Forum Posts Feed
Collectors/floating windows/icons
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Jan Rifkinson
Apr 20, 2007 at 08:16 PM
Hugh Pile wrote:
>Scrivener, whose praises I’m always ready to sing, has a floating scratchpad
>for rapid thought-recording (as have several Mac note/databank programmes, such as
>DevonThink).
Do you know of a similar writing tool for windows? Thanks.
—
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield, CT USA
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Apr 20, 2007 at 08:48 PM
Jan Rifkinson wrote:
>
>
>Hugh Pile wrote:
>>Scrivener, whose praises I’m always ready to sing, has a
>floating scratchpad
>>for rapid thought-recording (as have several Mac
>note/databank programmes, such as
>>DevonThink).
>
>Do you know of a similar writing
>tool for windows? Thanks.
>
I have never used Scrivener, just looked longingly at the web site, but I don’t believe anything in the PC world comes close. The only software I can think of that packs so many writing tools under one “hood” is Liquid Story Binder. But LSB doesn’t integrate its tools very effectively. The developer, Jesse Walls, does seem to work at breakneck speed to the point where it is difficult to keep up with the latest version. There’s a beta of the next generation LSB, which looks promising, but still not the tool Scrivener appears to be.
Steve Z.
Posted by Hugh Pile
Apr 20, 2007 at 10:04 PM
Jan Rifkinson wrote:
>
>
>Hugh Pile wrote:
>>Scrivener, whose praises I’m always ready to sing, has a
>floating scratchpad
>>for rapid thought-recording (as have several Mac
>note/databank programmes, such as
>>DevonThink).
>
>Do you know of a similar writing
>tool for windows? Thanks.
>
>—
>Jan Rifkinson
>Ridgefield, CT USA
>
>
Jan
There’s nothing on the Windows platform that rivals Scrivener as a fiction drafting tool, in my view.
I’ll leave aside IdeaMason, which is primarily a non-fiction tool and has been discussed previously here. I’ll also leave aside MS Word, which I think is still better than any competitor for short-form writing and for polishing any kind of writing. Nothing on either platform competes with Word’s “track-changes”, “compare-documents” and annotation tools.
The remaining programmes tend to split between those that are “prescriptive” in one way or another, and those that allow the user more freedom. In both cases their output is plain text, or at the maximum RTF.
I think the prescriptive programmes were amongst the first to be developed; they often deploy story development tools to channel the user into writing according to particular theories, formulae or models: Hollywood’s three Acts/120 pages, or the Joseph Campbell/Star Wars mythic formula for example. At the least they provide templates for character, location, plot and scene or “beat” attributes and point-of-view. They sometimes offer metrics for plot tension/emotional intensity. Probably such software programmes were, and continue to be, attractive to newcomers.
More recent programmes tend not to bother with these approaches but, like Scrivener, focus instead on providing basic practical drafting tools such as a full-page view, a binder that is often combined with an outliner, a scratchpad or notepad, and various kinds of metadata (for synopses, tracking and editing). . These are the ones that in general I prefer, because they don’t confine me and their tools are the tools I use on a daily basis.
There are at least five of these that are being actively developed for Windows. They are:
- PageFour http://www.softwareforwriting.com/pagefour.html
- Liquid Story Binder: http://www.blackobelisksoftware.com/Preview.htm
- WriteItNow: http://www.ravensheadservices.com/
- yWriter: http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter3_Version.html
- Writer’s Cafe: http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/
Of these five, I favour PageFour, which is a simple but steady piece of software with possibly similar potential to Scrivener, and yWriter, which has the merit that it is free.
There are others, such as New Novelist and WriteWay Pro, which fall more into the prescriptive category.
There are others still, like Power Writer and RoughDraft, that appear to be no longer under development.
And then of course there is also a whole basketful of fiction outliners such as Power Structure, Dramatica, StoryView, StoryCraft and Save the Cat!, most aimed mainly at the wannabe-screenwriter market, that will offer to structure your story for you according to any theory, or none.
H
Posted by Jan Rifkinson
Apr 20, 2007 at 11:02 PM
Hmmmm. Looks like I have a lot of playing around to do. Thanks for taking the time to lay all that out for me. Basically, I write newspaper/magazine articles based on research which I gather, etc. I’m sure you understand the drill. I used to use ADM which had an outline & the facility to hoist multiple windows of notes like 3x5 cards which could be re-arranged, etc. Unfortunately I can’t do that w UltraRecall… I wish it weren’t so. -jan
Posted by Cassius
Apr 21, 2007 at 05:45 AM
MyBase has an optional tool for saving snippets. When turned on, you highlight whatever you wish and copy (CTRL-C) it to the clipboard. A menu then pops up giving you a number of options for where to place the clipboard contents. Of course, MyBase can also easily save complete Web pages and it does`so almost instantly (at least on my new laptop with 2 GB RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo chip running at 2 GHz. My previous machine had 200mb RAM and a very slow processor.)
MyBase occasionally crashes, but I’ve yet to lose a MyBase data base or any part of one, even when it crashes right after saving a Web page…when I reopened the data base, the just-saved page was there.
-c