The Minimalist Writing App I use to write all my books
Ulysses
Exclusive
"Powerful features and a pleasant, focused writing experience combined in one tool, made for people who love to write and write a lot — this is Ulysses."
I love knowing that I can write from anywhere, on any of my devices, with seamless cloud sync.
Are pretty apps necessary to get writing done? Nope. But if I spend several hours a day in an app, every day of the year, it helps that it's a joy to use.
Sick of copying and pasting huge chunks of text in Microsft Word whenever you need to rearrange scenes? I was too.
This is a personal preference, but even with its customization options, I find Scrivener's design to be clunky, cluttered and outdated. Ulysses is clean, clutter-free, with a focus on the written word.
Quantitatively speaking, Scrivner has more features than Ulysses. If bells and whistles is what you're after, Scrivener's where it's at. Personally, I found Scrivener's multitude of options distracting. I spent more time organizing my book than writing it. Ulysses has the tools I actually need while keeping the priority on the actual writing space.
Scrivener's lack of cloud-sync and mobile app is why I left. They made a bunch of false promises about release date. Even now, as I write this, their iPhone app hasn't been updated in two years. Ulysses's iPhone app was was updated two weeks ago. I'm more comfortable with a company and app that is both forward thinking and "cloud inclined."
Enter your goal wordcount, due date, and Ulysses tells you exactly how many words to write each day.
Exporting a Ulysses project into an editor-ready Microsoft Word document is quick click the mouse.
Chapter Fourteen can become Chapter Sixteen, no cut/paste and scroll required.
Write a quick scene summary or editorial note that you can easily exclude from final export.
Ulysses syncs seamlessly across devices, so when a great line of dialog hits at 2am, I can add it directly to the MS on my phone.
Markdown is a techy, term, but it basically means you can add italics and chapter headings, minus all the crap.
Ever notice that Microsoft Word does just fine for a couple chapters, but after 100,000 words, it becomes awfully hard to find "that one chapter?"
Or try writing in something like Evernote or iA writer, only to become frustrated that it forces autosort by name or date?
In Ulysses, you can write each scene/chapter as its own “document” and then drag it around into whatever order you want.
Like magic, it pulls all of those individual scenes together into a single Microsoft Word file for you to send to your editor.
It even includes page breaks and everything, all without you having to do anything other than click export.
No affiliate link, no kickback for me. Just an honest recommendation from one writer to another.