writing tools
Last night I did a presentation for the Houston Science Fiction Writers' Meetup on writing software. Here is a brief review of the products we covered, with notes. ($ means you have to buy it. $$ and $$$ mean you have to shell out a larger chunk of cash than for shareware.) YMMV, please feel free to comment if you can elaborate or have used one of these programs more extensively. We were working from very brief overviews.
Writer's Cafe - http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/ - $
More of a creativity tool than a word processing alternative, Writer's Cafe is a suite of cute little tools like a simple mind-mapping program, a random prompt generator, a journal, and some games (Forty Thieves and the like). One great bonus with the Cafe is Storylines, which is actually a separate program. Storylines is a pretty robust story boarding program that uses electronic "cards" to represent scenes and allows the user to move them around a digital 'corkboard'. It's pretty cool, actually, and even if you don't get any use out of the creativity stuff, Storylines is nice to have.
WriteItNow - http://www.ravensheadservices.com/index.php - $
Pretty straightforward writing program that separates scenes, events, characters, places, and notes, and has some interesting tools for relating them. The chart of events, which maps each user-defined episode on a timeline, is awesome. As far as the word processing goes, this is a fairly robust Word-like interface. There is no drag-and-drop for moving scenes, though, you have to open a "sort" window and use the arrows. For at least one person at the table that was a deal-breaker.
Power Writer - http://www.write-brain.com/power_writer_main.htm -$$$
High-end writing assistant from the same folks who brought you "Screenwriter" and "Power Structure". This has a lot of tools for building story tension and plot, with questions for each act, chapter, and scene, as well as extensive character profiles. There is a tree-based outline function the points of the outline can be exported by themselves so that you can print a synopsis based on those single-sentence or phrase definitions. We didn't get to drill too far down into this one, but the help files are fantastic so new users can get going pretty quickly even though the learning curve is a bit on the steep side.
PageFour - http://www.softwareforwriting.com/pagefour.html - $
This is really not so much a novel-writing tool as a text file organizer. It has great RTF functionality and will keep individual files organized in folders, which can be kept in "notebooks", but there is no over-arching organizational scheme, and no export function that will combine text chapter files into a single document. It does have a universal search function, though. Might be good for short-story writers.
Liquid Story Binder - http://www.blackobelisksoftware.com/ - $$
Extremely graphics-oriented visual story organizer. This will thrill writers who like to keep images or collages at hand for characters and writers who storyboard in some fashion (there are several different methods of storyboarding). There are a lot of interesting side-bar type bonus functions, but the basic writing tools are still the tree-based outline and the word processing window. LSB seems to have a lot of color-coding built in, as well, which allows highlighting different parts of the text and planning document in one of the many built-in colors. Highly visual organizers love this program. I find it cluttered and a bit intimidating, and the light-text-on-black-or-teal default theme drives me crazy.
RoughDraft - http://www.salsbury.f2s.com/rd.htm
This is a free alternative to a standard word processing system. For someone who wants to get Word-style functionality without the bloat or the pricetag, RoughDraft is a good alternative. You get a lot of word processing power in an RTF format, and a bonus sidebar with a notes field or a folder tree to track your documents. This does not do outlining or scene recognition, but for writers who don't want that kind of nonsense cluttering their tasks, Roughdraft is a great option.
yWriter - http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter.html
My personal favorite, yWriter is a free little program that has very basic formatting (RTF files with bold, underline, and italics) but a fantastic interface for writers who don't work chronologically from Chapter 1 to The End. A yWriter Project is organized into Chapters, which can be given custom names, and each chapter has its own set of scenes. Chapters and Scenes have detail windows for brief notes or descriptions, as well as tracking POV characters, timing, and scene goals/conflicts/outcomes. yWriter tracks characters in a limited fashion (mostly for POV), and will also track word count statistics. Several different export methods are available as well. All the chapters and scenes can be re-ordered by dragging and dropping.
Roughdraft and yWriter are both small enough to carry on a flash drive.
