This is the last post on software stuff, I promise.

I’d planned to start by saying that all anyone really needs is a basic text editor, but then I ran across Writemonkey. It is the most basic text editor I’ve seen since 1982 – the only thing it does is text. No italics, no underlining, no fonts, no headings…just a completely clean screen and your writing. It produces plain *.txt files, which you can import into pretty much anything else. The point is apparently to avoid distracting the writer by eliminating visual clutter, but the no-underlining thing is a dealbreaker for me.

So instead I’ll start by saying that as far as I’m concerned, Scrivener and yWriter are still my vastly-preferred options for writing software. They’re both modular writing word processors which allow a lot of flexibility and places to stash your notes. Scrivener was designed for the Mac, but is now available in a Windows version. It still looks more Mac than Windows, which I expect would be an advantage for a Mac user switching to PC, but as a long-time Windows user, I find it a little uncomfortable. Which is one reason I like yWriter; it looks more like what I’m used to. Both programs allow for places to stash your pre-writing planning and notes, but don’t do a lot of hand-holding in that area. Both have a storyboard function and a flexible word processor that lets you rearrange bits and pieces and chapters easily. yWriter has the edge in manuscript analysis, but it needs more data entry to get it (not much; it makes it fairly easy to do as you go). Neither does submission tracking.

If you are looking for a workhorse writing program with good flexibility, I’d pick one of those. If what you want is something totally customized to your work process (and are willing to put in the time necessary to do the customizing and design), Liquid Story Binder is your program. You can micromanage every aspect of your process and work flow…but it doesn’t come with a default binder, so you have to design everything. The only thing it’d be a little tough to arrange is some of the analysis features; everything else, you can have as much or as little of as you happen to want. It’s still available, but hasn’t been updated since 2011, which makes me a little nervous. Also, it’s a long, steep learning curve.

Novel Factory was my favorite of the other programs I looked at. It has a clean interface, it’s fairly flexible, and its planning/plotting features get you to the actual plotting and scene-planning fairly quickly. Its plotting help is based around the standard three-Act structure with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey plot points, but that’s fairly easy to ignore (just don’t open their Roadmap or help). It starts with a one-sentence plot summary, then has you expand it to 500 words or so, then expand that into a multipage synopsis, then break that synopsis down into scenes. You can break off at any point to do some character and setting development…or not, if you’d rather not. It’s the only one of the planning programs that actually works the way some of the writers I know work.

Novel Factory also has a feature that made me actually buy the program:  an “Export to Scrivener” button, so you can do your planning here and your word processing/writing there. (Although their built-in word processor was just fine, as far as I was concerned, its scene management is a bit clunky compared to Scrivener.) Novel Factory also encourages you to summarize each scene from different characters’ points of view. This is a lot of work and has the potential to be a serious time sink, but it can be really helpful if one is stuck in mid-book. It has places to keep your research notes, and it even has submission tracking.

WriteItNow  doesn’t have much in the way of planning; it’s all about work flow, keeping notes, and analyzing. I really liked the feature where it shows icons of all your characters with a web of different colored relationships (customer, sibling, romantic interest, etc.), but not enough to buy the program. It’s worth checking out the demo.

Two of the programs I looked at, Contour and Dramatica Pro were planning-only software; neither includes a useful word processor, manuscript analysis, or submission tracking. Contour starts with four basic questions (who’s the hero, what does he/she want, who’s trying to stop him, does he win). Then you define your character’s role in four acts (Contour says it’s three, but Act II is twice as long and split in half, so it’s really four) by explaining how he/she is an archetypical Orphan/Wanderer/Warrior/Martyr (and apparently, being divorced qualifies a main character as being an orphan in Act I, as does getting fired, or even just “having a rebellious nature”). You then generate a one-sentence formula plot description and twelve plot points per act, and Bob’s your uncle, you’ve got an outline. If you think this way, or if you’re doing a Hollywood formula screenplay, it might be useful. Nobody I know plots like this, though.

