Best software for writing a novel

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Why oh why did I enter this thread? Now I desperately have to have a program that I never knew existed before this moment.

Download the thirty day free trial of Scrivener; watch some of the videos at Literature and Latte. See if it's for you.

If you complete NaNoWriMo you can get a sweet discount.
 

The Circle

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Download the thirty day free trial of Scrivener; watch some of the videos at Literature and Latte. See if it's for you.

If you complete NaNoWriMo you can get a sweet discount.

Was looking at the demo. Tossing up whether the investment of time in learning it would just be better spent writing. But in the long run, it would probably pay dividends.

Cheers for the tips. Thanks.
 

talktidy

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Was looking at the demo. Tossing up whether the investment of time in learning it would just be better spent writing. But in the long run, it would probably pay dividends.

Cheers for the tips. Thanks.

I definitely think the investment of time is worth it. But I would repeat what I said upthread and recommend you avoid the novel template to start with and just use the blank project template.
 

noranne

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I usually use Word, with Excel and Evernote for planning. This works pretty well for me as I am a very linear writer. I make an outline, start at the beginning, and work my way through it. However, lately I've been playing around with Atomic Scribbler (https://www.atomicscribbler.com/, although I just saw they've apparently changed the name). It has pros and cons, but I like being able to have my research in the same place as the writing. I think this sort of thing is better for people who jump around while writing and tend to re-order scenes and such.
 

Carrie in PA

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Was looking at the demo. Tossing up whether the investment of time in learning it would just be better spent writing. But in the long run, it would probably pay dividends.

Cheers for the tips. Thanks.

Also keep in mind that the trial is quite generous - it's the full version, and it's 30 days of actual use, not 30 calendar days. So if you mess with it for 2 days and then don't get back to it for a month, you still have 28 days to play with it.

And yes, if you win NaNo, you get a 50% discount. (And if you don't, you can usually get a code from someone who already has the program - they specifically encourage people to pass it on, so nothing shady there.)

I find the YouTube tutorials are more useful if I'm looking for something a little more specific. Like "Scrivener corkboard" instead of just searching "Scrivener tutorial".
 

Jason

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I had a post on a thread here that has either been lost in the etherwebs or has been archived and no longer searchable where I did a writeup on the benefits of most major text editors:

Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Pages, Scrivener, Google Docs, Evernote, Asana, and SimpleNote (also threw in Notepad and Notepad++ for the geeks out there)...

Not sure what happened to it, but if anyone wants, I did manage to find my Word doc where the content was originally written, and have it up on my blog. Not going to post the link here just in case there are rules about that, but if anyone wants that link, IM/PM me... :)
 

The Circle

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Also keep in mind that the trial is quite generous - it's the full version, and it's 30 days of actual use, not 30 calendar days. So if you mess with it for 2 days and then don't get back to it for a month, you still have 28 days to play with it.

And yes, if you win NaNo, you get a 50% discount. (And if you don't, you can usually get a code from someone who already has the program - they specifically encourage people to pass it on, so nothing shady there.)

I find the YouTube tutorials are more useful if I'm looking for something a little more specific. Like "Scrivener corkboard" instead of just searching "Scrivener tutorial".

As you're the second person who's mentioned it, and forgive my noobness, but what actually is NaNo?

As an aside, I'm currently using Word and Libre on my PC, and WPS Writer on my tablet.
 

Brightdreamer

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Thanks talktidy and admin! :thankyou:

Also adding: The goal of NaNo is to write the words; it doesn't need to be edited, or even finished, to "validate" and "win." There is no penalty or punishment for submitting a half-done draft or anything. (And NaNo keeps no record of what you validate, incidentally, so it's completely safe.) So even if you don't think you can write 50K words in a month, it's worthwhile to at least try once, even if you end up filling in with worldbuilding or personal notes or other words.
 

Thomas Vail

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As I like to say, the point of NaNoWriMo is to help aspiring writers get over the hump of 'how can I actually write a novel? It's such an intimidating mountain of effort!' by showing them that writing regularly, just getting words down, regularly, is an important first step.
 

Jason

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I had a post on a thread here that has either been lost in the etherwebs or has been archived and no longer searchable where I did a writeup on the benefits of most major text editors:

Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Pages, Scrivener, Google Docs, Evernote, Asana, and SimpleNote (also threw in Notepad and Notepad++ for the geeks out there)...

Not sure what happened to it, but if anyone wants, I did manage to find my Word doc where the content was originally written, and have it up on my blog. Not going to post the link here just in case there are rules about that, but if anyone wants that link, IM/PM me... :)

Update here - I found it, was looking in the wrong forum sub-threads:

https://absolutewrite.com/forums/sh...or-writing&p=10204996&viewfull=1#post10204996
 

KTC

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I've tried others, but I'm just comfortable with MS Word. I keep one file...absolutely zero files for edited versions etc...just one. I guess I don't like change. ;-)
 

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Why oh why did I enter this thread? Now I desperately have to have a program that I never knew existed before this moment.

