yWriter It Is

So I tried out a few other writing programs (Liquid Story Binder and Page Four to be exact). I did not use them for long. Just played around with them a bit. But I decided that I already knew I would go with either yWriter or Scrivener.

As you can tell by the title of this blog post - I have decided to go with yWriter. And here is why:

1. I like the layout and the user interface
2. I like being able to have multiple documents open at the same time
3. I like that it will read my work to me - right there
4. I like that I can highlight character names in a chapter
5. I like that I can see instantly the word count for each chapter as well as the over all document (without any extra clicks)
6. I like that it is free. (Of course I plan to donate to the project with the some of the money I make from my first book).

The things I didn't like (or liked better in Scrivener):
1. No spell check suggestions
2. Formatting (aka "Compile") options

I think I can live without. So on to writing using yWriter! You should check it out.

What program(s) do you use when you write?

yWriter, a Writing Software Review

So, as some of you may know - I have been trying out different writing software. I started with StoryBook (see my review). Then I tried yWriter. If you recall I liked yWriter better. After I finished the first draft of my WIP I downloaded the trial version of Scrivener to give it a try. As I always do better with reviews when I can compare two things, I will compare yWriter to my first impressions of Scrivener. Stay tuned for my full review of Scrivener.

I really enjoyed using yWriter. It has some great features. And from what I have seen so far, it has similar functionality to Scrivener. Although it does not have many cool exporting functions, which I personally don't mind.

My Favorite Features

• It's Free
• With the click of a button it will read your writing to you. Great for revising. (By the way, Scrivener does not have this feature.
• Did I mention it is free?

What it is Lacking

• Embedded spell checking. It tells you when a word is wrong but does not offer suggestions. I am a terrible speller so this was an issue for me. (Scrivener does).
• You have to have a Chapter-Scene structure. I got around this by just having one scene per chapter. No big deal. But Scrivener has more flexibility in this area.

The Verdict

yWriter is on the list for my top 5. But since Scrivener is not to terribly expensive I may end up going with it. The big reason? I plan to self publish and Scrivener has some great export options for that. However, I do have a few more I would like to try before I decided for sure.

Storybook, A Writing Software Review

Recently I have been trying out some different writing software. I don't want to pay a lot (don't have the budget and have a hard time justifying it when Microsoft Word will do). So I wanted to start with software that was free, or had a free version.

Thus Storybook. There is a pro version, but I only used the free version. Here are my thoughts:

The Good
-I liked how I could put everything into one place - my outline, characters, the actual manuscript text.
-While you are working on your scene, you can always see the description of the chapter - very helpful for keeping on track.
-You can divide your novel into parts, chapters, and scenes.
-You can enter items - something I had never thought about doing.
-You can assign scenes to different chapters - or un-assign them. This is great for keeping deleted scenes.
-There is decent, built in spell checking.

The Bad
-There is no word count feature (that I could find). Which means I had to copy and paste into word to get a word count.
-The free version does not have export options, so again - copy and paste into word.
-There are adds that take up a good chunk of the screen space. They aren't very annoying, just take up space.
-There seemed to be a lot of features I did not use. Maybe if I continued using it I would have explored those.

Conclusion
The next writing software that came on my radar was yWriter. I recently downloaded it and ported everything I had in Storybook over. Personally I am liking yWriter better already. So although Storybook was nice, I probably won't go back to it.

However, if you are looking for a writing software with quite a few nice features - I would give the free version a try and see if it fits your style.