It's all in the software!

[Pan]

I've tried various software along the way when writing and some of it was good and some bad. Here are my choices for those looking for creative writing software.

Scrivener + Scapple
1: Scrivener

WRITE.IT.NOW
2: WriteItNow

Power Writer
3: PowerWriter

Microsoft Word Cloud
4: MS Word Cloud

LibreOffice
5: LibreOffice

 

[Naomasa298]

I've tried various software along the way when writing and some of it was good and some bad. Here are my choices for those looking for creative writing software.

Scrivener + Scapple
1: Scrivener

WRITE.IT.NOW
2: WriteItNow

Power Writer
3: PowerWriter

Microsoft Word Cloud
4: MS Word Cloud

LibreOffice
5: LibreOffice

OK, but what did you find particularly useful about each individual piece of software? What were the most useful features?

 

[big soft moose]

Hey Pan, welcome to the site

Personally i do nearly all my writing in libre office... i use scriv for non fiction but ive never found it necesary for fiction. the main think i like about libre is that its free. I don't use its format to epub though because that can generate some ugly books... i use vellum for that

Ive never used write it now or power writer, and a quick look at their websites told me why that is, especially power writer, the 90s called and would like their website back.

pretty much thats my whole writing set up except for photoshop for covers and google /dog pile for research

 

[Naomasa298]

See, the reason I ask is that a lot of people seem to use Scrivener, and I have no idea what it offers over Word.

And why MS Cloud Word over Office365, apart from the cost?

 

[big soft moose]

The main benefit of scriv to me is if you write out of order you can move little chunks around much more easily than you can in a word doc.... i'm a linear writer for fiction but its very useful if you're structuring a non fiction article or book

 

[Amontillado]

Obsidian, used by some for writer's notes, has a new feature called Bases. I'm not sure the notes for a novel necessarily require extreme data mining. The concept is interesting, nonetheless.

Anybody use Obsidian, Notion, Logseq, or anything like that?

On the other hand, given the encroachment of AI, I'm tempted to give index cards, pen, and paper a shot.

 

[DLC]

Ywriter is free at least, it's what I used before scrivener.

 

[Naomasa298]

I have an Office 365 subscription through work, so I stick with that. I do have LibreOffice, but I can't get on with it - it's like something pretending to be Office 365, but not quite doing a good enough job. Also, it seems to screw up formatting on .doc and .docx files a lot, so I don't trust it - some publishers want those file formats. I haven't tried messing about with RTF files on it though.

 

[Amontillado]

I hate to say this because Nisus was my first Mac word processor. No, actually, I used Pages for a while. Then Pages changed and a mail merge script that I liked stopped working. Nisus was my second word processor.

Nisus Writer is (was) a pretty big name in the Mac universe. I believe it's safe to say it has become abandonware. Customer support isn't reachable. One of the two or three active threads on the Nisus forums is titled "Is Nisus moribund" and there has been no input or response from Nisus.

Automated sales processes still work so it remains possible to buy a new copy of Nisus. My opinion, beware. Something not good must have happened behind the scenes.

To any who use Nisus, its RTF files are non-standard rich text. As far as I know, anything that reads RTF files can open and modify Nisus documents. When another editor writes a Nisus file, Nisus styles in the document will be replaced with generic RTF styles. Or something like that.

Nisus doesn't read docx perfectly and I've seen docx export create unusable Word files. If you export to docx, confirm you got something close to what you expected.

Personally, I think it's a crying shame there isn't an enhanced Markdown allowing more formatting options. A little of the power of LaTex in a markup lingo with the casual ease of Markdown would be a good thing.

I would be happy writing with vim or BBEdit. In fact, when I write for complex formatting (or outrageous tinfoil hat tabloid pamphlets), I like BBEdit's Notebook files. They are sort of like a mini-Scrivener in plain text. Copy and paste from BBEdit to Affinity Publisher works like a champ, and I prefer pasting plain text to docx files in Affinity.

That's, of course, a lot of work to dash out a quick letter.

 

[Qvortable]

Personally I use Obsidian for all my creative work. It's free, audited, and integrated nicely between mobile and Pc using syncthing.

 

[Naomasa298]

To any who use Nisus, its RTF files are non-standard rich text. As far as I know, anything that reads RTF files can open and modify Nisus documents. When another editor writes a Nisus file, Nisus styles in the document will be replaced with generic RTF styles. Or something like that.

I can only speak about short story submissions, but a non-standard RTF would be a huge problem if submitting. Most venues expect standard manuscript format, and if the file doesn't render properly, it'll just get binned.

