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kindling

Free, open-source writing app for fiction writers who outline. Each scene opens with its beats, characters and notes beside the draft. Imports Scrivener, Plottr, yWriter, Obsidian and novelWriter. No AI, no subscription, no account.

Draft beneath the scene's beats: each beat is a prompt, with the prose written right under it.

Cost / License

  • Free
  • Open Source (MIT)

Application type

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux
Rolling Outline: each scene is Fixed, Flexible or Undefined, and the chapter tree shows its planning state.
References panel: the characters, locations and items linked to a scene, beside the draft.
+3
Editorial review (new in 1.3): work through an editor's comments and suggestions in the manuscript.
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Features

Properties

  1.  Lightweight
  2.  Privacy focused
  3.  Distraction-free
  4.  Local-First

Features

  1.  Desktop Application
  2.  No registration required
  3.  Ad-free
  4.  Dark Mode
  5.  Support for MarkDown
  6.  Works Offline
  7.  Hierarchical Structure
  8.  Portable
  9.  No Tracking
  10.  File Versioning
  11.  Full-Text Search
  12.  Offline
  13.  Distraction-free Writing
  14.  Export to EPUB
  15.  Word counter
  16.  Screenwriting

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News & Books, Office & Productivity, Video & Movies

GitHub repository

  •  70 Stars
  •  8 Forks
  •  104 Open Issues
  •   Updated  
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Our users have written 1 comments and reviews about kindling, and it has gotten 7 likes

kindling was added to AlternativeTo by smith-and-web on and this page was last updated .

Comments and Reviews

   
Guest
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Bugs under Linux Cinnamon.

  • menu feature "Window" doesn't work

  • you need to maximize the window to find your project list but this makes half of the import options get hidden, scrolling doesn't work

  • invisible links within a word and the links do not even work, hence, you need to find a way to edit the word without clicking it

  • while writing the programme buffers, it continues your writing then at the end of the whole text, so you have to retrieve the text and get back to the original line

Review from a new or low-activity account — shown here, but not counted in the app rating.

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What is kindling?

kindling is a desktop writing app for fiction writers who outline. Most writing software hands you a blank page when it's time to draft. kindling opens each scene with its beats as prompts, with your characters, locations and notes close at hand, so you write from the plan you already made.

Rolling Outline gives every scene a planning state (Fixed, Flexible or Undefined), so it suits plotters, plantsers and discovery writers alike. It supports novels and screenplays.

Import from Scrivener 3 (.scriv), Plottr (.pltr), yWriter (.yw7), Obsidian Longform, novelWriter or Markdown outlines. Export to DOCX in Standard Manuscript Format, EPUB, HTML, plain text or Markdown, or back to Scrivener 3, Obsidian Longform and novelWriter, using saved export profiles.

New in 1.3: editorial review (send a manuscript to an editor and work through their comments and suggestions), an export workspace, writing goals and statistics, and customizable keyboard shortcuts.

kindling is free and open source under the MIT licence. There's no premium tier, and it needs no account. It doesn't use AI to write or analyse your work. Projects are stored locally as SQLite files, and the app has no analytics or telemetry. It only goes online for automatic updates and optional feedback. It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.