I'm thinking this way now too. I've known of Scrivener for a while, but I never really looked at it to see what help it might provide. I think there is a free sample version I can play with.

How did Jane Austen get anything done without Word or Scrivener?
 

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I'm thinking this way now too. I've known of Scrivener for a while, but I never really looked at it to see what help it might provide. I think there is a free sample version I can play with.

You can download a completely working version to try for thirty days.

Watch the Literature and Latte videos, or at least the introductory one, a couple of times.

If you complete NaNoWriMo there's a killer discount coupon.

How did Jane Austen get anything done without Word or Scrivener?

In all seriousness, she did a lot of pre-writing relating to basic character traits and plot, and multiple drafts.
 

lizmonster

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I'm thinking this way now too. I've known of Scrivener for a while, but I never really looked at it to see what help it might provide. I think there is a free sample version I can play with.

Fair warning: there's a lot to Scrivener. It took me two weeks of determined daily use to get the hang of it, and figure out which features I did and didn't want to use. The learning curve is high, but so is the payoff.
 

Auteur

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I demoed Scrivener and then purchased it a few days ago with a $9.00 coupon, so it was $36.00, which is reasonable. It's pretty easy to use and fast. I used yWriter for about six months, which is similar, so it was easy to get up to speed on Scrivener.

Personally, I'd never write if I had to use just a word processor like Word or LibreOffice. They're too slow and get in your way when you just want your words to flow and don't want to look at anything but what you're working on at the moment, but to each his own. And you wind up with these big, unwieldy documents that are a nightmare for someone with ADD. With Scrivener (or yWriter), you can just focus on the scene you're working on and ignore everything else. There is a view mode that allows you to view all the scenes and chapters as one document, but that doesn't really appeal to me.
 
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JohnLine

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I just wanted to add that I consider NaturalReader invaluable during the revision process. It's the best text to speech reader I've found.

Having your novel read back to you makes it trivial to find odd wording, typos, filler words, and all kinds of issues that are hard to pick out with your eyes.

And so far, NaturalReader has the only voice that doesn't make me cringe (Heather). It's free to try and $99 after that, but it's literally saved me hundreds of hours poring over text.
 
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dickson

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I'm a devout user of Scrivener, although one inevitably encounters the day when it is necessary to cough up a doublepsaced 12 pt. Times New Roman Word version. (I get to there from 14 pt Cochin in Scrivener via the compile-to-RTF.)

One possibility I've not seen in this thread is LaTeX. While intended primarily for typesetting scientific or mathematical writing with lots of equations, LaTeX is arguably the most powerful document preparation software out there, with the exception of its parent, TeX. If it can be typeset at all, it can be typeset in LaTeX!

There are LaTeX style files for just about any kind of document, including novels. You prepare your manuscript using a flat ASCII editor with a markup language. If you are not dealing with equations or tables, it's pretty easy to learn. Leslie Lamport's LaTex A Document Preparation System, Addison-Wesley, is the classic introduction and is highly readable. Once your manuscript is complete (enough) you compile it. The LaTeX processer I use, TexShop, preferentially compiles to PDF. I'm sure there are processors out there that compile to RTF; who knows, .mobi?
 
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kranix1

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My writing partner and I use Google docs. We may look into scrivener when we finally start working on book 2. When I'm just sketching something out I write in notepad, copy and paste it into a bigboy program if It's something I want to hang onto.
 

Biffington

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I run a windows machine.

I started with google docs. My wife got a copy of scriviner, so I tried it out for a week before I bought my own copy.

In one week I ran into every single bug they produced. Formatting bugs, bugs to the spellcheck, saving bugs. Apparently none of these happened on macs, and they were rare on windows, but I managed to find every frickin' one in zero time.

They updated it and fixed the bugs, but that was well after that week. Besides, I started a new job where it was useful for me to have more than one input device, so I've been using google docs. I can edit it from any device I want, anywhere I am, provided they have internet or cell service.
 

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Another Scrivener lover here. The full-screen mode, the document hierarchy, the word count tracker, having all my resources in one electronic binder...it's been invaluable to me. I really don't know how long my most recent book would have taken if I'd had to slog through Google Docs like with my last novel.

Scrivener has its share of bugs and shortcomings, of course--sometimes even basic English words are marked misspelled, and certain kinds of formatting are really limited--but overall, it's an excellent tool. It's hard to stomach the thought of writing without it now.
 

Dave.C.Robinson

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The best piece of software is the one that meshes best with your individual writing process.

These days I use Scrivener to compose and Word for final editing like many other self-publishers on this forum. I've also written novels in OpenOffice, yWriter, and AbiWord. Google Docs is very handy too, though I use it more for client work than fiction.

The biggest piece of advice I can give anyone is to try different things and see what works for you.
 

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Scrivener intimidated me. So, I typed my first novel in word. Now I'm working on my second novel, and I delved into the world of Scrivener. I love it! As people mentioned, the organization features are wonderful. Since I'm an unorganized person to begin with, Scrivener makes me feel like I have it under control. Even if I don't...