Then again, you shouldn't be using any weird and wonderful styles anyway, in SMF.

Most venues will accept RTF, some will want doc/docx.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

I have an Office 365 subscription through work, so I stick with that. I do have LibreOffice, but I can't get on with it - it's like something pretending to be Office 365, but not quite doing a good enough job. Also, it seems to screw up formatting on .doc and .docx files a lot, so I don't trust it - some publishers want those file formats. I haven't tried messing about with RTF files on it though.

Hmm. I don't have an MS Office subscription, and as far as I'm concerned, MS charges a lot because they know they can get away with it.

I use LibreOffice because it's free. I've never had any trouble with converting those files to doc/docx, so I'm not sure what you mean, Naomasa.

For some rough-and-ready quick messing about/editing, I use Notepad. But to be honest, all the software in the world won't help you if you don't put in the effort.

Just wondering: what are the differences between Word or LibreOffice Writer and Scrivener?

 

[big soft moose]

ive never had a problem convering to docx but it screws up the formatting when it opens a docx file

 

[Amontillado]

Just wondering: what are the differences between Word or LibreOffice Writer and Scrivener?

The Scrivener approach is to edit in chunks, keep your reference notes in the same project as your chapters/scenes/whatever, and compile the document to any stylistic appearance you want. It's very powerful and highly recommended. Kind of like a mashup between OneNote or Obsidian and a word processor. It does a lot more, too.

Mellel is said to be introducing a focussed mode which allows the writer to click a heading in the navigation pane and see just that subdivision of the document. It sounds like the feature will be Scrivener-esque.

 

[Stuart Dren]

In the past I went from writing each scene in a .RTF file to using yWriter.

I want to use Scrivener. I own a copy.

Currently I use google docs. The low pretense and no-effort cloud keeps me coming back.

 

[Naomasa298]

As I only write short stories, it's easy enough for me to move scenes around manually in Word. I'm not sure I would gain much from using Scrivener.

 

[sianablackwood]

I switch around my software a lot because I've never found anything that quite does everything I want, for a price I can afford, and works on Linux. At the moment I'm using Obsidian for writing and Zim Desktop Wiki for notes, and it's pretty good except that I'd have to use four* entirely separate wordcount plugins to get Obsidian to show all the data I want to see, My nine year old laptop would really rather I didn't make it work that hard.

I used to use FocusWriter, but the laptop also has quite a small screen, and to have two files side by side (one in FocusWriter and the other in LibreOffice Writer) if I used a readable font size I could only see a paragraph or so of my writing at a time. That's a bit too distraction-free for my taste. I may go back to that setup when I get better glasses or a bigger screen, though.

ETA: I find Scrivener way too complicated (and also not particularly Linux-friendly) - if it was Scrivener or Word/LibreOffice Writer, I'd pick the standard word processor.

(* It's one for sidebar wordcounts, two for statusbar wordcounts (one that shows words in the folder and one that can show the wordcount of a selection, and a final one for daily goals.)

 

[KBWrites]

Hey Pan, welcome to the site

Personally i do nearly all my writing in libre office... i use scriv for non fiction but ive never found it necesary for fiction. the main think i like about libre is that its free. I don't use its format to epub though because that can generate some ugly books... i use vellum for that

Ive never used write it now or power writer, and a quick look at their websites told me why that is, especially power writer, the 90s called and would like their website back.

pretty much thats my whole writing set up except for photoshop for covers and google /dog pile for research

+1 for LibreOffice Writer. I've tried some Scrivener alternatives but haven't been happy. My covers are created in GIMP

 

[KBWrites]

The main benefit of scriv to me is if you write out of order you can move little chunks around much more easily than you can in a word doc.... i'm a linear writer for fiction but its very useful if you're structuring a non fiction article or book

Definitely what I like about it. I tend to write scenes as they come to me, then put everything together. I probably need to research Master Documents in LO

 

[KBWrites]

Obsidian, used by some for writer's notes, has a new feature called Bases. I'm not sure the notes for a novel necessarily require extreme data mining. The concept is interesting, nonetheless.

Anybody use Obsidian, Notion, Logseq, or anything like that?

On the other hand, given the encroachment of AI, I'm tempted to give index cards, pen, and paper a shot.

I used Trilium Notes for over a year as my second brain. After setting it up similar to scrivener it puked on itself and I lost way too much work. Even it's backups were corrupted. From that point on, I have reverted to the tried and true LibreOffice.

I played with LogSeq for a while, and there were things I liked, but I just didn't stick with it.