Alexis Kestler
Whether you‘re an aspiring author hammering out your first draft or a seasoned freelancer polishing your thousandth blog post, every writer needs the right set of tools to create their best work. This expert guide reveals the top 15 writing resources guaranteed to help you improve your skills, work more efficiently, and transform into a professional-grade writer.
From AI-powered assistants to mind mapping software, these hand-picked tools represent the best solutions available today for writers aiming to reach the next level. Read on to discover new ways to organize ideas, tighten prose, optimize SEO, access premium imagery, and more.
Writing Assistants: Editing and Feedback
These intelligent assistants review your writing and provide constructive feedback so you can perfect every piece.
Grammarly
As the world‘s most popular digital writing assistant, Grammarly improves writing by finding and correcting up to 250 types of grammatical mistakes. It also checks for awkward phrasing, vague wording, spelling errors, and plagiarism. The combination of AI technology with human expertise helps writers communicate clearly and effectively.
"I will never send another piece of writing without running Grammarly first. It not only improves my writing, it gives me confidence that my points come across clearly." – Lauren G., Copywriter
ProWritingAid
Consider ProWritingAid your personal writing coach, offering in-depth writing analysis, correction suggestions, and actionable writing tips tailored to your needs. This customizable tool integrates directly into popular word processors and editing software so you can get real-time feedback while writing. Writers praise the Contextual Thesaurus and Word Explorer tools for improving vocabulary.
Hemingway Editor
Minimalists will appreciate Hemingway Editor‘s focus on brevity and clarity. This web app highlights complex, dense, or vague sentences and prompts you to shorten them for increased readability. The bold visual interface makes it easy to spot problem areas in your writing. The tool calculates readability scores so you can assess how clear and concise your writing is before publishing.
"After using the Hemingway app, I was able to simplify my writing style tremendously. Now my blog posts and essays read cleaner, tighter, and more professional." – Dan H., Freelance Writer
Idea Organization
Getting thoughts out of your head and onto the page starts with gathering all your ideas in one organized system. These tools facilitate smooth brainstorming, outlining, mind mapping, and documentation.
Milanote
Milanote serves as a visual ideation hub to collect all your thoughts, images, notes, and links into inspirational boards and pages. The flexible interface adapts to your creative process, allowing you to map concepts, build outlines, or gather research. This cloud-based organization tool enables writers to consolidate resources, shape structure, and transform scattered ideas into organized writing projects.
"As a fiction author juggling multiple storylines and characters across a series of novels, Milanote helps me keep all the pieces connected so I can focus on writing." – Cindy T., Novelist
Scrivener
Favored by novelists and long-form writers, Scrivener provides a customizable writing environment built for managing complex projects. This popular app allows you to break projects down into chapters and scenes, rearrange structure, store notes/images/PDFs, track progress, export into various formats, and more. Scrivener removes organizational hassles so writers can concentrate on the creative process.
Notion
The infinitely flexible notebooks within Notion enable writers to organize projects however they envision – via lists, boards, wikis, calendars, or custom layouts. It‘s an all-in-one workspace for writing, note taking, task management, and document organization. The feature-packed personal productivity app allows teams to collaborate on projects so you can work closely with editors, co-authors, or clients.
"As a blogger juggling tons of ideas across multiple articles and channels, Notion helps me stay organized and document everything in one central place!" – Alicia R., Blogger
Design and Imagery
Quality visuals grab attention and boost engagement with your writing. These graphic design, photo editing, and stock media tools empower you to create captivating images to complement your words.
Canva
Non-designers can produce sleek custom graphics with Canva‘s user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and professionally designed template library. This leading graphic design platform offers simple tools to create social graphics, presentations, posters, documents, logos, book covers, ads, and more. Canva Pro unlocks premium templates, photo editing features, brand kits, color palette tools to publish visually appealing content fast.
"As a non-technical writer, Canva brings my articles and ebooks to life with charts, graphs, and other custom graphics that capture attention while conveying information clearly." – Mark R., Nonfiction Author
Adobe Photoshop
For advanced image creation and editing, Adobe Photoshop remains the gold standard software used by professionals across photography, design, and media. Its unparalleled features for working with raster (pixel-based) images enable fine-tuning color, applying complex effects and filters, precision editing, realistic painting, and infinite digital manipulation. Although the learning curve is steep, this industry leader offers the deepest set of design tools.
Pixabay
Finding fabulous royalty-free stock photos and vector images for your blog posts, articles, social posts, and more is effortless with Pixabay‘s collection of over 2 million (and counting!) free high-quality images. This popular marketplace offers photos, vectors, illustrations, videos, and music licensed under the Pixabay License so they‘re free for both personal and commercial use without attribution.
SEO and Optimization
Drive more traffic to your writing by optimizing content to rank better in search engines. These tools analyze key elements that influence ratings so you can maximize visibility.
Yoast SEO
The #1 WordPress SEO plugin, Yoast SEO, analyzes content and recommends improvements to rank better in Google. It provides real-time feedback on important optimization elements like titles, meta descriptions, headings, keywords, readability, and more so you can tweak as you write. The Snippet Preview reveals how your content will appear in search results.
"Yoast SEO helps me create compelling meta data and structure content in a search engine-friendly way. My blog traffic has doubled since installing it!" – Noah W., Food & Travel Blogger
SEMrush
Take your content optimization to the next level with SEMrush‘s robust keyword research, backlink analysis, technical auditing, competitor monitoring, rank tracking, site analytics, and other marketing tools for in-depth SEO strategy. This marketing platform reveals traffic insights and opportunities to improve visibility across search and social.
"The keyword data and competitor research from SEMrush guides my content planning and product development to meet market demand, differentiate from rivals, and own search rankings." – Amanda C., Founder of Eco-Friendly Activewear Company
Copywritely
Copywritely‘s AI-powered writing assistant analyzes the search performance potential of your post and suggests practical SEO improvements to increase Google and social traffic. It detects weak points in your content and provides specific tips to boost optimization.
Training Courses
Sharpen and expand your writing abilities through interactive online learning experiences designed to unlock your creative potential.
Writing With Flair
Former Wall Street Journal editor and writing instructor Shani Raja packs her acclaimed Writing With Flair course with 45 bite-sized video lessons demonstrating how to captivate readers with vivid details, personal insights, sparkling prose, and other advanced storytelling techniques. The conversational teaching style makes learning enjoyable and practical.
"Shani breaks down the elements of exceptional writing in a simple, understandable way. I‘ve become much more conscious and intentional with my word choices and narrative style thanks to her guidance." – Student Testimonial
ProBlogger Blog Writing Course
Called "the best thing I ever did for my blog," the wildly popular ProBlogger Blog Writing Course contains 39 comprehensive lessons equipping bloggers to create captivating articles and social content, build engaged communities, and attract site traffic. Expert teachers Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett demystify effective blogging through exclusive tips and step-by-step training.
Level up as a writer and turn pro with help from these exceptional resources purpose-built to assist with every stage of the writing process. From sharpening prose to streamlining publishing, utilize these tools of the trade to work efficiently, optimize content, access cohesive feedback, and realize your full creative potential through the written word.