Dramatica…Dramatica uses an insanely complex system of developing characters and plot structure on four different levels that would require several posts to do it justice. I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. The Windows program hasn’t been updated since 1999 (though it still runs under Windows 10); the Mac version got a makeover some years ago. Dramatica has a steep learning curve – its terminology is non-standard and non-intuitive – and its system is incredibly abstract and totally character-centered. If you start with a plot and fit the characters into it, this isn’t likely to be much help. It’s still selling (at $90 a pop), though, and appears to have a moderately active community on its web site, so it’s obviously just the thing for some people. If you’re interested, I’d recommend downloading the demo and a bunch of their free articles.

9 Comments
  1. I occasionally write in notepad for drafts when I need a lack of distraction and an inability to undo what I’ve erased. I use _underscore_ for italics or type tags for other formatting and then go search and replace by hand when I save it in a file that supports formatting.

    • type tags
      \ type tags (checking backslashes for future reference)

      • not coming through
        html/xml type tags with greater than/less than arrows around them -.-;
        sorry about the multiple posts

  2. I use notepad++ when I need a simple text editor that produces .txt files – mostly for quick notes, and almost never for words that will actually go into a story. If I needed to “vacuum a cat” some time, I could set notepad++ up so that, in .txt files, it displays *italics* when words are surrounded by stars and _underlines_ when surrounded by underscores. In fact, there may be a plugin out there that does that for me without my having to roll my own.

    For writing the actual story, I stick with an older version of MS Word (2003) that I cling to with a death-grip.

    What I really want by way of writing software is something that will let me organize the various doc, txt, rtf, xls, etc. files that I have in a project’s folder without the program trying to borg those files into its own special format. Something like a specialized file manager, that lets me create comments on the various files, view lists of files that are filtered in various ways (e.g. to give me a list of all the various files tagged “character description/backstory”), that will launch various files in their “native” programs, and that will take in stride any new files added to the project without having to jump through any special “import” hoops.

  3. I just posted a comment that got devoured by the spam-eater.

  4. I have always used Microsoft Word and Scrivener. I’ll have to check those others out!

  5. the no-underlining thing is a dealbreaker for me.

    Yeah. I don’t need much, but I do need italics. Not negotiable. 😉

    I’m still using Textra, a pretty full-featured word processor from the days when DOS was king (and easy to convert to programs from this millenium). I understand version 7 was released into the wild when the company went out of business, if anyone wants to try going retro.

    ZenWriter is reported to be excellent for those looking for a no-distractions option, though I haven’t got around to trying it myself.

  6. I’ve been using Textilus, which was just changed to “Notes Writer +” without my knowing. I work on my iPad mini. It’s essentially a basic word processor, although for some reason it now has a name generator program in it, too.

    I *just* bought the iOS version of Scrivener for my iPad. I also have Storyist, which was a compromise app for the iPad when Scrivener didn’t have anything out for mac tablets. All I can say is, it’s wonderful! The word count feature, the summary of chapters or scenes hanging out on the left of thee page, the ability to import and then chop up a larger document so you can do surgery on it — I could go on. Then there’s the ability to synch what’s on my iPad in DropBox, and then have it on my iPhone when I don’t have my iPad with me, but want to write down a note and have it in the research folder for a project. ***happy squeals!***

    Novel writer sounds interesting, too. It sounds more or less like the Snowflake method. I’ve been a pantser writer, more or less, with dashes of planning ahead, but if I want to get more writing done and out there, I’m going to have to start planning ahead a bit more, and stick with the plot, so to speak.

    Thanks for the articles!

  7. I have to admit I’ve never quite understood the whole storyboarding thing where one moves scenes around. For me, each scene builds on the previous one, and if I move them around it messes everything up.

    I’m sure I’m missing some key piece of information that makes the whole storyboarding idea work for other writers, but I have no idea what it is.