I've been writing my story on a google doc and copying it over. It's getting very long and laggy so I'm planning on making each chapter it's own doc but since I'm switching it up I thought I'd ask what you all use.

Where to you write your story?

I use Open Office Writer. It's good enough for my needs. I save my files on my PC's hard drive and back them up on a Thumb/Flash drive. 

I've been using google because it's easier for me to write from whichever computer I'm at (I have 3 that I use regularly, so that's handy).  As I've approached 50k words it's gotten more laggy, so I'm thinking of keeping a laggy main doc (where I can search the whole thing occasionally) and a separate "slush" document for my unpublished bits.

WriteitNow.

Basically, it's a simpler Scrivener. It's also a bit cheaper as well. I personally like it more because I can still have a single file for a story,  and I can focus on one chapter at a time while also switching to other chapters with ease. I basically wanted a dedicated program to novel writing since I do so much of it and I can invest in one.  WriteitNow just happened to be the one I liked the most, and it was cheaper than Scrivener.

I will also will end up getting MS. Word again because the accessibility tools are much better in MS Word than any of the open source free word processors like LibreOffice and OpenOffice. And before someone says just use Google Docs, I can't. It lags on large documents. I can't check through a document if the program lags after 50k words. I'm planning on publishing and if you ever readied a novel for publishing and file converting. You know that formatting issues are sometimes unavoidable. It's much easier to correct them when you aren't having to deal with a laggy program.

Scrivener, because I do stuff for amazon too and being able to export directly as epub is super comfy 

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I use Gdocs with Night Eye to have it in dark mode. 

I write with Scrivener, which is really awesome for the ease of switching between (and organizing) scenes and chapters, or searching for previous references. Those features alone makes it a must-have for me.

Google Docs is way too slow and laggy with documents of any significant size. I started out writing in Microsoft Word, but larger documents were too awkward to deal with, and when I split it up into separate files for each chapter, it made it much more difficult to reference things I'd already written.

A friend recommended Scrivener. I was hesitant to change my workflow, but it worked so well after a five-minute test run, I never went back.

I'll give an example of why I use it: One thing I do constantly is search for past references (like names and events) so I can refresh my memory as I write new stuff. A lot of those references occur in many scenes, but I'm generally searching for one specific scene, and I don't always remember what chapter it's in. In a multi-chapter Word doc, that involves a lot of finding and scrolling. When I split up my Word doc into separate docs for each chapter, it was almost impossible.

With Scrivener, I can do "Search in Project" (Shift-Command-F, on Mac), and it'll pull up a list of all the scenes that match the search terms. Then I can just click on the one I was looking for and it'll take me right to it (I label each scene descriptively, so it's easy to find the right one once I've narrowed down the list).

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I do text files on my phone using the QuickEdit app on Android.

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Google Drive.
I don't have any lag whatsoever; I've got at least eighteen full-length novels saved there, plus all their "behind the scenes" meta stuff like countries, timelines, house crests, political theatres, family trees, maps, geographies, weather patterns, blah blah blah. 
I can export as an epub and then import it here if I want (and i have been)

I've had people recommend me all sorts of software, but Google Drive is literally everything I need. 

Open Office Writer. In general I like it, but either it or RR keeps messing up the spacing when I try to copy from one to the other. (Used to use Microsoft Word and probably wouldn't have changed if I hadn't had to. I do not like switching writing programs.)

Scrivener all the way!
I love having all the different docs and reference and resources for each project together in one place, while also being able to split scenes or chapters or books and organize them all, with snapshots and different drafts all neat and tidy and together. :)

Xovinx Wrote: Open Office Writer. In general I like it, but either it or RR keeps messing up the spacing when I try to copy from one to the other. (Used to use Microsoft Word and probably wouldn't have changed if I hadn't had to. I do not like switching writing programs.)

RR takes any para break (enter) and makes it 2x size of a standard line break (ctrl-enter), so if you put in 2 of them to have 1 empty line, it'll look like 3 empty lines in RR, best I can tell.  This happens from Google Docs too.

Scrivener since its convenient, conveniently over-priced, conveniently outdated 90s' interface, and has an absurd amount of features than you'd ever really need. The only downside to it for me is the lack of intergrated editing so I have to import it to grammarly and g-docks to edit it.

Bit of an outlier I guess... I use Microsoft OneNote. It's the one Microsoft program that's free to use. It auto-saves and synchs across my devices (including phone!) without requiring a constant internet connection like Gdocs. I like how the 'notebook' structure fits with how I think about things. I really like having all my idea docs/past chapters available without having to open/close files.

The word-processing features are super basic, but meh. It does italics, bold, underline, and different size fonts. That's all I've ever needed.

Moving text from it into RR was a bit of a chore last time I tried, but that seems true of most programs.

I totally forgot about one note, which is funny because when my story wasa D&D campaign before I started writing it, this is where I wrote it all. 

Scrivner looks good but I do a lot of rough draft writing on my phone when ideas strike me.

MS word. I use the headings and navigation pane to keep everything organized and accessible. Occasionally I'll use telegram (a messaging app) if I'm outside and don't have my laptop on me. I'll write whatever as a text message that I send to myself.

I use the Google Docs app on my phone. My primary regret is not being able to easily tab so sometimes it feels like my paragraphs blend together.