After a bunch of writing and due consideration, I changed my mind about what I’m doing in this post. I’m going to start with two posts on the basic features you see in writing software, and then look at a couple of specific programs. Because I was 2,000 words into what was supposed to be a general summary, and hadn’t mentioned any specific software yet.
For most writers, writing software is where the rubber meets the road. All you really need to write a novel may be a pen and some paper, but they will pry my word processor from my cold, dead fingers. Metaphorically speaking.
In the world of writing software, however, word processors have become almost as basic-bare-bones as the aforementioned pen and paper. There are now dozens of programs purporting to make the process of writing a novel or screenplay faster and easier, not to mention producing a better result. While most of that can be dismissed as marketing hype, the fact is that the programs and apps billed as “creative/novel/screenplay/fiction writing software) have a tremendous variety of specialized features that you just don’t find even in a “full-featured” word processing program like MSWord or Open Office. And many of them are or could be useful, depending on a particular writer’s needs, experience, process, and so on.
The most common features can be divided into a number of categories: 1) story planning and development, 2) work flow and word processing, 3) organizing notes and research, 4) manuscript analysis, including tracking of things like character appearances and locations used, and 5) submission formatting and tracking.
I didn’t find anything that handled all five categories equally well. Most apps don’t even try. It is, therefore, worth taking some time to consider exactly which features are must-haves for you, and which ones you’re willing to work around, use a different program for, or do without. Then check carefully before you commit.
The other thing you need to know is that my very non-scientific survey was limited to a) programs with a Windows version or an iPad app, b) programs with a free demo I could download and play with, and c) programs I had at least a couple of hours to work with.
- Story planning and development
This covers a lot of ground. There are programs that provide daily writing prompts and inspiration triggers; programs that provide various holding areas for things you may want to take notes on and leave you to it; programs that give you some advice about what you’re going to need/want and a basic structure to fill in on your own; programs that walk you step-by-step through a systematic development process of some sort; and programs that will actually make suggestions for everything from character names to plot twists, based on whatever is in their database. Almost all of the programs that deal with structure use a linear three-act model; many of them layer on some version of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Most of these pay lip service to the notion of non-linear storytelling, but provide no guidance on how to take the nice linear plotline you’ve come up with using their system and rearrange it into a workable nonlinear narrative (not that I’ve ever met anyone who constructs their stories that way).
Lots of programs with this feature are either explicitly or implicitly aimed at screenwriting, rather than novels. It’s possible to get a useful view of a novel plot by running it through one of these, but only if you ignore a lot of the program’s basic assumptions about where things go and how many pages you should spend on them. The screenwriting ones seem (in my admittedly small and idiosyncratic sample) to be worse at helping develop subplots or handling multiple plotlines, and much more expensive than the ones aimed at novelists.
What you need to think about for this category is what kind of pre-writing work you usually do and how much hand-holding and organizing you want for it. Some software provides plot and character templates that you can use or not; others are all about their step-by-step system. If their system is a good fit with your natural process, it can make developing a solid structure a lot easier; if it’s not a good fit, it can still be useful if it forces you to look at your characters and plot from an angle you wouldn’t normally choose (and if you have the patience to walk through the things that don’t come naturally). I occasionally find the systems useful for organizing things when I’m buried under a vast mountain of material in the middle of the book, but I’ve never found them helpful for actual story generating and planning. Your mileage may vary.
2) Work flow and word processing
Most (but not all) creative writing software includes some form of word processing so you can actually compose stuff. None of them are the kind of full-featured program you’d get with MSWord or Open Office. Some programs don’t have this function at all; they’re meant for plot development or analysis only.
The majority of writing software these days is designed to make it easy to manage, rearrange, and recombine segments of prose, ranging from chapters and scenes down to tiny files containing only a paragraph or two. This usually involves some sort of file tree or other visual representation of your chapters/scenes/bits at one side of the screen, so you’re not constantly opening and closing a list of files. Some combine this with a mandatory three-act structure layout (you have to group your chapters into acts whether you normally do that or not). There are also some programs that are clearly intended to assist the sort of fractal writers who start with a log line, blow that up into a one or two paragraph summary, expand that into a five to twenty page plot outline, chop the outline apart into chapters, scenes, and plot points, and only then start actually composing scenes. At the other end, there’s “clean screen” software that cuts the on-screen clutter to an absolute minimum – all you see is the words you’re typing.
The first thing you want to check here is whether you want to compose in discrete bits, and if so, what size. The ability to move scenes into a more felicitous order is potentially highly useful for anyone working on a complex, multiple-viewpoint novel (like, say, The Game of Thrones). Some programs are more flexible in this regard than others.
The second thing you want to check is the program’s ability to recombine the files into a single manuscript that an editor can read. So far, all the programs I’ve looked at needed some tweaking in MSWord before I’d send their “final draft” export off to an editor, but some of that may be my own unfamiliarity with their settings and options.
After that, it’s a matter of what you like in a word processor and file management system, and how much of it you want to see on the screen at one time.
