The Best Writing Software for Romance Authors
Sage Kay
Writer, reader, outfit repeater.
As the most popular and profitable genre, romance can be a hard one for authors to keep up with. Many authors publish several books a month to stay competitive, and traditional publishing is often no different.With such a rigorous publishing pace, writers trying to break into the genre will need to write quickly to see results. Luckily, I’ve got a few tools to help keep you on schedule.
Best Novel Drafting Program For Romance Authors
With speed as the name of the game in romance, we need software that can help streamline that process. Here are a few features you might look for:
- Ease of use
- Low learning curve
- Streamlined functions
- Optional organizational features (a program that forces you to utilize every feature will likely slow you down)
- Goal tracking
- Grammar check
- Multiple file format exports
- Plotting and structure assistance
- Distraction-free writing mode
- Character development tools
There are many writing programs out there, and they hit some or most of the points above, but I only know of one that hits them all and more. NovelPad was designed to streamline the writing process by giving you everything you need to draft your novel in one place. Its character sheets, plot point tracking, and other organizational tools make it perfect for romance writers who need to write quickly and efficiently while making sure their character dynamics and relationship building plot points are as strong as they should be for the genre.
Character Cards
Romance novels are nothing without strong characters. To ensure your characters are fleshed out and built to feel real, NovelPad includes a character card menu where you can fill in their name, nicknames, biographical information, and relationship to other characters all in one place.
Simply click "add character" and add your love interests, supporting characters, and antagonists to a card. Gone are the days that you forget your main character’s eye color and need to scour your draft or misplaced post-it note for the detail. Additionally, once a character is added, NovelPad keeps every scene from their POV under their name, letting you track your character’s storyline in order without unrelated scenes breaking it up. $ Read more on character cards here$ .
Scene Cards
A powerful tool in NovelPad’s framework is the $ scene card$ . Scene cards live on the chapter board and house all kinds of helpful information like your scene description, when the scene happens, the POV, the location it takes place, the plot(s) it serves, associated notes, and a custom color label you can use to track anything you’d like.
Once you assign this information, you’ll find the scene cards on various boards—like the character boards, where you can see each scene associated with that character, in order.
Or the locations board, where you can see every scene that happens in each place, in order. Same for plots. This can help you tighten arcs and find plot holes easily.
Plot Tracking
Because romance plots are usually formulaic, they can be relatively quick to write—but it's important to make sure you’re hitting those beats.
With NovelPad’s plot board, you can add important plots, subplots, and romance or character arcs to track them all in one place. This makes it easy for you to check your plot lines for inconsistencies, plot holes, and flow. With this tool, you can easily keep your character’s relationship arcs in order.
Customizable color labels
One of the most versatile tools in NovelPad’s arsenal is the customizable color label. You can create an unlimited number of labels, each with their own assigned color and text. For a romance novel, a common use for this feature is to track the emotions of each scene. Another option is labeling scenes that correspond with certain parts of a book outline. Save The Cat labels might look like: Fun & Games, All Is Lost, Finale, etc.
You can find what aspect of your story is most helpful to track for your drafting process by experimenting with different color coding systems.
Goal Tracking
And of course, the best way to write efficiently is to write consistently. NovelPad offers an intuitive, customizable goal tracking system. A few things you can control:
- Words vs minutes
- Tracking words in your whole manuscript, or just the live version
- The heaviness of each writing day (or non-writing day)
- Adding sprints
- Adding vacations
- The length of the goal
- Adapting schedule to your progress (meaning your daily goals will update as you under or over-perform on the present day)
The specificity of this goal tracker is what makes it successful. You can input your own writer data and let it make an appropriate and realistic plan.
Helpful Writing Programs for Romance Authors
Here are a few additional tools you might consider for your romance novelist career.
1. $ Cold Turkey$
Cold Turkey streamlines your writing process by figuratively locking you in your room with your computer. It essentially turns your computer into a typewriter, blocking out everything but the drafting page until you’ve hit a minute or word goal. Most writers find this very effective for getting things done.
2. $ Text Expander$
Text Expander provides a shortcut to quick writing with user-made "snippets" of text. While it’s marketed toward businesses looking to streamline communication and skip repetitive text, it can easily be used to fast-track your drafting schedule with short-hand snippets that can take the form of whatever you’d like. Instead of typing out that long and complicated town name, simply assign a few letters to a snippet and watch it automatically expand to your desired word or phrase.
It can even be used to quickly access character information by creating a snippet that will expand into a few short descriptions of your character, location, or plot point. This process is not very intuitive, but if you’re a writer who loves keyboard shortcuts and custom layouts, Text Expander could be worth checking out!
3. $ Dorian$
The Dorian platform is an excellent option for romance authors to monetize their stories. To explain is simply: Dorian is Kindle Vella for comics. Users can pull imagery from the app’s library, or illustrate/commission their own art to go with their choose-your-own-adventure story. You can publish adaptations of your stories, or write original ones for the platform. Many romance authors have reached amazing success through Dorian.
To explore the rest of NovelPad’s features and see if it suits your romance writing needs, create a free trial account $ here$ , no credit card info required.
If you’ve been inspired to write a romance novel but don’t know where to start, check out this tutorial for $ starting a romance story$ or tips on $ how to use romance tropes$ .
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