The best AI tools for writing a novel in 2026
The best AI tool for writing a novel depends on which part of the work you want help with. For help drafting and revising prose, look at Sudowrite, Novelcrafter and ProseSpun. For co-writing a story turn by turn, NovelAI. For open-ended brainstorming, a general assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude. And if you want no AI at all, Scrivener and Plottr are built for planning and writing a long book by hand.
There is no single “number one” here, because these tools are not trying to do the same job. Below, each one is described by what it is built for and who it suits, based on each tool’s published features (checked October 2026).
ProseSpun is our own product; we’ve described every tool, including ours, from what it publishes.
The tools at a glance
| Tool | Best for | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Sudowrite | Writers who want a wide set of AI drafting tools in one place | Fiction-focused editor with Write, Describe, Expand, Rewrite, Brainstorm, Feedback and a Story Bible |
| Novelcrafter | Writers who want a detailed story wiki and a choice of AI models | Planning, writing and a Codex of characters, places and lore, with AI connected from the model you choose |
| ProseSpun | Writers who want to keep their own sentences | Proposes detail, dialogue and rewrites around lines you wrote, with every change marked before you accept it |
| NovelAI | Co-writing a story back and forth, plus image generation | Story generation with a Lorebook of characters and places, and an anime-style image generator |
| ChatGPT | Open-ended brainstorming and questions | General assistant; Projects keep related chats, files and instructions together |
| Claude | Open-ended brainstorming and feedback on longer passages | General assistant; Projects keep context, instructions and files organized |
| Scrivener | Organizing and compiling a long manuscript, without AI | Binder, corkboard, outliner, snapshots and compile to many formats |
| Plottr | Plotting a book or series visually, without AI | Visual timeline, story-structure templates, character sheets and a series bible |
AI tools built for drafting fiction
These three are made specifically for fiction. They know what a scene, a chapter and a character are, and they keep notes about your story that the AI reads when it suggests something. Where they differ is in how much of the writing they offer to do, and how they keep your story in mind.
Sudowrite
Sudowrite is a writing app built for fiction and novelists, with a long list of AI tools around the editor. Write continues from where you stopped. Describe offers sensory description, Expand builds out a scene that feels rushed, and Rewrite revises a passage. Brainstorm generates ideas, Feedback suggests areas to improve, and Chat is a conversation built for novelists.
Its Story Bible takes you from an idea to an outline and on to beating out chapters, and Canvas is a space for exploring plot points, character arcs and themes. Sudowrite also offers Visualize, which generates art from character and worldbuilding descriptions, a library of community Plugins, and its own model trained for fiction, called Muse.
Best for: writers who want many kinds of AI help, from planning to continuing a draft, in one fiction-focused app.
Novelcrafter
Novelcrafter is a writing environment built around planning and the Codex: a wiki of your characters, locations, lore and worldbuilding that links its entries as they appear in your manuscript. Its planning views help you spot plot holes and inconsistencies early, and its writing tools offer AI-assisted drafting and revision, plus a Chat for brainstorming.
What sets it apart is AI Connections: you choose which AI provider to use, including your own keys for several platforms or a model running on your own computer. It also supports collaboration, such as inviting an editor, and it is built for many forms of writing beyond the novel.
Best for: writers who plan in detail, want a thorough story wiki, and want to choose which AI model does the work.
ProseSpun
ProseSpun is a fiction writing app for people with more story than sentences. The writer writes; ProseSpun proposes, and waits.
You select a line you wrote and pick Describe, Dialogue or Rewrite. Describe keeps your sentences word for word and adds detail around them; Dialogue writes the spoken lines a moment needs; Rewrite says it another way. Each result comes back as a proposal under your passage, with the changes marked and the word count before and after (for example, 9 → 74 words · 65 added). You accept it, discard it, or try again.
To plan, you start a line with // and it becomes a beat, a note of what
should happen next. Draft turns a beat into sentences you keep or drop one
at a time. Compose turns it into a plan of blocks (description, action,
dialogue, thought) that you put in order, then writes them a few blocks at a
time, each run waiting for you to accept it.
For memory, ProseSpun keeps a card for each person, place and thing your story names. It reads what you write, drafts cards for new names and proposes changes to existing ones, and none of them is added until you say so. A Setting holds where and when the story happens and how it should feel. Threads lays out who appears where, scene by scene. For long books it keeps summaries of every scene, rolled up into chapters and the whole story, and tracks what is true of each character as of the scene you’re in. (We explain that design in A novel is bigger than any model’s memory.)
What it is not: it is not a generator that writes a whole book for you, it has no image or cover generation, and it has no publishing features.
Best for: writers who want to keep their own sentences and see exactly what every suggestion changes before it reaches the page.
AI for co-writing a story
Some writers want less a writing assistant than a storytelling partner: you write a little, the AI writes a little, and the story goes somewhere neither of you planned.
