Novel organization for serious plotters

Approachable simplicity. Unparalleled customizability.

The basic account is free!

Hiveword has helped writers organize their novels since 2011. The free account offers the essentials such as scenes, characters, and plotlines while the Hiveword Plus upgrade provides powerful customizability that grows with your needs.

Save Time

“Measure twice, cut once.” This old carpenter’s adage can be applied to many things including creating a novel. Planning your novel before you write can prevent you from meandering and wasting time. No more dead ends. No more painting yourself into corners. Organizing your story with Hiveword can help you prevent these fates.

Your Way

Whether you favor index cards, the Snowflake method, or your own process, Hiveword is there for you. Hiveword provides the components that all stories have (characters, scenes, etc.) plus extension points such as tags so that you can mark those components as you see fit. For example, you can mark scenes as TODO, First Plot Point, Twist or whatever you’d like. Mix and match all of these things to achieve the perfect degree of organization for you.

Know Where and When

Which scenes have Bob as the POV character in Paris? Where was the villain last seen? Hiveword’s powerful scene filtering feature allows you to answer all of these questions and more in an instantly understandable way. You can also easily sort your scenes in this filtered mode.

Scenes list with filters

Untangle Plotlines

Managing plotlines can be an exercise in frustration. Prevent that frustration and save time by leveraging Hiveword's plotline management tools. Intuitive visuals make it a breeze to see at a glance how your main plot and subplots weave through your scenes.

Scenes by plotline

Infinite Possibilities with Hiveword Plus

Upgrade to Hiveword Plus to unleash the ultimate in novel organizer customizability. Track anything you can imagine from spells to starships. A Hiveword exclusive!

Create Your Own Things

Track your novel's religions, clans, companies, countries, weapons, spells, or anything you want along with any number of fields to describe them. Your new types will appear in Hiveword like they were there all along. Magic!

Story sidebar showing custom types

Add Your Own Fields

Augment the standard Hiveword types such as scenes, characters, settings, etc., with your own extension fields. There's no limit to the details you can track. Here, a normal Hiveword item can have magical properties.

Item page augmented with custom fields

Images

Attach images to your characters, settings, custom types, etc., in a convenient in-page popup. You can also have unassigned images that are not attached to a story in any way. You can tag your images for simple categorization and use the powerful image filter to see all of your images in one place.

Notes

Like the image upload feature, you can have any number of notes for stories, scenes, characters, etc. The same great features exist such as the in-page popup, a powerful filter, and tags for categorization.

Writer's Journal

Many authors use journaling to log their thoughts, brainstorm, or simply free write to get the juices flowing. Sue Grafton does it. Many others do, too. Hiveword Plus makes journaling easy. You can have multiple entries per day and you can tag them for reference.

Search Everything

Find things fast! The search feature sifts through all of your data with Google-like speed and lists the results by category such as characters, settings, etc.

Track and Search Your Research with Bookmarks

Tired of making browser bookmarks for web pages that you can never find again? With Hiveword's bookmarks you can

  • Link to anything on the web
  • Attach bookmarks to characters, settings, etc.
  • Use tags for easy categorization
  • Include notes
  • Optionally give them a name
  • Filter by various attributes
  • Search bookmarks by name, tags, and notes

But here's the best part:

Hiveword's search will also search the web page itself!

You'll quickly and easily find your references when you need them with Hiveword's bookmarks.

Dark Mode

Turn the lights down to give your eyes a break in low light (or any time!).

Sample scene in dark mode
14 day free trial. $25/year.

All Hiveword accounts include the following features:

  • Unlimited stories
  • Unlimited scenes
  • Unlimited characters
  • Unlimited settings
  • Unlimited items
  • Unlimited plotlines
  • Unlimited tags
  • Sorting
  • Scene board
  • Powerful scene filtering
  • Plotline visualization
  • Character name generator
  • Location name generator
  • Private workspace
  • Data export (no lock-in!)
"Hiveword is a huge game changer for me. I actually feel like a real writer at last, and that I will realize my dreams of producing a book..."

— Denise G.
"Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! As a new writer this is exactly what I've been looking for!"

— Jon K.
"Wow. Your software is SUCH a help. I am creating scenes, sorting them, and getting all the tangles of my ideas down and in logical, fun to read order. NEVER could do this with file cards or other software. Thank you!"

— Brenda R.
The basic account is free!