Plottr Alternatives for Writers in 2023
As
Seen
On
5 Plottr Alternatives for Planning Your Books and Series
Plan with Index Cards
- Visualize your plot, characters, and world (with writing and drawings), and arrange your story ideas in any order
- Ideal for tactile learners, who benefit from hands-on work
- Easy to lose or damage individual index cards
- Integrating with word processing tools can be time-consuming
Work with Spreadsheets
- Manage your story data in a structured and systematic way
- Customize the layout and design to suit your writing method
- Not designed for managing books and series with complex casts of characters, locations, and worldbuilding
- Hard to visualize and link plotlines, scenes, and story details
- Functionality and flexibility can be overwhelming
Organize with Notebooks
- Write and draw out your character, world, and plot ideas
- Enjoy a private, distraction-free, hands-on experience (ideal for tactile thinkers and learners) you can customize with stickers, etc.
- No ability to search or filter for individual pieces of information
- Hard to manage long series with many characters
- Notes can fade, tear, become hard to read, or lost
Install a Whiteboard
- Visualize your story and plot ideas with markers (and more) on a physical canvas to see the big picture
- Easy to revise your ideas, highlight details, and collaborate in person
- Fitting all your book and series ideas can be very challenging, and may require purchasing additional boards and space
- Content is likely to fade over time and can be erased by accident
- Installing a whiteboard in your home may be physically demanding
Sticky Note Everything
- Affordable, easy to use, sticks to almost anything
- Prone to loss, damage, and adhesive issues, hard to transport
- Challenging to integrate with word processing software
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FAQ
Plottr is a visual outlining tool built for published and aspiring writers of all kinds – novelists, screenwriters, playwrights, academics, journalists, writing students, and beyond.
It helps pantsers just as much as plotters. Pantsers will enjoy the series bible and editing capabilities. Trust me, it's really going to help.
Whether you’re an outlining pro or your journey is just beginning, Plottr can help you visually (and creatively) build a plan to write your book!
It helps pantsers just as much as plotters. Pantsers will enjoy the series bible and editing capabilities. Trust me, it's really going to help.
After you write your first draft, you're still going to have to think about the plot and the character arcs and plot holes, etc. and make it all work together. You can do that after your first draft in Plottr just as easily as beforehand.
When you're on book 3 or 7 or 10 of your series, you're just not going to remember what that one character's eye color was, but your readers will. Having a series bible helps you save so much time!
Plottr Pro has all the features of Plottr but also adds cloud-based functionality such as a web app, automatic syncing across platforms (web & desktop), cloud backups, and real-time collaboration.
It is best suited for writers who plan to use Plottr while connected to the internet, don't intend to manage their files locally, and/or need to collaborate with a co-author, coach, or editor.
For Plottr: You can download Plottr on Windows & Mac. Backups are stored on your computer and you can sync files across devices using a 3rd-party storage service (e.g. Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive).
For Plottr Pro: Plottr Pro is available to download for Windows & Mac as well, but you can also use your browser to use Plottr! That means you can use it on a mobile device, Chromebook, Surface Tablets, and any other device with a browser. It backs up to the cloud and syncs instantly between devices just like working with Google Docs.
We provide friendly and sometimes humorous support to all customers from a real, live person via email even on weekends when you need it most. We try to answer within a day, but often it's quicker than that!
We also offer a full suite of educational resources, including:
You can also view (and contribute to) our roadmap here.
Yes. All versions of Plottr are granted unlimited household licenses. You can use it on as many devices as you own!
For Plottr: It's a lifetime license that never expires! You get updates for life. You get access to your projects for life.
For Plottr Pro: If your account expires, you will no longer be able to access your projects or get updates and bug fixes afterwards without renewing.
For Plottr: Backups are stored on your computer as files and it's easy to revert to any stored backup.
For Plottr Pro: Backups are stored in the cloud and you can also save them locally to your device! It's also easy to revert to stored backups.
Both: Backups are made 2x per session per project. The first time is when you open a project for the first time that day. And the second time is when you're finished using a project.
So you will have 2 backups per project for every day that you have worked on it: one before you made any changes that day, and another after your last change.
For Plottr: Backups are stored on your computer as files and we can't access them (not even in the case of a broken computer) though we can help you find them on your computer.
For Plottr Pro: Backups are stored in the cloud and you can also save them locally to your device! We can help you access them and email you a backup file or just show you how to do it yourself.
For Plottr: You can sync files across devices using a 3rd-party storage service (e.g. Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive).
For Plottr Pro: It syncs to the cloud instantly between devices just like working with Google Docs.
The Plottr Community site is a private community that we host on Mighty Networks. It's not our Facebook group, though we do have one of those and we do enjoy reaching people on there.
This private community site is where we host all our educational events and let you connect and network. It's moderated so that we can maintain a friendly, supportive atmosphere. You can talk with other writers, learn from our coaches, hear some otter puns, and even group into accountability groups.
For right now, only people paying for the education plans (Plottr Pro + Education, or Education only) have access unless you have attended one of our educational events. In the future we will be opening this community up to anyone!
The Plottr Community site is a private community that we host on Mighty Networks. It's not our Facebook group, though we do have one of those and we do enjoy reaching people on there.
This private community site is where we host all our educational events and let you connect and network. It's moderated so that we can maintain a friendly, supportive atmosphere. You can talk with other writers, learn from our coaches, hear some otter puns, and even group into accountability groups.
For right now, only people paying for the education plans (Plottr Pro + Education, or Education only) have access unless you have attended one of our educational events. In the future we will be opening this community up to anyone!
If you already have Plottr Pro and you don't want the education plan, then there's no need to change anything. You get all the same benefits of Pro, just like the Pro+Education bundle.
We have found that writers thrive within a supportive community and that their chances of success are many times greater. For that reason and others, Plottr Pro is being bundled with our educational community.
This saves you more than 30% and it also sets you up for success, and seeing you succeed is what makes us happy!
So for now you can't get access to Plottr Pro without that sweet sweet, supportive community.
Even if you don't use Plottr or Plottr Pro, we'd still love to have you in our education community, so don't be shy! It's for anyone who is willing to be kind and supportive towards other writers and who wants that from others.
You can try out Plottr for free for 60 long days with the free trial!
This should give you plenty of time to try it and decide that it's right for you. Because of that, we don't give refunds after purchase.
If you cancel your subscription to Plottr Pro + Education or Education only, you will still have access until the end of the subscription period, but we don't give prorated refunds for unused time.
Yes, both Plottr Pro + Education and the Education only subscriptions are auto-renewing and we are not able to turn that off.
Yes. Reach out to Support and they can help you with that!
