Creative Writing Software

[AngharadTy]

I know some of us are fantastic writers. Does anyone have a recommendation for a program I can use to organize my work? Because it's all messy. (I heart you, googledocs, but you aren't helping the mess.)

I recall once or twice hearing about a program where you could just slip scenes in, drag them around to relocate them, easily access notes that aren't part of the main story, things like that. I can't remember the name of it or where I heard about it. I would prefer something free, but if that's not possible, I'd still like to know what program would be good for my purposes.

[Jessi]

Ty, I believe one program you might have heard of/are talking about is Scrivener - it's pretty popular among NaNo writers because it's so easy to drop in scenes and the like. I DLed the free Windows beta this year for NaNo but I didn't get a chance to play with it - I literally DLed it about 10 minutes before NaNo started and it wasn't exactly a great time to say "Instead of writing, lets fiddle with this program!" - and up until now I forgot I had it!

Here is a link to the free beta for Windows! Also, if it ever goes not-free, haha, I have a code for 50% off that's good until September 2011, so I'd be happy to share that with you if you need it!

[AngharadTy]

Sounds like something to play with! Thanks. ^_^

[Kari]

Jessi, that program looks pretty nifty. Didn't know they were making a Windows version, though I also have a Mac. But no money, which is why I didn't want to try it -- in case I'd want to spend my no-money and buy it

I don't know how good/comprehensive it is in comparison, but last year for NaNo I used Storybook to put my ideas down.

[AngharadTy]

I am totally up for trying multiple programs and finding out which I like best. Free does help, hehehe.

edit: I must be doing something wrong with Scrivener--it keeps turning chunks of my text all black (like, black text on a black background). I have no idea what's up. Maybe it doesn't like that I'm pasting stuff from googledocs.

[Cranberry]

I write in Wordpad. So old-school! It doesn't even have spellcheck. I'll be watching this thread for suggestions, too. I used WordPerfect and then Microsoft Word when I was in university, and they were both fine; I didn't really have a preference. OpenOffice's word processing program seems fine, too. I don't think any of those have the ability to move big chunks around easily, though.

I like Google Docs for collaborative stuff. I copyedit a friend's fiction, and it's really cool to be able to edit one section at the same time she's writing another, and leave notes along the margins for her, and have a record of every edit either of us has made. She edits my stuff, too, although I tend to upload only finished docs to it; I don't like actually writing in it.

[Kantark]

Ahhh, WordPerfect. The last time I wrote a story I used WP5.1 for DOS. Printed on a lovely dot-matrix printer, stored on 5.25" floppy disk.

[Iggy]

I use old school Microsoft Word 2003, that I had to buy when I attended college.