What writing software do you prefer?

[jaF0]

As post 27 eludes to, fancy isn't really needed. Remember pencil/pen and paper? Editing in red ink, manuscripts, rewriting full pages by hand?

To that end, much of the simple stuff I do gets done in WordPad or Notepad.

I haven't even heard of most of the programs mentioned. I have a full retail boxed version of WordPerfect 7 Suite that includes Paradox, QuattroPro and a few other goodies. But I switched to OpenOffice years back and after their demise I went with LibreOffice. I use that mostly for Calc though in place of QuattroPro and only use Writer for a few things that WordPad won't do well.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

Google Docs, because it's cloud-based and I can use it wherever I am.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I am tempted, but I wonder if the costs for Scrivener ($49) and the time and effort for familiarising with the software is worth the benefits over an already available and very familiar version of Word. I am currently working on a longer story (>100k words) which also requires a decent amount of research.

Depends on individual factors, but if you're not sure, you could try the 30-day trial.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I tried Scrivener, but the complexity distracted me from writing. I use mostly Word, with Google Docs for sharing with editors. I used to use grammarly but not for a while now. I spent too much time telling it to ignore.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I spent too much time telling it to ignore.

Do it once, like on the Forums, and you never have to see that person's drivel ever again!

Wait, you're talking about your own writing. Carry on .

 

[MColton84]

I tried Scrivener, but the complexity distracted me from writing. I use mostly Word, with Google Docs for sharing with editors. I used to use grammarly but not for a while now. I spent too much time telling it to ignore.

I struggled with Scrivener. As Chloe stated, it was too complex for me. I would spend more time and effort just trying to figure it out than I did writing. I now use Word, with Grammarly, but I'm too cheap for premium.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

I tried Scrivener, but the complexity distracted me from writing. I use mostly Word, with Google Docs for sharing with editors. I used to use grammarly but not for a while now. I spent too much time telling it to ignore.

When using Grammarly, what were you trying to tell it to ignore? I use it a triple check and accept most of the free version's suggestions. (I'm probably a sloppier writer.)

 

[AllenWoody]

When using Grammarly, what were you trying to tell it to ignore? I use it a triple check and accept most of the free version's suggestions. (I'm probably a sloppier writer.)

Grammarly loves commas a lot more than I do. I do appreciate the spelling help though, and things like double words which somehow slip past my brain.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Yes, I noticed the free trail. But knowing myself, if I'm going to give it a try, then I'm going to invest time in it. And I won't stop testing it until I've figured it all out. It wouldn't be the first time to figure out that I'd been wasting my time on something that doesn't have a real benefit.

FWIW, I've written two novel-length series here (second one not quite complete yet - hopefully in the next few weeks).

The first one, "Stringed Instrument", I wrote in Word. From the point where I decided to make it a series, I was writing and posting about one chapter a month, and I had a good idea what the overall story arc was going to be, though I improvised events around that arc and it ended up longer than planned.

That all worked out well. I didn't need Scrivener for that, any text editor would have done the job.

The second one, "Anjali's Red Scarf", I started in Word, with intentions of keeping to roughly the same pace of one chapter a month. That failed miserably. It's been taking me a lot longer to write, partly because of external distractions, and partly because it's a more complex story that mutated significantly as it went along, with a third major character emerging unexpectedly and a much larger supporting cast.

Those longer delays, and all the distractions of the last few years, made it much harder for me to manage everything in my head. Have Anjali and Sarah already had this discussion? How long has it been since X happened? What have I already established about Anjali's parents? Have I paced this subplot the way I want it? I was losing track of things like that, and at one point I stalled for about a year, and of course the longer I left it the harder it felt to resume.

So I migrated the whole thing to Scrivener. I broke each chapter into scenes, tagged each scene according to the characters and themes that appear in it and annotated it with the time period where it happens. If I want to check whether something I'm writing contradicts the ground rules that Sarah and Anjali agreed on earlier, I pull up the "relationship negotiations" tag and I can easily find all the scenes where I wrote about that.

