fiction. But when I’m writing in my freelance capacity, for other people’s blogs and e-books, a run through Grammarly is a must.

I don’t agree with 100% of its suggestions, but it’s definitely helped me to catch typos, redundancies and clunky wording more than enough to make it worth downloading. I use the free version, obviously, because I’m a massive cheapskate! But it works fine for my needs.

If you get paid to write, or hope to, I think it’s worth using something beyond the inbuilt spell-check of your word processor to check your work. It adds a measure of reassurance, apart from anything else!

Is it a tool? I don’t know, but I recommend bullet journaling

Okay, I’m getting a bit more abstract here, but bear with me. I’ve been bullet journaling for about four full notebooks now, and it has proven very and extremely useful for writing. Not so much in helping me to plot or outline or physically write (I do all that in Scrivener now). But for helping me to prioritise writing.

I use my bullet journal to track the habits I want to build and maintain throughout the month, including making regular writing time. I keep track of my progress towards finishing different writing project. Everything I want to get done goes into a to-do list in my bullet journal, and I plan out my time across a week – including carving out that precious writing time.

Whether or not it can be considered a tool in the same way as Scrivener or Grammarly, I attribute a lot of the writing I get done these days to my bullet journaling.

As far as I’m concerned, the ultimate in helpful tools for writers – or anybody really – is a proper desk set-up

I recognise that whether this is possible or not can depend on a lot of factors beyond your control. Whether you have the space for anything like a proper desk area. Whether you can afford to buy tools and equipment to make your desk more comfortable and practical. But it made a massive difference to my level of comfort while writing (and especially after a few days of writing), so it couldn’t not go on the list.

At a minimum, I’d advise people who do a lot of typing to not do it from a sofa or bed. Tempting as it can be to set up somewhere soft and squishy, for most of us it isn’t going to be the best move in the long term.

When it comes to my own desk space, I’ve got a laptop stand that puts my laptop screen at a comfortable height. I’ve got a proper keyboard plugged in, with a wrist rest in front of it, to help keep my hands comfy while I’m working. I’ve also got a desk chair, so that I can adjust the height and angle of the back rest.

Do I still sit cross-legged, or hunched over, an alarming amount of the time? Of course I do. But at least I have the option of sitting with good posture and not wrecking my back and shoulders. I never had that when I worked from the sofa!

At a minimum, being able to have your screen at the right height and having a more wrist-friendly keyboard to work with can be a good start. If you have to spend a lot of time typing it’s worth trying to find a way to do so as comfortably as possible.

What do you think are the most helpful tools for writers?

These were my top five, and I’m aware I’ve been a little loose with the term ‘tools’! But honestly, I swear by a proper desk set-up of some kind. If you have the space and the resources, your back will thank you.

And now it’s over to you lot! What are your favourite helpful tools for writing? Playlists, software, productivity hacks – whatever your recommendations, I’d love to hear them!