Resources

Short, practical guides for choosing and switching to free tools, plus links to good documentation elsewhere.

Switching guides

How to switch from Scrivener to novelWriterCompile or export your Scrivener project to DOCX or plain text, then import chapter by chapter into a new novelWriter project.

Stars: how many people have bookmarked the project on GitHub or GitLab. It is a rough signal of popularity, not of quality, and projects hosted on SourceForge, Savannah or Bitbucket have no star count at all.
Last commit: when code was last pushed to the project's repository. A recent date means someone is actively working on it. An old date isn't always bad: some mature tools change slowly.
Licence: the terms you get the software under. Copyleft licences (GPL, AGPL, LGPL, MPL) keep the code open when it's shared; permissive licences (MIT, BSD, Apache) allow almost any use. "Free, proprietary" tools cost nothing but you can't see or change the code, and some limit commercial use.
Not open source: shown when a tool has no public source code, so there is nothing to count.

Start from the job: list the handful of things you actually do in the paid tool every week, and test those first.
Check files in and out: make sure the free tool can open your existing files and export what your colleagues, supervisor or supplier needs.
Check where it runs: Windows, macOS, Linux or the browser, and whether your organisation lets you install it.
Look at activity: the last-commit date and recent releases tell you whether bugs get fixed.
Read the licence: especially for business use: some free proprietary plans are for non-commercial use only.
Trial it on real work: run one real but low-stakes project in both tools and compare the results before switching fully.
Find the help: official documentation, forums and community chat matter more than a feature list when you get stuck.

Scrivener projects: Compile or export to DOCX or RTF, then open in the new app. Keep a zipped backup of the .scriv project.
Markdown projects: novelWriter, Zettlr, Obsidian and Pandoc all speak markdown — move the folder of .md files.
Screenplays: Prefer Fountain or Final Draft (.fdx) export. KIT Scenarist, Starc and Trelby can exchange FDX with care — compare a test PDF.
Ebooks: Use Calibre to convert EPUB/MOBI; polish structure in Sigil before uploading to a store.

Drafting a novel: Pick a manuscript organiser (Manuskript, novelWriter, bibisco) or a cloud app (Dabble, Novlr).
Industry screenplay format: KIT Scenarist, Starc or Trelby before paying for Final Draft.
Line edits: LanguageTool or Vale locally; ProWritingAid when you want deep reports.
Ebook + print: Calibre + Sigil, or Atticus/Vellum if you want a paid all-in-one.

Fountain screenplay format ↗Plain-text screenplay syntax and tool list.
Pandoc user guide ↗How to convert manuscripts between formats.
LanguageTool docs ↗Self-hosting and integration notes.
Reedsy writing tools blog ↗Indie-author craft articles (vendor blog — read with that in mind).

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