Thread: Software for novelists

Has anybody used or uses novel software?
For example the StoryBlue or Snowflake Pro?

Just curious as to if it helps or anything.

-Eden

I've never heard of either (super helpful, I know), but I would say stuff like that won't hurt, but it certainly won't make the process easy. I don't think anything can do that.

When they invent a program that takes a scene in my head and puts it on paper perfectly, then I'll be onto it. Haha

yea i am just trying to figure out if it is worth it.

Oh, if you have to pay for it definitely not. There's nothing a program can give you that a simple old Word doco can't. The quality of the novel is up to you.

I visited the the StoryBlue site. There's a free trial, so if it interests you, download it and try it. I just might, for the heck of it. I think it's only 27.00, so if you find it useful, then maybe that's not such a big investment. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, without looking into it.

Fox, a good tool just makes things easier and faster. So who knows? I'm sure you could bang out a novel on typewriter if you had to.

I've tried yWriter which is free. I generally like it except for a couple of things: I don't like the way it formats the output file, and it doesn't allow the files to be password protected. Other than that, it's not a bad program.

These programs are particularly useful for organising and planning. They allow a system for character profiles and various other notes which can be quite helpful.

I've used a free program called Quickplot on and off for many years. It's been discontinued, but is available here. Nothing else seems as targeted or flexible. I tried yWriter, and it's decent but not as much for me.

Originally Posted by JosephB

Fox, a good tool just makes things easier and faster. So who knows? I'm sure you could bang out a novel on typewriter if you had to.

Good point. Mine was an ill-informed reply based on the fact that I'd never (till now) heard any writers I know mention using such programs. Apparently I don't know everything? Shock. Haha.

Heh. Well, that is pretty shocking. I need to go have a good lie-down now just to get over it.

I've never run into anything like that I consider helpful. But whatever works, is the idea.

I create a table in Word for screenplays of novels, and move scenes around the grid like I used to do with a ruled bulletin board on my wall. Except instead of note cards, the scenes or chapters are keywords that when clicked pull that chapter up to work on.
Some of them grow into major consoles, with links to research, notes, maps, all sorts of stuff.
I thought this was a totally cool, really original concept until the other day I heard a writer say he organized novels with a spreadsheet. And realized...hmm, same idea, huh?

Novel software? I've tried Story Mill and Melle (sic?) however, though they did what they were supposed to do I personally found them distracting. Either something about the UI was too abnormal or it was something else like compatibility with .doc/.docx documents. Of course no word processor I can think of exports .doc properly some do better than others.
I've been sticking to Apple Pages 4 (iWork '09) for most of my work and the full screen mode along with the simple yet powerful UI makes writing and formatting my finished manuscript a breeze. It exports to Word formats quite well and I'm happy with it. Though with the soon arrival of Office for Macintosh 2011 I might go back to Word because it's what I used in the good old Windows days.
If you'd really like to try out some novelist software I do however recommend you try Story Mill. Be aware though last I used it the application only ran on Apple Macintosh OS X but there was a Windows version on the horizon.

Simon Haynes' Spacejock Software has some pretty cool writer tools. It has a complete novel writing program, a very useful app for keeping track of submissions, and some cool ereaders and stuff as well.

http://www.spacejock.com/

And yeah, that's as in Hal Spacejock, the outerspace hero of this Australian writer. If you like Pratchett and Star Trek parodies and Brewster Rockit, take a look at the Hal site. There's usual some free ebook around.

http://www.spacejock.com.au/

yWriter, which I mentioned above, can be found at the Spacejock site.

I'm probably old fashioned, but I'm content to create my own files with word for everything. I have tried some of the software, but keep going back to my old methods with word. New learning curves with software always annoys me.