vkbo/novelWriter

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

3091 stars · 212 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

novelWriter is an open source plain text editor designed for writing novels assembled from many smaller text documents. It uses a Markdown-inspired formatting syntax with metadata for comments, synopsis, and cross-referencing, storing projects in human-readable text files.

Use cases

• write a novel in plain text
• organize chapters and scenes as separate documents
• cross-reference character and plot notes in fiction writing
• export a manuscript to docx, odt, pdf, or markdown
• keep novel projects in version control
• outline a novel with chapters and scenes

When to choose

• you write fiction and want plain text files for robustness and version control
• you want a free, open source novel editor that runs on Linux
• you need to split a novel into many small documents with cross-references

When to avoid

• you need rich WYSIWYG word processing like LibreOffice or Word
• you want cloud collaboration or co-writing features
• you need screenplay or non-fiction-specific formatting tools

Facets

application · maturity active

editor markdown file-system internationalization text-editors developer-tools files windows python cross-platform novel-writing plain-text pyqt6 qt6 fiction-writing manuscript-export writing-tool linux macos desktop

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="vkbo/novelWriter")