A look at Software for Writers |

A look at Software for Writers

Posted by LordGefner On July - 28 - 2009

If you are a writer or trying to become one, whether it’s a novel, movie, comic book or play, you know that keeping track of everything can become quite tedious. I myself have more notes and chapters than I can keep track of and occasionally have to spend my writing time looking for notes that I can’t seem to find. Could writing software be the answer?

From my personal experience and maybe yours too, there is a need for something to make a writer’s life a bit easier – hey it’s 2009 and everything is being done on the computer anyway, right? While browsing the web and doing some research, I came upon this quote that was on the absolutewrite.com forums:

In the morning, she convened a group of fantasy writers, including NYT R.A. Salvatore and George R. R. Martin, to discuss the future of epic fantasy—joking about the sheer immenseness of Martin’s four-books-and-counting series, Salvatore quipped, “Do you have a whiteboard that takes up a wall of your house to keep all your characters straight?” No, Martin joked back, he lets the people who run his unofficial fan site sort all that out, then emails them when he needs to check up on a character’s details. Salvatore admitted to a similar strategy for one book which brought a supporting character in his series to the foreground. Having lost track of that character’s weapons inventory, he posted anonymously to one of his fan boards, asking what the character had and what it did, and pretty soon the readers had come up with pages’ worth of material.

So if these two well known authors need some type of oranization program, what hope does the rest of us have?

Nowadays, there seems to be software for everything, from creating shopping lists to writing a master thesis but there hasn’t been that mainstream commercial app for writers. I have come across several writing programs that seem to do what I need: keeping track of my writing project, notes, scenes, settings and ideas all in one place. Unfortunately, only one of them has made it to the big time, can be bought easily and backed with celebrity endorsements. The rest are lesser known with a website or two with maybe a few reviews but are looked upon by writers with a lot of trepidation.

Final Draft 8

If you are into script writing for movies, television episodes, plays and even comic books, the choice is pretty simple, get Final Draft 8. This program does pretty much everything you want for your script. Since it includes both word processing and formatting, you can create a finished script ready for submission once you are done.

Final Draft includes a scene view so that you can look at your scenes in an outline or index card format, reorder scenes and even merge them. This program really makes it easy for you to edit and organize your script, you can even view your notes and script in a split screen view. Since it is geared for submissions, it even has templates to use for Television shows, screenplays and even graphic novels within the program and they offer more online.

Final Draft also has the celebrity script writers singing it praises. If you go to their website, you can get a nice long list of testimonials from writers such as Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Carribean ), J.J. Abrams (Lost), Jon Favreau (Iron Man), Michael Bay (Transformers), Oliver Stone (Scarface) and a whole bunch more. Who can argue with them?

Right now, the Final Draft 8 is going for $79 while the full version will run you $249. While the full version price is up there, compare it to what designers pay for the any of the Adobe suites.

Final Draft’s Panel System:

For other fiction writers, the choices are a bit different. There’s nothing out there with (use your best announcer’s voice here) “The Endorsement of the Stars!” So, the next best thing is… FREE! There are some programs out there that you can download absolutley free. Depending on your needs and computer savy, they are pretty good and contain some of the features that writers need.

yWriter

yWriter is written and designed by Simon Haynes – author of the Hal Spacejock series and the Andromeda Spacewways Inflight Magazine navigator. This free program has helped Simon write four novels and he is continually updating it. It is up to version 5 and allows you to create storyboards for your ideas, trackers for Characters, locations and tension points. It also seperates your work into chapters, scenes and allows you to write descriptions of each to guide you. There is a word count and a feature that I think is pretty cool, a chart that shows your daily progress – so no more slacking!

Pretty cool for a free program. This one has a pretty good following and is a great tool to use. There is even a Google following which you can join at http://groups.google.com/group/ywriter.

Simon Haynes has also created another free program to help keep track of your manuscript submissions called Sonar 3. This guy is pretty cool and he has more free stuff available on his software website at http://www.spacejock.com. He accepts donations on his site so if you ever become a famous author and use his tools, don’t forget to share.

Here’s a video showing off yWriter’s features:

Chapter by Chapter

Another free program is Chapter by Chapter, created by Sebastien Berthet. This program is an MS Word add-on that allows you to create, organize and edit multiple chapters. Chapter by Chapter allows you to view your word documents and view them similar to Windows explorer except you can combine them into one document with chapter numbers or view them with summaries of your chapters or scenes. This is so much easier as from experience, if I had multiple chapters (which I do) in word docs and need to rename a chapter, I would have to rename every file, this program does that for you. You can even edit or copy and paste parts of one chapter into another.

