The novel that gets written on the bus
The sessions a phone allows are short: a commute, a lunch break, the ten minutes before everyone else wakes up. That turns out to suit drafting, which benefits from not rereading, and to suit revision very badly, because revision needs the whole chapter in view. Use the phone for the first and a larger screen for the second, and a surprising amount of writing gets done.
What a phone is good for, and what it is not
- Drafting forward without rereading
- Capturing a line the moment it arrives
- Dictating a scene while walking
- Keeping a word count honest
- Restructuring chapters
- Reading a whole draft for pace
- Formatting a manuscript for submission
- Anything that needs two documents side by side
Advertisement
The apps
A clean writing app that handles Markdown and screenplay format, and syncs with the cloud storage you already use. Some features are paid.
iA Writer. Its focus mode dims everything except the sentence you are writing, which is exactly the discipline a phone draft needs.
Built for long fiction: chapters, scenes, character sheets and research notes in one project, with an export for the manuscript.
A minimal Markdown writer with a word count and nothing to configure. It opens instantly, which matters when the bus is already moving.
Open source, plain text and Markdown files in a folder of your choice. The safest home for a manuscript, because nothing about it is proprietary.
Linked notes for the world around the story: characters, places, timelines. The files are plain Markdown in a folder you control.
Works offline, keeps a version history and lets an editor or a friend comment on the draft without installing anything.
Most agents and publishers still expect a Word file. Use it at the end for formatting and tracked changes rather than for drafting.
Fast capture for the line that arrives in a queue. Plain text notes that sync everywhere.
Encrypted notes, for a journal or anything personal that feeds the writing and should not sit readable on a server.
Open source notes that sync through a cloud account of your choosing, a good home for research and outlines.
Dictionary and thesaurus in one, with usage notes that settle the kind of question a writer actually has.
The alternative, with a quick thesaurus view for when a word is on the tip of your tongue.
A timer for short sprints. Twenty five minutes of drafting with the phone on Do Not Disturb is the whole method.
Gboard. Voice typing is good enough to draft a scene while walking. The punctuation needs fixing afterwards; the pace does not.
Publish chapter by chapter to readers who comment on each one. Motivating, and blunt feedback on whether a chapter holds.
Serial fiction with a strong fantasy and science fiction readership, where regular chapters build an audience.
A synced folder for the plain text files, so the draft always exists on at least one other machine.
Which app for which kind of writing
| Kind of writing | Start with | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A novel in chapters | A manuscript organiser | Chapters, characters and notes stay together |
| Short pieces and essays | A plain Markdown editor | Fast, portable, nothing to learn |
| A screenplay | An editor that understands screenplay format | Formatting by hand on a phone is misery |
| Worldbuilding and research | Linked notes | People and places connect to each other |
| Serial fiction for readers | A reading platform | Feedback arrives chapter by chapter |
A routine that survives a busy week
- Stop mid-sentence at the end of a session The next session starts by finishing the sentence, which removes the blank page minute that eats a short slot.
- Reread only the last paragraph Rereading on a phone turns into editing on a phone, which is slow and rarely an improvement.
- Leave a note of what happens next One line at the end of the file. It is the difference between writing for fifteen minutes and deciding what to write for fifteen minutes.
- Count words per week, not per day Some days produce nothing. A weekly number absorbs them without breaking the habit.
- Revise on a computer once a draft exists Export it, print it or open it on a bigger screen. Revision is a different job and deserves a different setting.
Draft on the phone, revise elsewhere, keep the files portable and backed up. The rest is turning up for fifteen minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Bluetooth keyboard worth it?
For more than a few hundred words at a time, yes. A small folding keyboard roughly doubles typing speed for most people and turns a phone and a café table into a workable desk.
Does dictation work for fiction?
For a first draft, better than people expect, especially dialogue. It produces text that needs heavy editing, which is fine, because it is a first draft.
Where should the files live?
In a cloud folder you control, synced to at least one computer, with a copy exported every few weeks. Losing a phone should cost you nothing but the phone.
Read next
Nothing has infected your phone. Something you installed has permission, and the fix is a list in settings.
A phone will happily run a keyboard, a mouse and a memory stick. It will not power a desktop hard drive.
Hard and fast are different things. Almost every game confuses them, and these do not.