Recently I had to do a major rewrite on one of my chapters after a beta reader pointed out significant flaws with the approach I'd taken. Scrivener made it much easier to handle the structural/organisational aspects of that change, identifying which scenes I needed to move/delete/rework.

If you find yourself wanting that sort of help with organising a story, that's where it's worth investing the time in something like Scrivener. Otherwise it's superfluous.

 

[jsmiam]

Microsoft also makes something totally free, a 100% web based product formerly called Office online, and thereby Word online. Importantly, it’s NOT the same thing as Office 365, the paid subscription product, and not the same as the iPhone app either.

I’m not even sure what to call it now. I’m not sure Microsoft does either. They don’t seem to promote the old name. But it still exists with a OneDrive account. Now, I think you have to create a free OneDrive account, or have a url to a document that already exists. (For a while it was usable without an account. )

It now has track changes, and you can share with a proofreader too, and they don’t need an account to do that. It’s grammar and spelling is reasonably good. And you can create a OneDrive account without necessarily making a new email account, you can use a different email address for the account registration.

For real life I use office 365. For my sordid secret life, I use whatever this product formerly known as word online is called.

 

[regularguy13]

Gotta give Google Docs some love

Google docs is easy to use, free, and easy to share with an editor (when you can find one!)

Saving documents to the cloud has saved me when my computer crashes. I lost tons of stories in progress the first time a computer died because I only had them in my computer.

Recently, it rescue me again. I write in small segments that are easy to run thru a spell/grammar checker (I use the free version of Grammary) When my story is done, I copy and paste to assembly the work.

Copy. paste in grammary. copy. Erase the original google version and paste in the corrected version. Erase from Grammary and repeat. Christ! I deleted a chapter by pasting chapter 4 over chapter 5!!!

Luck for me, Google docs gives me access to all versions of my chapters, and I recovered the end of the story.

Google saves me ass!

 

[SyleusSnow]

For those who find Scrivener a little too much, try the free SmartEdit Writer. For me it hits the sweet spot between Scrivener and distraction-free editors like FocusWriter. Windows only, though.

SmartEdit has outlining, notes, versioning and reasonable grammar and style checking. It can export to Word and works well with "cloud" drives like Dropbox and OneDrive.

For grammar checking, I've always had better results with ProWritingAid than Grammarly. The paid version is cheaper too, if you pay per year.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Google docs is easy to use, free, and easy to share with an editor (when you can find one!)

Saving documents to the cloud has saved me when my computer crashes. I lost tons of stories in progress the first time a computer died because I only had them in my computer.

Keeping a copy on the cloud helps, but if this is the only place you're storing it, be very careful with account security. I assume Google have some sort of duplication to save data if a server catches fire, but if somebody gets access to your Google account you're hosed.

I'm often working with no/limited internet connectivity so I find Dropbox useful - lets me work offline and then automatically sync when I'm back online, and it means there's a copy on each of the two computers I work from as well as on DB's servers. But I also have an automated backup. Hopefully that's enough paranoia!

(As a teenager, I once stayed up very late helping a hapless PhD student retype her thesis from printouts, the night before it was due in, because she'd lost the only electronic copy in a crash. It was a cautionary experience.)

 

[MColton84]

Question:

My computer crashed today. Along with my family albums, I lost all of my writing. To make matters worse, the clouds apparently decided to stop backing up my files in October. I am fortunate that I still have the edits for a little more than half of my current story. I use word and Grammarly and am trying to salvage my story from the edits sent to me. My question is how do I remove the editor's notes? Can I or will I have to rewrite it?

 

[MColton84]

My computer crashed today. Along with my family albums, I lost all of my writing. To make matters worse, the clouds apparently decided to stop backing up my files in October. I am fortunate that I still have the edits for a little more than half of my current story. I use word and Grammarly and am trying to salvage my story from the edits sent to me. My question is how do I remove the editor's notes? Can I or will I have to rewrite it?

Never mind, my wife is a goddess. She recovered most of my files and showed me how to fix my problem.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Never mind, my wife is a goddess. She recovered most of my files and showed me how to fix my problem.

Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Remember this then

 

[MColton84]

Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Remember this then

Oh, I will. There was never a luckier man, than the one who heard her say "I do".

 

[CarnalLusts]

Plot and Characters: Scrivener, Manuskript, or Google

What about for overall story/plot and character development?

I use Google Docs currently. It works fine for all the benefits mentioned by everyone else above. However, one of my biggest problems (besides grammar) is character development and plot/story.

Scrivener costs money and seems to have a high learning curve. What about Manuskript? I haven't tried it but from what I can see it looks just like Scrivener but is free, open-source software. Is it just as difficult to learn/use efficiently?

After some research I found that some people use MS Excel or Google Sheets. I didn't read much on this aspect of story creation and software use in this thread. I may have missed it.

What does everyone use for overall plot/story and character development? Most of my stories lack a good plot and I usually just wing it.

 

[YarikB]

I also like Ggogle Docs. It is convenient to work there. It is cloud-based, so I don't worry about saving. Also, there is an option to work offline.

 

[Handley_Page]

Word 2003 (on my PC).

 

[Morgan60]

When I’m writing on my iPad, I use Pages, but sitting at my Mac, I use Scrivener. As a “pantser” writer it works best for me. Easy for me to keep track of individual chapters and scenes.

 

[MimiRay]

We used to be a Mac family. Then one day Ray came home and announced that we would switch to Linux. After going through the five stages of grief, I learned to enjoy it. Consequently, I now use Libre Office, and it feels natural to do that.

My biggest struggle is with synonyms. I hate using the same adjective over and over again, but other than the old paper Rogets, I cannot find a thesaurus that comes close to associating words the way my mind thinks it should.

 

[Ian_Snow]

Word. Once tinkered with, the heading templates make it easy to create a TOC for your works if you choose to upload to Amazon and it's a fairly painless uploading process once you have your paragraph settings dialed in. Scrivener's good too, but I prefer Word.

 

[Voboy]

Microsoft also makes something totally free, a 100% web based product formerly called Office online, and thereby Word online. Importantly, it’s NOT the same thing as Office 365, the paid subscription product, and not the same as the iPhone app either.

I’m not even sure what to call it now. I’m not sure Microsoft does either. They don’t seem to promote the old name. But it still exists with a OneDrive account. Now, I think you have to create a free OneDrive account, or have a url to a document that already exists. (For a while it was usable without an account. )

It now has track changes, and you can share with a proofreader too, and they don’t need an account to do that. It’s grammar and spelling is reasonably good. And you can create a OneDrive account without necessarily making a new email account, you can use a different email address for the account registration.

For real life I use office 365. For my sordid secret life, I use whatever this product formerly known as word online is called.

So apparently, I've no longer got access to a downloaded Office product, meaning that all of a sudden I've apparently got to start wrapping my head around Word Online?

In the past, I've just typed in Word, uploaded my submissions, and never had to worry about things like copying and pasting into the Lit submission portal. All my formatting has always come through intact. Clearly, that involved a file upload directly from my hard drive.

If Word is now going to be an online product in my life, does that change my submission any? I assume it'll save my story in The Haze somewhere, but how would I upload that to Lit? I'm fine with using Google Docs now, too, if that's any easier...

Essentially, I'm looking to be able to simply type somewhere and then upload it directly upon submission, without having to mess around with html tags. Failing that, I'm fine with typing (into Docs, say) and then schlepping the text over to the Lit portal... but, again, I'd rather not mess with html.

 

[SyleusSnow]

With MS Word Online you can do "Save as" then "Download a local copy" then attach that file to your literotica story submission. It's a real MS Word document, so would preserve italics and the other basic formatting allowed in stories the same as if created using the downloaded version of MS Word.

Whether you trust big brother Microsoft and their various gov't and law enforcement partners with having access to your stories is another matter. I don't. I write on a local computer using offline software like LibreOffice, SmartEdit and FocusWriter, all of which can save to MS Word format.