Getting words down
Drafting
Tools that help you produce prose: scene generators, manuscript editors with a model in the margin, and general assistants writers actually draft in. None of them owe you a finished book.
13 tools
Drafting
ChatGPT
The general assistant most writers already have open. Useful for brainstorming, blurb variants, and line rewrites if you paste the scene and say what you want. It does not hold a novel together unless you build that memory yourself with projects or files, and it will invent sources if you let it.
Best for Writers who want one flexible assistant and will bring their own outline, pages, and skepticism.
FreemiumFiction and nonfictionDrafting
Claude
A general assistant that writers often prefer for long passages, tone, and a calmer revision pass. Projects can hold notes and chapters you upload. It is still a chat, not a novel app: continuity across a whole book is only as good as the pages you put in front of it.
Best for Drafting and revision when you want a careful reader more than a plot machine.
FreemiumFiction and nonfictionDrafting
Gemini
Google's assistant, practical if your research and drafts already live in Docs or Drive. It will brainstorm and rewrite like the other general models, with the same habit of sounding finished before the thinking is. For source-grounded reading, NotebookLM is the closer sibling and is listed on its own.
Best for Writers already working in Google's tools who want a second model without a new app.
FreemiumFiction and nonfictionDrafting
HyperWrite
A browser assistant for rewriting sentences and producing short drafts in the page you are already on. It is built for emails, posts, and articles more than for an 80,000-word novel. Fine as a line-level spare, not as the place you keep the book.
Best for Short-form drafts and quick rewrites, especially outside a dedicated writing app.
FreemiumNonfictionDrafting
LivingWriter
A manuscript workspace for books and screenplays: boards for structure and elements, outlines, and export to DOCX, PDF, EPUB, and Kindle. Optional AI can chat with the draft, rewrite, analyze, outline, convert a chapter to a screenplay, or sketch a cover, and the vendor says your manuscript is not used to train models. Free and Pro cap those requests hard, and this is still a general writing desk rather than a fiction-tuned co-writer like Sudowrite.
Best for Authors who want planning boards, a manuscript, and optional AI in one app, including screenwriters.
FreemiumFiction and nonfictionDrafting
Loreon
A novel continuity studio: a structured story bible, canon links as you type, and specialist checks for contradictions, voice, and dropped foreshadowing, including across volumes of a series. You can write every word and only run the checks. Agent work spends credits, and the product is new enough that you should test the depth on your own manuscript before you trust it.
Best for Series and long-form fiction writers whose continuity problem is bigger than a chat window.
Usage-basedFictionResearch
Notion AI
Writing and Q&A inside the notes you already keep: research dumps, series bibles, interview transcripts, chapter indexes. It is a strong place to ask questions of your own material and a weak place to line-edit a novel. If the wiki is the point, this is the assistant that lives in it.
Best for Nonfiction writers and planners whose research already lives in Notion.
SubscriptionFiction and nonfictionDrafting
NovelAI
A story model with a lorebook, memory, and author's notes, built for long fiction rather than office prose. It is less filtered than ChatGPT or Claude, which some genres need and some writers will not want. The interface feels closer to a text adventure console than a manuscript editor.
Best for Fiction writers who care about a dedicated story model and persistent lore more than a guided editorial workflow.
SubscriptionFictionDrafting
Novelcrafter
A novel workspace with a codex for characters, places, and canon, plus chat and drafting that can call many outside models. You are in charge of how much AI shows up, including none. The tradeoff is setup: keys, prompts, and model choice are your problem.
Best for Series authors who want a codex and the freedom to pick the model, including one running on their own machine.
SubscriptionFictionDrafting
ProseEngine
A fiction studio for drafting and revising a novel in one project: inline rewrites, a story codex, continuity checks, and scene scoring. You can bring an API key or use prepaid credits. The free plan is narrow, and a score is not the same thing as taste.
Best for Fiction writers who want continuity checks and rewrite tools on their own manuscript, not a general-purpose chatbot.
FreemiumFictionDrafting
Squibler
An outlining and drafting app that will try to expand a premise into chapters or a screenplay. Speed is the point, and it shows: structure comes out fast, sentences come out generic, and you should expect to rewrite. Handy as a project container if you already know the story.
Best for Writers who want a structured project and a fast first pass they are willing to throw away in revision.
SubscriptionFiction and nonfictionDrafting
Sudowrite
A fiction workspace rather than a blank chat. Sudowrite keeps a story bible and offers brainstorming, description, continuation, and rewrite tools aimed at novels and screenplays. Credits run out, and the prose still needs a human pass for plot decisions and voice.
Best for Novelists who want fiction-specific drafting tools inside the manuscript, with usage included in the subscription.
SubscriptionFictionDrafting
Type.ai
A long-form editor with generation, revision, and review beside the document, so you are not pasting chapters into a chat. It also exports and can narrate a draft. It is a writing surface, not a story bible with deep canon checks.
Best for Writers who want model help inside a manuscript editor and do not need a full worldbuilding database.
FreemiumFiction and nonfiction