yWriter

yWriter is a free desktop writing application built by Simon Haynes, a programmer and published author of nearly 30 novels. Instead of a single scrolling document, yWriter structures your manuscript as a tree of chapters and scenes — making it easy to reorder, analyze, and track your novel without losing your place.

What You Get

• Scene-based structure: Each chapter contains individual scenes with their own word count targets, viewpoint characters, goals, and conflict notes. Drag and drop scenes between chapters without cutting and pasting.
• Character and location management: Track viewpoint characters across scenes, assign goals, conflicts, and outcomes per scene. Location files let you store world-building notes alongside your manuscript.
• Progress tracking: Daily word count logs show exactly how much you wrote and when. Set targets per scene and track overall project progress.
• Automatic backups: yWriter snapshots your project at user-defined intervals, allowing rollback to any earlier version without relying on cloud services.
• Export options: Exports to RTF, ePub, Kindle (Mobi), and LaTeX. Most authors export to RTF for final editing in Word before formatting.

Who It's For

• Budget-conscious novelists: yWriter delivers Scrivener-like scene organization at zero cost. If you write long-form fiction and don't need formatting tools or cloud sync, it covers the essentials.
• Windows users who write offline: The primary Windows application is fully featured and doesn't require an internet connection. A macOS beta and separate iOS/Android apps are available, though these are maintained by different developers and have fewer features.
• Planners and outliners: Writers who want to track scenes by character, track per-scene conflict, and generate detailed project statistics will find yWriter's data-oriented approach useful.

Pricing: yWriter 7 for Windows is completely free with no ads, subscriptions, or paywalls. Simon Haynes accepts an optional $24.95 donation that unlocks a manuscript evaluation feature. The iOS and Android apps are separate third-party projects and may charge their own fees.

Strengths

• Genuinely free: No trial period, no feature gating, no "free tier" that nudges you toward a paid plan. The Windows version is fully functional at zero cost.
• Scene analytics: Few free tools match yWriter's ability to generate per-scene and per-character statistics — useful for spotting pacing issues and character imbalances.
• Stable and lightweight: yWriter 7 runs on Windows 7 SP1 and up. It loads quickly and doesn't require significant system resources.

Limitations

• Scenes edit in separate windows: Each scene opens in its own popup window rather than inline. This interrupts flow for writers used to a scrolling document.
• Dated interface: The UI looks like early-2000s Windows software because it largely is. Text size inside scenes is small and not resizable in some versions.
• No cloud sync: yWriter is fully offline. There's no way to sync projects between devices without manually moving files.
• Mac/mobile support is secondary: The macOS beta is not feature-equivalent to the Windows version. Mobile apps are built by third parties, not Simon Haynes, and have varying reliability.
• Not a formatter: yWriter has no book formatting or design capabilities. After finishing your draft, you'll need a separate tool for ebook or print formatting.

Alternatives

Scrivener ($60) offers a similar scene-based structure with a more polished interface and built-in compile/formatting tools. Atticus ($147 one-time) combines writing organization with direct ebook and print formatting output, making it a logical upgrade path for yWriter users who find formatting is their next bottleneck.