The most important thing when you’re writing is the words, but it helps you to have some tools to speed the writing process along. Here are 8 tools we love and use for writing fiction. They help with writing blog posts and freelance jobs too.

We hope you find a couple tools on this list that are helpful for you!

1. Grammarly

Grammarly is a free online writing assistant that helps with spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I wasn’t an early adopter because not all its suggestions are correct. It’s a program, not a copy-editor after all.

I came around because I’ve found that it picks up a lot of the things I don’t catch myself on re-reads. In particular, I find it good for:

• Missed words. The articles or other words I’ve left out when I typed but insert in my head when I proofread.
• Misspelled words. While your writing program may check for misspellings, I think Grammarly catches more of them. I like the fact that it catches the words I think are two words (e.g., door knob) and makes them one word (doorknob). Or vice versa (wordcount > word count). It also catches words that should be hyphenated.
• Unneeded words such as, “Rebecca’s blog posts are really informative.”
• Wordy phrases such as, “In fact, I like this post so much, I’m going to bookmark it.”
• It also catches double spaces which are hard to see, especially if they are at the right margin of a line of text.

Grammarly’s not perfect. It doesn’t identify tense issues well. With voicy fiction, Grammarly identifies some “problems” that aren’t really problems. However, it’s quick and easy to use and the issues it does catch make it worthwhile. It allows me to get my chapters cleaner before I sent them to critique partners so they can focus on bigger issues, not my dumb mistakes.

You can use Grammarly online by going to Grammarly.com and uploading or cutting and pasting in text. There are also Grammarly add-ons to Word or for email programs like Gmail.

I use the free version, though you can get suggestions for fixing more complex grammar issues if you upgrade to the paid version.

2. Thesaurus.com

I’ll say I’d like to say I have a 5-inch thick copy of The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus on my desk because that would feel more writerly. But it’s taking me months to make it through the current revision of my work-in-progress and I’m not taking minutes to look up every word by hand in a thick tome.

Thesaurus.com is not as extensive as I’d like, but that site and sister-site Dictionary.com are quick and easy to use. The 5-inch tome can wait until I get to the polishing level of revision.

3. Related Words

Sometimes I don’t find the synonym I’m looking for on Thesaurus.com. Sometimes I’m not looking for a synonym, but for a word that’s on the tip of my tongue but not coming to me. Or a word that’s kind of like one I’m thinking of. Then, I use RelatedWords.com.

If you’re writing a description and need a word related to shimmer, it will give you dozens of ideas. How about glisten, glimmer, twinkle, shine? Relatedwords.com is also great for getting rid of echoed words.

To use this tool, just go to Relatedwords.com and type in a word. It’s that easy.

4. Scrivener Labels

There are hundreds of blog posts that can tell you about all the great things in Scrivener, but if you’re like me, you know the basics but don’t use many of the tools beyond them.

One I’ve been really loving lately is chapter labels.

Why? My work-in-process has 4 point-of-view characters. I’ve labeled them each with a color. When I was drafting, this made it super-easy to see when one was out of the rotation for a while. Now that I’m revising, it makes it easier to find the chapter I’m looking for when I’m skipping around the manuscript doing edits.

Only have one point-of-view character in your manuscript? You could use labels to make each of your settings different colors so you can make sure your characters aren’t always in the same spot, or use them to highlight important secondary characters, themes, sub-plots, etc.

To use labels, right-click on a chapter in the Scrivener Binder, click on Labels. That will bring up the current label options in your document. Below the current labels is an option to edit them. Click + or – to add or delete labels. Double click to change the color. (I use Scrivener for Word. Labels might work differently on Scrivener for Macs.)

You can also get to the labels menu by clicking Project in the menu and then Meta-data settings.

5. Scrivener Status

Did I mention I’m in the middle of a never-ending revision?

I’m revising near the end of the manuscript, one critique partner is reading earlier chapters, and I’m desperately trying to finish to send out to 2 other critique partners. The status tag makes it clear where each chapter is in the revision process.

You can customize your status options. Mine currently are:

• Revised draft
• 2^nd pass read
• Karin’s edits incorporated, and
• Revised with feedback from Michelle/Halli

It’s so nice to revise a chapter, scan it through Grammarly to get it clean, and then move that status down—kind of like checking something off a to-do list.

Status works much the same as Labels. Right-click on the chapter in the Scrivener binder and then click on Status. Or click on Project then Meta-data settings in the menu.

And here are some favorite writing tool nominations from Richelle!

6. Scrivener Project Targets

Richelle loves Project Targets because they’re great for motivation when drafting. You can set word count targets for each writing session and watch the status bar move up from the red zone to the green zone as you approach your target.

You can also set a target for your manuscript.

When, like me, you’re in revision, they aren’t as useful. Maybe I should use them to get my word count down from 103k!

7. Find & Replace

Find and Replace is surely in every writer’s toolkit, but how many uses do you have for it? Richelle uses Find and Replace a LOT for over-used words and phrases, to change characters’ names, to make sure she’s getting details consistent through a draft.

I use this one a lot too. Did you know that in Word, Google Docs, and Scrivener you can bring up the Find and Replace function with Control F?

8. ATOS Analyzer for Text

Not sure if a chapter is hitting the right reading level for your target audience? The ATOS Analyzer for Text can help. Is uses average sentence length, average word length, and word difficulty level to assess the readability of a passage.

To use it, cut and paste in a selection of text into the website box or upload it.

It takes just a minute to analyze the text and then provides a report with the ATOS level. You can compare that reading level to the ATOS level of students in different grades (provided with the results, just scroll down).

The ATOS analyzer can be used with English or Spanish text.

That’s it for today — 8 writing tools we love.

What writing tools do you love? Let us know in the comments!