Writing tool for MacOs, or for Windows-a question.

Posted by grapeshot
Oct 24, 2010 at 07:10 PM

I know this reply is way late, but it might still be useful to anyone else asking themselves this same question.

The best writing tool depends on what you’re trying to write—fiction or non-fiction. Fiction writing involves developing and tracking the narrative, the worlds (yes, all fiction stories have a world they exist in), the characters, and the stage, scene, and setting. Non-fiction writing requires gathering facts and laying them out in the most effective order. In some instances of non-fiction writing, developing and maintaining a source list is also critically important.

Word, and other word processing software is actually not that useful for either type of writing. (I will qualify that by saying I mean for writing a long-form piece of work, such as a book.) I found that Word was hopeless at allowing me to track the development of a story. Something as simple as re-arranging scenes became very difficult once I had gone more than two chapters in my story. Even organizing the work into chapters was clumsy and awkward. It seemed that I was spending more time trying to keep my work organized and on track than I was in writing it. (However, Word can be used once you have finished your work for final formatting so that your manuscript can be submitted for editing/publishing.) For me, using Word was frustrating.

I discovered that as you begin trying to write something, part of what you have to do is figure out for yourself what methods work for you. I cannot tell you what software will universally work, but I can point you to software that I use. I work on the Windows platform, and found yWriter, which was developed by a published author for his own work. I found it to be nearly perfect for my needs. It handles chapters and scenes, allowing me to move them around, and makes version control easier to manage. I can track my timeline, my characters, my objects, and my settings. It shows me my word count (which I discovered is surprisingly important), and lets me see if I’m overusing certain words, and I can even set wordcount goals. It has only rudimentary word processing capabilities, which I discovered turns out to be all one needs for writing outlines, first drafts and subsequent revisions, but there is an option that allows an external word processor to be used if someone cannot do without their favorite. For final formatting, or for printing for reviewing, it can export into several different formats, chiefly to html (to read in a browser) or rtf (to open with Word). It can even serve as a voice reader, which some writers find useful to hear their passages. yWriter can be used as a portable application, and many users have found ways to make it work on Linux, but there is no Mac version, and despite requests, the author has no plans to develop a smartphone version. The most surprising thing for me was that all these features served to allow me to focus just on the actual writing, and how much it lifted the burden of tracking and organizing the work-in-progress.

Some writers find that storyboarding, or outlining, is also useful for them. I sometimes do this, but find old-fashioned index cards to be sufficient. I also sometimes use mind-mapping software for brainstorming sessions, but for me, plain old paper and pencil works the best for that, too. (I turn these into PDFs for future reference, but usually incorporate the ideas into my outline almost immediately.) StorYbook is a free software that allows you to create a story using storyboards. I tried it, but since storyboarding isn’t a method that I find congenial to the way I write, I can’t speak about how well the software works. (For the few times I do storyboarding, I use the Hipster DIY PDA index card template set, which includes storyboarding pages for index cards. Hipster DIY PDA)

There is a plethora of paid software for creative long-form writing, and you can spend a LOT of money if you want to, but if you’re just trying writing out to see what you can make of it, why spend money if you don’t have to? Besides, writing software will neither do the work for you, nor will it automatically make the result interesting for readers. After all, lots of great works were written using paper and pen, or even papyrus.

If I were to write non-fiction, I would never consider using yWriter, or any other creative writing software at all. Although I suppose you could bend the software to do your will, I would instead do the bulk of the work using some sort of outlining software, preferably one that can keep my source notes well organized, allow me to do an outline, and allow me to modify the outline easily. Also, because I always have several projects in progress at once, I’d rather have something that allowed me to keep them separate, rather than have an “omnium-gatherum” outliner, but this, too, is a personal preference.