Comments on: Five fantastic computer programs for writers

By: Iain Broome

Iain Broome — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:29:49 +0000

@Sophie Please do, I’d be interested to know what you think…

By: thesophie

thesophie — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:04:13 +0000

Just downloaded Celtx, looks great!
I’ll come back and let you know if/when I get bored/annoyed with it.

I used to use final draft, but lost my copy in the death of a computer.

Let’s see.

By: L. L. Daugherty

L. L. Daugherty — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:37:04 +0000

I know this is a bit late but thought I’d toss in my two cents.

I was using Open Office until I had to format a manuscript for hard copy submission and spent a couple hours fighting with the header and footer formatting. I’ve also heard from others that when OOo docs are converted to RTF and then read in Word the formatting will not remain consistent (not a surprise for Micro$oft). I didn’t have a problem personally but these folks were getting rejections due to the problematic formatting issues. I gave in and went back to Word.

For first drafts I use Write It Now, available for both PC and Mac. According to a friend who uses Scrivener they do similar things. Write It Now allows the user to create chapters, scenes in chapters, and rearrange scenes and chapters on screen easily. It will track characters, time lines, relationships etc. It also has a submission tracker. I’ve found it quite useful and worth the $59.95 price.

http://www.ravensheadservices.com/

By: Helen Gallagher

Helen Gallagher — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:31:59 +0000

Not exclusively for fiction writers, Microsoft has a cool product called OneNote. (and, as a tech consultant, I don’t often say anything good about Microsoft products).

OneNote is a free form structure with a ‘notebook’ for every major topic you wish to organize, such as personal writing, travel journals, your memoir, and article ideas. As your ideas grow, you can add sub-folders and create hyperlinks from one notebook to another, so you never have to go hunting through files and folders.

Even the most disorganized writer can catalog all their work: ideas, drafts, character sketches, pitches, clips, research, guidelines, web pages, audio files, video clips.

You may already have OneNote on your computer. It is a standard component of included in the Home and Student version of MS Office 2003 and 2007.

Works on PC and Mac with Virtual PC.
Helen Gallagher
http://www.releaseyourwriting.com

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:13:46 +0000

If like me you’re a proud Linux user and are feeling a tad left out, you might want to check out the Writers’ Cafe application (http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/).

It’s perhaps not the most slick looking package, but it provides a host of features for juggling scenes, managing resources, and templating manuscripts. It runs on Linux, Windows and MacOS, and it’s optimised to work with USB drives, and run well on netbooks.

Personally, I’ve fallen back on using OpenOffice and my own directory structure, but I was impressed by the featureset here. Worth a look.

By: Joan K

Joan K — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:41:47 +0000

I use “The Journal” whose developer is David Martin and has just rolled out version 5. Very reasonably priced, tremendous support, active community, plus David is responsive to users and their requests for added features.
The other is Writer’s Blocks v. 3. It is visual, and functions a lot like digital index cards with a manuscript view. I have mind mappers but I need a more organized view. I’ve been waiting a few years for a version “4″ and have been told it is being developed.

By: Alexis Grant

Alexis Grant — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:13:28 +0000

What a great list… Oh, I need to try some of these out. Thanks!

By: Grace

Grace — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:09:26 +0000

Hi,
One piece of software that i have absoloutely fallen in love with is “Life Journal for writers”.
The website gives a free trial of Life journal and the different versions of Life journal such as, for writers, for christians, for staying sober etc, and you can buy the full version for around £25 uk pounds.
The software is excellent! It indexes your work for you, you can assign categories to each entry and to parts of an entry, it has prompts and quotes for when your feeling uninspired and has personal productivity graphs.
I completely reccomend this software to any writer, in any style of writing…. especially if organisation is something that you have trouble with.

By: Tony Dougan

Tony Dougan — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 13:08:42 +0000

Scrivener-yes very good but a bit like learning a musical instrument and, as noted mac only. On a PC I use Pagefour which is very similar to Srivener and is recommended. I know most people don’t rate it but I like the mac word processor prog-Pages.
I’d also highly recommend Mindmanager mindmapping software which is great to write poems or reviews with. Also Novamind is great for mindmapping and screenwriting.
Just a few ideas-I hope they help.

By: milliverstravels

milliverstravels — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:56:47 +0000

Hi Iain,

You might know about this one already: Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software.

It was 99 bucks when I got it, but it’s down to $49.99 so a bit more doable now.

I’ve been using it for almost two years and I couldn’t live without it. I have found it to be well worth the money.

You can see a video demo here:

http://www.nuance.com/talk

Cheers ~ Milli