Writing Software

Back in April, I promised a follow up post on the topic of free writing software. I intended to trial Liquid Story Binder to write my novel.

Well, this isn’t the follow up post to that earlier one. Because I couldn’t get my head around LSB, and abandoned it. It seemed to have heaps of potential, but I just didn’t have the time or enthusiasm to work my head around it.

Instead, as regular readers of Pearl Sideways will know, I bought a Mac.

And the main reason I bought a Mac? Scrivener.

The whole time I was testing out the writing software, I kept reading about Scrivener. How all the PC-based software paled in comparison. How the software interface was so intuitive. And how cheap it was. So it seemed like a message from my Muse when my netbook performance took a nosedive and I decided to buy a new laptop… she wanted Scrivener, so that meant I had to buy my Muse a Mac.

It was worth it. I’ve rhapsodised about the Mac over at Pearl Sideways, so I won’t repeat myself. Instead, I’ll limit myself to five great things about Scrivener.

1. Scene cards – Scrivener allows you to write scene cards that actually look like index cards, along with a virtual corkboard to arrange them on.
2. Document notes – a partitioned space for each scene where you can make research notes, record ideas or questions, or whatever works for you.
3. Ease of use – I learned to use the major Scrivener features in less than an hour, and I’ve written several short stories and thirty thousand words of my first novel using the software.
4. Structure – the ability to structure scenes and information into chapters, sections, research, narrative.
5. It was hard to choose number five – the statistics, the text editor, keywords functionality – but I’m going for something very simple: the ability to switch to full screen. I am easily distracted, and full screen is the only way to write for me.

I might also have mentioned the price, were it not that I bought a AUD$2,000 laptop in order to download the writing software. But I had to buy that anyway. Really, I did.

Update: In response Scrivener’s link to this post (on Facebook) – yes, it has been worth every penny 🙂

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