Chapter by Chapter is great for people that are used to using MS Word and don’t want to learn anything else. While not as sophiticated for other uses like yWriter or one of the commercially available programs, Chapter by Chapter is pretty easy to use and Free!

While free is great, hey, “free is free” and I am sure we would all prefer that everything was free but some things we do have to pay for. I was pretty impressed by two other programs Liquid Story Binder XE and New Novelist.

Liquid Story Binder XE

Liquid Story Binder XE by Black Obelisk Software has got to be the best looking fiction writing program out there. It handles graphics, mps and of course your writing. I was blown away by just looking at the screenshots and then from reading all of its features.

While Liquid Story has a host of features, I was looking for one in particular, manuscript templates and Liquid Story has it! As a writer looking to submit your work, you should know how to format your story for a manuscript. If you are shelling out your money for a program then I feel that you shouldn’t have to worry about it. The program should be able to format and print your work it in a format you can use, especially for first timers who get so much different advice that they don’t know what to choose. While some publishers request a specific format, a general manuscript format should work for most places and at least that part is covered.

Liquid Story allows you to create character dossiers with pictures if you wish, storyboards, outlines, timelines and can even play writing mood music for you. This program still has more going for it as you can set project goals and let it show you how you are doing, link ideas together and even record yourself reading your work – which is great for working on dialogues.

This program really has been setup with writers in mind. You can edit your work as it includes spell-checking, smart quotes and paragraph styles. It also integrates with WordWeb, a free dictionary and thesaurus, and includes a repetative word and phrase finder. There is a cool feature that mimics a typewriter. The screen just shows you the text you type but does not allow any editing, really forcing you to write. No backspacing, no highlighting, no going back. It’s forward only. Type away and get those words on the page!

Liquid Story’s setup file is a tiny 5mb download that you can take anywhere – huh? This looks too good to be that small. You can download the trial version from their website to try it out for free for 30 days. The program is going for $45.95 but there occassionally there are discounts offered on bitsdujour.com (http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/liquid-story-binder/) for half price – you’ll have to keep checking or sign up to be notified because the last half price deal was offered on June 30th.

Take a look at more screenshots HERE

NewNovelist 2.0

Lastly I was pretty impressed by NewNovelist 2.0 by Creativity Software Ltd. This software does exactly as its name implies, it walks a new novelist through the process of creating a novel. Maybe because I am from the States I’ve never heard of it before but this seems to have a lot of press reviews and testimonies from overseas as they are based in London – the testimonials and press releases are listed on their website.

NewNovelist has a pretty good tutorial for this program, it uses the same system as the creative writing course offered at the University of East Anglia – (the top University for creative writing in the UK). It walks you through creating a name, category and story concept for your story. It then opens up steps and you can jump from each step if you like, even start with the ending if you wish. The steps organize into an outline and you can choose to fill in your text in each step, generating your story as you go along.

They offer many templates on characters and even include a name generator so you won’t get stuck on naming them (Which I often do, causing me to pause while writing). They also have the same setup for places, objects and ideas so you can have everything organized and available or you could go back and fill in as much detail as you like.

While the software won’t write for you, it does offer many editing tools such as a thesaurus, spell check. a US or UK dictionary, first line prompts and printing from any chapter or point in your work. It will also print your manuscript into a format accepted by many publishers so you are ready to submit your work to the world.

Although they are based in the UK, they do ship here here in the States or you can download the software from them. NewNovelist 2.0 is also Vista compliant and costs $54.95.

There is a flash demo you can watch to check it out for yourself on their website. The program looks like what you’d think a full writing program should look like. The tutorials seem to be very easy to understand and really good for someone writing a novel for the first time.

Watch the NewNovelist Demo:

Conclusion:

Although some people still prefer to hand write everything and then type it on the screen I think writers should start taking advantage of what’s available out there. Some of these programs blew me away with the amount of things they can keep track of. They also serve as reminders of details that can be added such as filling out a character profile and then it asking you the character’s favorite color – you probably wouldn’t have thought about it but now it’s just one more detail you can use to flesh out your work.

If you are struggling to get that novel out or don’t know where to start, I believe that any of these programs would help push you a little further along and give you some directions. Old hat writers might consider them for the ease of organizing their works. Personally, I look at them for both and something to make staring into that blank page become something a little more interesting.

LordGefner