NovelAI
NovelAI offers two things: story generation and image generation. On the story side, it describes itself as writing “with you, not for you”: you write, it continues, and the story grows back and forth. Its Lorebook holds entries for characters, locations, objects and factions; when a key word for an entry appears in the recent text, that entry’s description is added to what the AI reads. Entries can also be set to always be included.
The image side generates anime-style illustrations, with editing tools for changing details of a picture and keeping characters consistent across scenes.
Best for: writers who enjoy improvising a story in turns with an AI, and those who also want character art.
General chat assistants
General assistants are not writing apps. There is no manuscript, no chapter list and no character notes unless you create them. In return they will talk about anything: a plot problem, a historical detail, a title, a reading of your opening page. Many novelists use one alongside a writing app rather than instead of one.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is OpenAI’s general-purpose assistant. For a novel, its most useful feature is Projects: a project keeps related chats, files, instructions and sources together, and the project’s instructions apply across its chats. You can upload your outline or character notes once and have every conversation in that project start from them.
Best for: brainstorming, research questions and talking through a story problem, with your notes kept in one project.
Claude
Claude is Anthropic’s general-purpose assistant. It helps with first drafts and editing, accepts uploaded documents, and its Projects keep context, instructions and files organized by project. Its memory can carry context over from past conversations, and Artifacts give it a separate space for a document you can edit yourself or ask it to change.
Best for: brainstorming, feedback on a passage you paste in, and keeping a novel’s reference material in one project.
(For one way to work with any of these without losing your voice, see how to use AI without losing your voice.)
Writing apps without AI
Not every writer wants AI in the room, and a good structure tool is useful whether or not you use AI elsewhere. These two have none built in.
Scrivener
Scrivener is built for organizing a long manuscript. The Binder holds every chapter, scene, note and research file in one place. The Corkboard shows sections as index cards you move to rearrange the book, and the Outliner shows synopses, word counts and metadata. You can view up to four documents side by side, keep Snapshots of earlier versions, and Compile the manuscript for print or export to formats such as Word, PDF and ePub. Its published features don’t include AI.
Best for: writers with a big, messy project who want to organize, revise and assemble it by hand.
Plottr
Plottr is a plotting tool: a drag-and-drop visual timeline for scenes, chapters and character arcs, more than forty story-structure templates, character sheets, places and notes, a family tree, and a Series Bible for details that span several books. It exports to Word and Scrivener. Plottr states plainly that it is not building AI into the app.
Best for: plotters who want to see the whole book’s structure at once, and writers who want a planning tool with no AI.
(Whichever you pick, the habit of a story bible is worth keeping; here is how to make a story bible.)
How to choose an AI tool for your novel
Start from the problem you have, not from the longest feature list.
- “I have the story but my sentences come out flat.” You want tools that work on your prose, sentence by sentence: Sudowrite, Novelcrafter or ProseSpun. If keeping your own sentences matters most, look for a tool that shows what each suggestion changes before you accept it.
- “I lose track of who knows what.” You want a story bible the AI reads: Sudowrite’s Story Bible, Novelcrafter’s Codex, NovelAI’s Lorebook or ProseSpun’s cards. Check how each one stays up to date: whether you write every entry yourself, or the tool proposes changes from your prose.
- “I want to play with a story and see where it goes.” A turn-by-turn co-writing tool such as NovelAI suits that way of working.
- “I’m stuck on a plot problem.” A general assistant is a good partner for talking it through. Upload your notes to a project so you don’t explain the book from scratch each time.
- “I need to organize the book, not generate it.” Scrivener for the manuscript, Plottr for the structure. Both work without AI.
- “Who decides what lands in my book?” Read how each tool applies its suggestions: inserted into your text, offered as a choice, or shown with changes marked. That decides how much of the finished book is in your voice.
Before you settle on one, take a scene you have already written, run it through two candidates, and keep the one whose suggestions you would actually accept.
Related reading: Sudowrite alternatives in 2026 and AI story generator or writing assistant.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI tool for writing a novel?
It depends on the job. Fiction-focused apps such as Sudowrite, Novelcrafter and ProseSpun help with drafting and revising prose and keep notes about your story. NovelAI suits turn-by-turn co-writing. General assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude are best for brainstorming and questions.
Can AI write a whole novel for me?
Some tools will generate long stretches of text, but a novel needs a consistent plot, characters and voice across hundreds of pages, and those decisions are still the writer’s. Most fiction tools are built to help you write rather than to write for you, and the result reads more like your book when your own sentences are the starting point.
Is ChatGPT good for writing fiction?
It is useful for brainstorming, research and talking through story problems, and Projects let you keep your notes and instructions in one place. It is a general assistant rather than a manuscript editor, so it has no built-in chapter structure or character notes unless you supply them. Many novelists pair it with a writing app.
Which novel writing software has no AI?
Scrivener and Plottr are well-known options whose published features include no AI; Plottr says outright that it isn’t building AI into the app. Scrivener is for organizing and compiling a manuscript, Plottr for plotting on a visual timeline. (For more on planning without any tool, see how to keep track of characters in a novel.)
If you want help that starts from your own sentences, bring a scene you’ve already written to ProseSpun.