Hugh Howey

September 25, 2026

NEO – Fiction without Friction

Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I was tempted to make “Fiction without Friction” the tag line for NEO, but it’s only (kinda) clever the first time you hear it. I’ll (probably) never say it again.

I’ve been blogging about NEO for over ten years now. I’ve been writing exclusively inside NEO for most of this year. Quite a few authors I know have adopted NEO as their go-to for getting that rough draft written. With more users and more time, the program has been smoothed over and most of the pesky bugs have been squashed. NEO is ready for prime time!

To that end, I put NEO on its own landing page, here on my site: www.hughhowey.com/neo. I also created a short-ish video on how to acquire, install, and use NEO:

I get nothing out of you using the software. It’s just something that’s amplified my writing sessions, and if it helps anyone else, then I’m chuffed to the max. My biggest hope is that a novel that might not have existed without NEO will now see the light of day and find a reader out there, somewhere.

Not only is it free, forever, it also doesn’t collect any data about you or upload your books anywhere. Everything you write is saved on your computer. And your entire bookcase is backed up daily and saved for two weeks, just in case. If you want an online backup, link your Neo Library to iCloud or DropBox. You can also email yourself copies of your WIP with a keypress.

NEO exports to Word, for when you need to do an editorial pass with tracked changes. Or PDF if you want to share with beta readers. Or you can export straight to .epub with a table of contents and Amazon-approved formatting.

The ENTER, ENTER, ENTER philosophy behind NEO is what keeps me writing. No more formatting section breaks or new chapter headers. No more re-numbering chapters. Hit ENTER once for a new paragraph. Hit it again for a new section break. A third ENTER gets you a new chapter. I like to think of this as NEO’s enterface. (groan. I know)

Word count progress bars, daily goals, a 30 day writing history, and word sprints are all there to motivate you. Quick notes let you drop a to-do so you can keep writing and google something or make up a proper noun later. The “Darlings” tab is a place to drag and drop text you aren’t in love with without losing it forever. Everything about NEO is there to remove the friction of authoring your next novel.

That’s it. Something I made for me that I’m offering for free. Now back to my own writing…

---

Writing

---

«Previous Post

21 responses to “NEO – Fiction without Friction”

1. Kevin Palm September 25, 2026 at 9:21 am Hey, Hugh! Nothing to do with NEO, but I’ve gotta ask: What’s up with the “Hugh Howy” I see on this page and in the “From:” field in the email I received this morning? Did you change your name for Witness Protection or something? 😁 Reply

1. Hugh Howey September 25, 2026 at 9:58 am LOL! No, the nickname in my WordPress backend was misspelled. I saw that too when I uploaded the video and fixed it. Reply 2. bob wandtke September 25, 2026 at 9:42 am Thanks for that! Great program! started my first short story! Reply

1. Hugh Howey September 25, 2026 at 9:58 am Wooooo-hooooooo! Reply 3. Andrew M. September 25, 2026 at 10:30 am Not a writer, but love the idea of NEO. We need more simple tools, not bloated over-complex tools where we use 10% of the functionality. Back to basics! Reply 4. Chris Tice September 25, 2026 at 10:36 am Ive used it a couple times and really like the format. I used to have a dump folder to keep favs bit darlings is a better name. I do a lot of writing on my android tablet, is there a way to download neo there? Reply 5. Markus Diersbock September 25, 2026 at 10:56 am Awesome walk-thru and GUI design! As a programmer, it would be awesome to see an interview on your tech stack and how you made GUI choices based on your writing needs — and how other writing apps fell short! Reply 6. Jonathan September 25, 2026 at 2:11 pm Was excited for this since they first post. Alas, I’m now a Linux user. Hopefully a more dev savvy writer than I can convert it and share! my remarkable has a similar frictionless interface I’ve had tons of success being productive with but the Enter/ Return function sounds like a nice feature (like Final Draft that screenwriters use) Reply

1. Hugh Howey September 25, 2026 at 4:35 pm There’s a linux version! Reply

1. Jonathan September 26, 2026 at 12:49 pm Very exciting! Already moving my work into it. Thanks for making it so easy. Reply 7. John Finch September 26, 2026 at 12:43 pm Hugh, you’ve made my day! Reply 8. Patrice Fitzgerald September 26, 2026 at 10:02 pm Looking forward to jumping onto this. Thanks for sharing your work! Reply 9. Imran September 27, 2026 at 7:31 am I had written to you a very lengthy letter, I do hope it reached you via the contact page safe and well. For me this is a very important subject and I beg you to read iz and possibly grant me a reply. Back to NEO, in our think tank we were using a very simple NEO like proggie that kept getting more complex, nowadays it is a word-like monster. I will distribute it amoung our members and have it checked if it is suitable. If so, Quantum Entanglement will be very happy growing into the future with you app. Thanks for sharing it with all of us, people like you have become rare pearls on planet Earth. Reply

1. Hugh Howey September 27, 2026 at 11:08 am I don’t see it, and I tried searching your email address and username for this comment and nothing came up. Reply

1. Joachim Imran Reinhold September 27, 2026 at 3:13 pm Please look for Quantum Entanglement, Joachim, Mars etc. I am a bit beside me for some health issues, maybe I used my official e-mail … Apologies. Reply 2. Joachim Imran Reinhold September 27, 2026 at 3:36 pm I just sent it again. Reply 10. Robert Gibson September 27, 2026 at 1:44 pm Any chance or plans for release on mobile? or the upcoming GoogleBook? Reply

1. Joachim Imran Reinhold September 27, 2026 at 3:11 pm iPadOS would be awesome. But then, let us be grateful for what have have already. I just imported my novel from 2015 and started a revised version. Reply 2. Chris Tice September 27, 2026 at 3:39 pm I saw an openware windows emulator, winlator, for android im going to try with neo.exe on my tablet. My kids still live at home so anywhere my tablet and keyboard fits is my writing space. Reply

1. Rob Gibson September 27, 2026 at 4:19 pm I think the upcoming Googlebook may be able to run the Linux version. But the Googlebooks aren’t out until October 4th or 5th. I would love to see one on Android and iPad OS for those on the go! There is one other thing I would love to see in “Draft” mode the ability to type into a chat box and have it “send” to the main document. So that I can “chat” my story instead of fighting blank page syndrome early on. But that’s just me. Reply

1. Chris Tice September 27, 2026 at 5:11 pm Winlator is a bit janky with my bluetooth keyboard so i may have to see whats going on there but neo works so far. Im currently drafting into google docs and would like a better solution as the docs are just ok. I have word on my win10 laptop and refuse to pay for the app. I also got the tablet free so im a bit cheap, but thats my demon haha I like your idea of chatting straight into the document. A lot.of times im driving when inspiration strikes. I should use voice recorder and transcribe later but that probably wont happen Reply

Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey

NEO – Fiction without Friction

21 responses to “NEO – Fiction without Friction”

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Comments (0)