Writer software

There's an open source brainstorming application called FreeMind that I've been playing with. Interesting...

Dragon-lady said:

I'm in the early planning/worldbuilding stages for a new novel and thinking of trying out some of the software that's out there for authors--not so much the wordprocessing ones. I like to stick to Word because it's what my critters use and for tracking changes it works well.

But I've heard there is some for character and plot planning and thought it might be interesting to check some of them out. Has anyone tried any of these? Are any of them good enough to be worth getting?

Thanks.

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There's a discussion over in the Tech Help forum that might be useful:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84239

What OS are you using?

I've been looking at Scrivener and Curio for Mac OS Tiger or higher. I'm trying to decide which one to go with. They each have a full demo available for download if you want to play around with them. I'm leaning toward Scrivener.

I do like MS Word best for word processing though.

I haven't tried any of the programs for PC out there, though I have to say that Keynote looks really interesting. If I didn't do most of my work on my iBook, I'd have to check them out.

Your most powerful planning and outlining and world-building tool is Microsoft Excel.

Check the FAQ. I wrote about this extensively. Everything else is more flash than database awesomeness.

jessicaorr said:

What OS are you using?

I've been looking at Scrivener and Curio for Mac OS Tiger or higher. I'm trying to decide which one to go with. They each have a full demo available for download if you want to play around with them. I'm leaning toward Scrivener.

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Scrivener is pretty cool. I use it and it has some very useful features. However, if you are using an older ibook you might want to check out the literatureandlatte technical forum as there are issues with speed in Scrivener when older machines are updated to Leopard. Fine with Tiger though.

It is very good, and, I thought, quite cheap. And the support through the website is excellent.

For PC Storylines is quite useful, as is Writeroom.

I've been playing around with Scrivener and Curio a bit more and I definitely like Scrivener better. It has all the features I need and it's intuitive, to my mind at least. I'm on a iBook clamshell Indigo that's maxed out Ram-wise. So far I haven't noticed any problems with slow down. Curio was a bit much for the little guy to handle though.

Dragon-lady, I definitely second Excel as a powerful world-building tool. Depending on how far you want to go into the physics of your world, you've got quite a few formulas built into the program.

You might use Excel, FreeMind and a journaling application together. You could make your databases and calculations in excel, web-diagrams in FreeMind and use the print-screen function to copy them and import them into a journal. That way you'd be able to have all your notes in one place. You could also save the actual excel and FreeMind files in one folder on your hard-drive so you'd have editing access later. This is basically what I planned to do before I found Scrivener.

Dragon-lady said:

"Physics?" she shrieked.

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Or tables of place names, languages, flora/fauna...


Seriously though, having a journal (digital or otherwise) to keep all your project notes together- not to mention photo clippings, sketches, maps etc... would be a great help in maintaining your sanity. At least, it has been for me.

I'm mostly sane, mostly

i have to say Freemind and a paper journal work wonderfully for me, while Excel absolutely does not (I do use Excel for my academic work though). I also use my head - it's the best outlining tool I have.

As for languages - I have separate systems for grammar, lexicon, and texts. Sociolinguistics and pragmatics are a part of wordbuilding.

Dragon-lady: I use it for outlining and brainstorming. Word does not have the "tree" function that Freemind has, and I find it very helpful. It visually separates main ideas from secondary ideas, bits to be incorporated in scenes, etc.

Ultimately all my tools are just mnemonic devices - I want to help the ideas and the plot settle in my head.

I needed to get organized and I was shifting projects between a PC desktop and a Mac laptop. After looking around, I bought a program called "Write It Now". It was reasonably priced (approximately $50 USD) and I could download both the PC and the Mac versions for one price - plus put it on as many computers as I own so if I upgrade computers, it's easy to reinstall. The program is set up so that a computer/techno phobe like me can use it fairly easily. There's a section for characters, events, relationships, notes, and actually writing chapters. I've found it easy to keep track of characters (especially in a series I'm working on) and there is even a time-line feature. You can set a date for an event and then you can pull up a time line chart to see how the events are linked. I've found this invaluable for a plot with parallel stories. While it isn't perfect, it is working well for me and the price was right. When I'm ready to print, it exports in a .rtf file already set up in standard manuscript style. There is a free download you can try out before buying. Here's the link to the company. http://www.ravensheadservices.com/

The main thing I discovered was to try the downloads until I found the one that did what I wanted at a price I was willing to pay. Good luck.

There is this piece of software, which is free:

yWriter4

http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter4.html

Dramatica Pro best, but pricey

I've tried quite a few of the software packages and the best - for me, anyway - is Dramatica Pro. It is NOT cheap, although all the other "bad" things I've heard said about it, I've never found to be a problem.

First, ignore 90% of their terms and don't even bother trying to learn "their" logic. Just use it as a question/answer, get-down-the-bones, brainstorming tool and your brain will help you beat out the scenes, outline, and everything else that you need to preplan your writing.

It's NOT hard to learn if you just don't bother trying to figure out "their" terms. It's only drawback is the price.

Try E-Bay maybe for a used or older copy, that's what I'm doing.

You can also download a no save/no extract but otherwise functional trial of it - well worth it before you fork out the big bucks - from their website. One BIG caution, even with my low-end cable broadband internet service, the download took MORE THAN an hour and a half! With dial-up it would be all night, probably, and even with DSL it would be longer than with my low-end cable download. But if you have the fastest cable download as one guy who downloaded it did, the download only took seconds. So, if you don't have the fastest cable download, maybe you have a friend who does who can download it for you.

Dramatica Pro best, but pricey

I've tried quite a few of the software packages and the best - for me, anyway - is Dramatica Pro. It is NOT cheap, although all the other "bad" things I've heard said about it, I've never found to be a problem.

First, ignore 90% of their terms and don't even bother trying to learn "their" logic. Just use it as a question/answer, get-down-the-bones, brainstorming tool and your brain will help you beat out the scenes, outline, and everything else that you need to preplan your writing.

It's NOT hard to learn if you just don't bother trying to figure out "their" terms. It's only drawback is the price.

Try E-Bay maybe for a used or older copy, that's what I'm doing.

You can also download a no save/no extract but otherwise functional trial of it - well worth it before you fork out the big bucks - from their website. One BIG caution, even with my low-end cable broadband internet service, the download took MORE THAN an hour and a half! With dial-up it would be all night, probably, and even with DSL it would be longer than with my low-end cable download. But if you have the fastest cable download as one guy who downloaded it did, the download only took seconds. So, if you don't have the fastest cable download, maybe you have a friend who does who can download it for you.

Even if you have to let it download all night with dial-up internet, Dramatica Pro trial is well worth the time to try it out.

Word with endnotes

Word rocks. Outline view especially.

For on-the-fly world building, why not use endnotes. You can gather them up and colalte them for the second draft.

Also, there are fantasy mapping applications for RPGs.