And For Macs: (I know nothing about these, but they come recommended by their users)
Avenir - http://returnself.com/
Scrivener - http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
Also, I believe WriteItNow is dual platform.
Writer's Cafe - http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/ - $
More of a creativity tool than a word processing alternative, Writer's Cafe is a suite of cute little tools like a simple mind-mapping program, a random prompt generator, a journal, and some games (Forty Thieves and the like). One great bonus with the Cafe is Storylines, which is actually a separate program. Storylines is a pretty robust story boarding program that uses electronic "cards" to represent scenes and allows the user to move them around a digital 'corkboard'. It's pretty cool, actually, and even if you don't get any use out of the creativity stuff, Storylines is nice to have.
WriteItNow - http://www.ravensheadservices.com/index.php - $
Pretty straightforward writing program that separates scenes, events, characters, places, and notes, and has some interesting tools for relating them. The chart of events, which maps each user-defined episode on a timeline, is awesome. As far as the word processing goes, this is a fairly robust Word-like interface. There is no drag-and-drop for moving scenes, though, you have to open a "sort" window and use the arrows. For at least one person at the table that was a deal-breaker.
Power Writer - http://www.write-brain.com/power_writer_main.htm -$$$
High-end writing assistant from the same folks who brought you "Screenwriter" and "Power Structure". This has a lot of tools for building story tension and plot, with questions for each act, chapter, and scene, as well as extensive character profiles. There is a tree-based outline function the points of the outline can be exported by themselves so that you can print a synopsis based on those single-sentence or phrase definitions. We didn't get to drill too far down into this one, but the help files are fantastic so new users can get going pretty quickly even though the learning curve is a bit on the steep side.
PageFour - http://www.softwareforwriting.com/pagefour.html - $
This is really not so much a novel-writing tool as a text file organizer. It has great RTF functionality and will keep individual files organized in folders, which can be kept in "notebooks", but there is no over-arching organizational scheme, and no export function that will combine text chapter files into a single document. It does have a universal search function, though. Might be good for short-story writers.
Liquid Story Binder - http://www.blackobelisksoftware.com/ - $$
Extremely graphics-oriented visual story organizer. This will thrill writers who like to keep images or collages at hand for characters and writers who storyboard in some fashion (there are several different methods of storyboarding). There are a lot of interesting side-bar type bonus functions, but the basic writing tools are still the tree-based outline and the word processing window. LSB seems to have a lot of color-coding built in, as well, which allows highlighting different parts of the text and planning document in one of the many built-in colors. Highly visual organizers love this program. I find it cluttered and a bit intimidating, and the light-text-on-black-or-teal default theme drives me crazy.
RoughDraft - http://www.salsbury.f2s.com/rd.htm
This is a free alternative to a standard word processing system. For someone who wants to get Word-style functionality without the bloat or the pricetag, RoughDraft is a good alternative. You get a lot of word processing power in an RTF format, and a bonus sidebar with a notes field or a folder tree to track your documents. This does not do outlining or scene recognition, but for writers who don't want that kind of nonsense cluttering their tasks, Roughdraft is a great option.
yWriter - http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter.html
My personal favorite, yWriter is a free little program that has very basic formatting (RTF files with bold, underline, and italics) but a fantastic interface for writers who don't work chronologically from Chapter 1 to The End. A yWriter Project is organized into Chapters, which can be given custom names, and each chapter has its own set of scenes. Chapters and Scenes have detail windows for brief notes or descriptions, as well as tracking POV characters, timing, and scene goals/conflicts/outcomes. yWriter tracks characters in a limited fashion (mostly for POV), and will also track word count statistics. Several different export methods are available as well. All the chapters and scenes can be re-ordered by dragging and dropping.
Roughdraft and yWriter are both small enough to carry on a flash drive.
And For Macs: (I know nothing about these, but they come recommended by their users)
Avenir - http://returnself.com/
Scrivener - http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
Also, I believe WriteItNow is dual platform.