Write Your Novel In Your Browser – From Everywhere – Novlr.org is here

Novlr is a simple online tool that lets you write novels in a web browser.

It’s available at www.novlr.org (Not to be confused with novelr.com or novlr.com).

It is currently in beta testing and you can sign up for free and have a go with it. It’s current functionality includes basically one thing: distraction free writing.

After logging in you see your writing area and a list of chapters at the left hand side. That’s about it.

Since it is web based you can log on from any computer, tablet or phone with internet access. Backing up is a non-issue since all your data is stored on their servers (actually I don’t exactly know where your stuff is stored. I couldn’t find any information about it).

What about offline writing?

Since a lot of beta testers have requested this feature it’t built in now. When you lose connection to the internet you can still continue writing. Your changes will sync the next time you’re online.

You can even fire the thing up without any internet connection. If you have been logged on before going offline that is. So, if you’d like to take your writing to the next coffee shop, just don’t log off and you’re fine.

There is one caution though:
Don’t clear your cache while you’re offline! Since novlr stores your written text in the browser’s cache you will delete it along with everything else that is stored there (passwords, browsing history, the lot).

Formatting

Novels gives you basic formatting possibilities like bold, italics, underline and strikethrough. But don’t expect any more than that.

The price

There’s no official price tag on the thing yet. You can test it for free until the beta stage is finished. But, if you’re interested to become a “lifetime hero” and help novlr develop you can do so for an early bird price of $100. For that you will also be immortalised on the novlr.org page. I suspect the official price will be significantly higher once it’s released officially.

Features in the works

Exporting

You will want to export your work when you finished writing your brilliant novel. Output in word, pdf and maybe other formats is planned but not implemented yet. You’ll need to copy and paste your novel out of it on a chapter-per-chapter basis for now.

Character Profile Pages

A place for your character’s back stories. You should also be able to import pictures and video once this functionality is implemented.

Sharing

This will give you the opportunity to share your work with others in order to get feedback. Your friends will be able to comment on specific chapters or your whole book.

Conclusion

I like the idea about novlr. It gives you a very clean, distraction-free interface that lets you concentrate on your writing, nothing else. It gives you all the basic functionality that you need to write your novel. But there are a few things that I miss:

Exporting

This feature is being implemented.

Novlr will be adding space for your character background stories, but that’s not enough. I wish there were additional space to store additional notes of any kind. Since you will be having a lot of them you need another tool for that. So, you still have to worry about backing up your work, taking it with you on multiple devices, … Because you will always want to have your notes handy when you’re writing. Not having that possibility kind of defeats the purpose of novlr.

However, if you’re looking for a tool that gives you basic writing functionality with a nice and simple interface, I’d definitely give it a try.

 

Have you tried novlr? What are your experiences with it? Do you like writing in a web browser or are you the “offline guy/gal”?

Tell us about it here …