A Small Guide to Software You Can Use to Write*
by phill
With the exception of the interviews of established, eccentric authors with more free time than they know what to do with, it’s increasingly difficult to find a writer that isn’t doing the deed across the crisp white sheen of a computer monitor. After all, the majority of us are on them for our job during the day, before retiring to them in the evening for our entertainment in the form of video games, forums, YouTube or chat. It might be considered a shame, this loss of the handwritten, but it comes with advantages. Typing speeds are orders of magnitude beyond those of cursive. Committing a piece of writing to hard drive makes it generally easier to get at later, rather than having to scavenge around various notebooks and scraps of paper. And in today’s changing landscape of self-publishing, coupled with electronic submission being made available for most publications, having it ready and waiting in a file makes good sense.
But the choice of electric over acoustic brings with it a plethora of choice when it comes to which software is the most appropriate for your writerly needs. Some people prefer to emulate as closely as possible the blank page of a piece of paper, while others want options for formatting and organisation. So which is right for you?
Recently I conducted a survey through my Twitter and deviantART accounts to see which pieces of software people had opted to use. Then I lumped them together into rough groups and made a pie chart (huzzah for pie charts!), which you can see below:
(click for bigger)
The results weren’t all that surprising. Just over half of people opted for the generic MS Word/Mac Pages/OpenOffice document editor, with most citing the familiarity and fact that they used it for more than just creative writing as reasons for its use.
The next-closest were what I deemed bare-bones editors, things like Notepad that offer the most basic of formatting options (if they do at all). Interestingly, these were favoured more by self-described poets than prose writers.
Following these was a close run between combined word processing and planning software, and distraction free options. The former offer a way to organise plot into chunks that novel writers were very much into, as well as organising research and clipping things such as pictures into the process for later inspiration.
Interesting then that tied with them was the opposite side of the coin in the form of distraction free software, specifically designed to reduce your writing experience to a full-screen black or blank background that you can type onto. Obviously useful for those that find their attention yanked by shinies like Twitter updates, facebook photos, and e-mail notifications.
After that it was pretty much a scattered tie between specialty programs for script writing, layout, writing enforcement, and those who (despite the question being very focused towards software) insisted that paper and a pen/pencil was enough for them.
So, an interesting result. Just in case you were on the prowl for a new program to better allow you to let loose your juices over your computer monitor (strictly the creative ones, mind), I’ve listed the programs that made up each section below and provided links to their download/buy sites. Let me know if I missed your favourite program in the comments!
MS Word/Mac Pages/Mac Word/OpenOffice
Combined word processing & planning:
- Scrivener (Mac)
- The Guide (Windows)
- Writer’s Cafe (All)
Bare-bones:
Script specific:
- Dramatica Pro (Windows/Mac)
- Final Draft (Windows/Mac)
Internet based:
- GDocs (Any)
Distraction free:
Other/Enforcement:
- Write or Die (All)
- Mac Freedom (Mac)
Layout:
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*My apologies for the ridiculously long title, but I didn’t want to put ‘A Small Guide to Writing Software’ since that sounds suspiciously like a how-to for programming. I didn’t want to confuse folk that might stumble onto this article!
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Comments
TextEdit is a RTF editor included in OS X that I use primarily for note-taking or typing text for blog entries. I’m not exactly sure where it would fit, since unlike the barebones editors listed it’s not suited for coding, but it doesn’t have the formatting capability available in Word.
I used Word for most of my writing. I’ve considered trying out OpenOffice, though.
Another layout program you might want to mention is Quark Xpress. It’s what I primarily used for design work prior to the release of InDesign because it was far superior to Adobe’s PageMaker (I won’t even discuss MS Publisher).
Thanks for reccomending The Guide, it has made my writing so exponentially better.
I can’t believe people can write in notepad! There’s something too confronting about all that white space for me. At least with Word there are lots of little buttons and things to keep me company.
Chris Currie (http://furioushorses.blogspot.com) wrote a short story every day on his blog, and he once joked that he found it hard to write outside of a Blogger window. I can sympathise with that — I think I’m most productive when I’m blogging. Word reminds me of doing university assignments.
@AR: OpenOffice is pretty good for something you can get for free, and with its latest iterations it’s escaping even that qualification. I fucking hate the stupid ‘Ribbon’ thing that MS has introduced with the latest Word, and it drives me from using it overly much.
@Cthulhu: Glad to help one of the Great Old Ones! (though I know it won’t help me that much when you awake :D)
@Estelle: Hi Estelle, thanks for dropping by! Always nice to see fresh faces here (I’ve added your blog [intriguing concept by the way!] to my RSS feeds, so hopefully I’ll return the favour sometime soon).
And I can totally identify with Chris and yourself: for quite a long time I was submitting all my stories to the art website deviantART. Despite the text editor there being completely useless, requiring html code for italics, bold, line-formatting, etc., I still found it much more comforting to compose in than anything else.
Something I forgot about – while BBEdit is an excellent editor that I use all the time, it’s for pay. Text Wrangler http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ is the little brother to BBEdit, sharing a lot of it’s capabilities and is free.
My personal favourite of the moment though is OmmWriter. Most if not all of my gripes (missing features, not problems) from the first beta have been addressed, and it’s really a wonderful and clean tool to go and write with.