Writing apps for iPad - suggestions?

[kannaophelia]

Can anyone suggest any good fiction writing apps for iPad? I downloaded Writer's App today for the times when Ponyo kicks me awake (at 3.30-ish every night, like clockwork) and I have an hour or two of bright wakefulness, so that I can jot down plot bunnies and notes better than in the Note application I generally use. It's a barebones but helpful

Comments

[augustuscaesar]

Scrivener looks amazing. It's a pity that I write SO MUCH more effectively in longhand on a notepad :(

[kannaophelia]

I'm the opposite - I've tried carrying a notebook around, but as soon as I see anything in my childish looking handwriting, it looks too amateurish and I can't use it. I need typeface. :) Laso, I would find it very hard to restructure, write floating scenes etc in longhand. I always did write in a fairly nonlinear way.

Ended up getting Writing App because apparently they are eventually going to release a Scrivener iPad app and it will do quite nicely for now, currently playing with it.. It has all the functionality of Writer's App, so I don't actually need both, but what the hell, it's the price of a cup of coffee going to an independent developer. But Scrivener, however stripped down, would be better.

[augustuscaesar]

I am extremely linear, so yes, we're complete opposites! I might occasionally restructure things slightly once I'm done, but it's always written in the order I intend it to end up. The key for me with handwriting things is that I can't sit there and edit one sentence for two hours, trying to get it "perfect". I'm much more likely to let things flow, and just put a question mark over a word I'm not sure is the best one, if I do it all by hand.

I think it makes sense to just get something workable as a stop-gap and then get the Scrivener app eventually :)

[kannaophelia]

Switching off self-editing has been HARD. And may well be why revising and rewriting is taking me longer than writing. But I knew that it was better to have something finished to edit than to never complete.

I do start at the beginning, but I get scenes appear full-blown in my head without yet clear places in the narrative, just, so I need to write them while they are vibrant, so a program that lets me just get them down and worry about where they go later is brilliant. I used to do it in separate Word docs and combine, but separate scenes arranged later into chapters is much better. And once I had the whole thing, from top-down view it was clear that things needed to happen earlier or later than they did for flow and structural purposes, so I could shift them around until they were right. (And then laboriously make sure no one made reference to something that hadn't happened yet, or seemed not to know something they should...)

Writing App is doing well, especially now I have the keyboard, but it's not Scrivener.

[st_aurafina]

I have Storyist, but I haven't used it. I keep meaning to, it's just been busy and I've been writing short stuff. I want to be able to use programs like Scrivener, but I've never clicked with them, and I thought this would be a good place to start.

Can I maybe open it and tell you anything about it?

[kannaophelia]

Ooh, yes, I'd be very curious about what you think of it. Is yours it for Mac or iPad?

[st_aurafina]

It's the iPad app. Theoretically, I'd be using it with a Belkin blue tooth keyboard, which I've used already with the Pages app. I don't mind the keyboard - it's a bit clunky and there's definitely some lag, but the portability makes up for it.

With Storyist, I really haven't used it. Like, there's just the sample files in there right now. I'm hoping to get to know it, but I'm finding the transition from dot point plans to using index cards kind of tricky. I am happy to open it and tell you what's there, though. There are templates and stuff. /not very helpful.

[kannaophelia]

It would be awesome if you could take a look, I'm really curious!

I generally used dot points, too. I do, even in Scrivener, in a research file. Then I know sort of what each scene card is.