Clean and functional writing software?

[Yogma]

Up until now I have been using Microsoft Word for my story writing, and while I've always known that coding-wise it is very messy under the hood (i.e. text styles work well on the surface, but leave formatting tags behind even when changing to a different text style), whilst my output has either been a Word document or a printed script, it has been more than adequate for my needs. However, now I'm beginning to transition over to other text formatting, the messiness inherent in Word is beginning to be a pain.

I was just wondering what people tended to use for writing their stories and if you had any recommendations for clean but feature-useful software.

BTW - I'm not necessarily looking for writing software that also functions as a story planer like Scrivener.
BTW2- I'm using Windows.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Google Docs on iOS

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Up until now I have been using Microsoft Word for my story writing, and while I've always known that coding-wise it is very messy under the hood (i.e. text styles work well on the surface, but leave formatting tags behind even when changing to a different text style), whilst my output has either been a Word document or a printed script, it has been more than adequate for my needs. However, now I'm beginning to transition over to other text formatting, the messiness inherent in Word is beginning to be a pain.

I was just wondering what people tended to use for writing their stories and if you had any recommendations for clean but feature-useful software.

BTW - I'm not necessarily looking for writing software that also functions as a story planer like Scrivener.
BTW2- I'm using Windows.

Thanks for any advice.

LibreOffice is free and cross-platform.

Be aware that lots of formatting won't be permitted on Literotica.

--Annie

 

[Areala-chan]

I compose my stories in Libre Office and have had zero issues importing them to Lit. I save them as .rtf files and formatting is always preserved. Only changes I wind up needing to make involve line spacing in areas where I want things single-spaced and the site wants to double-space them.

 

[TheLobster]

If you're looking for a plain text editor, Ghostwriter is pretty great and has some features tailored for fiction (word & page count, Hemmingway mode, etc.). It is technically a Markdown editor but it will highlight the syntax of HTML which is what you wanna use for formatting on Literotica.

I've been using it for most of my writing.

 

[Writer61]

I write in Word and have had no problems at all. That might be because I stick to a consistent style and use a dedicated template.

Good luck with your search.

 

[NotWise]

I use LibreOffice, and I'd call it highly functional. I'm not sure about your standard for "clean." LibreOffice has a pedigree that dates to StarOffice in the 1980s. There's probably still "so"-titled modules in the code base. As in any large, open-source project, it's very difficult to keep the code base clean and there may be some inconsistent behavior related to that.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Obsidian. That's all I need.

If all else fails, Ghostwriter is the second best option.

LibreOffice Writer is left to formatting. I quit Word long before Office 365 dropped.

 

[SyleusSnow]

Usually I do most of my draft writing in the excellent distraction-free editor FocusWriter, saving files in MS Word format, then open it in MS Word for final polishing, checking with ProWritingAid and proof-listening.

 

[UnexpectedLuggage]

I just write everything in OpenOffice. Then, when I'm ready to publish, I just copy and paste the whole document over.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

LibreOffice is free and cross-platform.

Be aware that lots of formatting won't be permitted on Literotica.

--Annie

If you limit yourself to LibreOffice's built-in styles Heading1, Heading2, Bold, Italic, and Centered, I have a tool that takes a LibreOffice "Save as HTML" and converts it to text compatible with Lit's New Story input box.

https://waxphilosophic.sdf.org/LitMark/

Click the ? icon to get more detail on how it works.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

What could be plainer, simpler, or cleaner than a text editor. I use Cot Editor. Formatting? A few HTML tags, mainly for em-dashes and italics, suffice for stories on Literotica. For more sophisticated stuff, I us TeXshop--which does typesetting.

 

[ruddygore]

Up until now I have been using Microsoft Word for my story writing, and while I've always known that coding-wise it is very messy under the hood (i.e. text styles work well on the surface, but leave formatting tags behind even when changing to a different text style), whilst my output has either been a Word document or a printed script, it has been more than adequate for my needs. However, now I'm beginning to transition over to other text formatting, the messiness inherent in Word is beginning to be a pain.

I was just wondering what people tended to use for writing their stories and if you had any recommendations for clean but feature-useful software.

BTW - I'm not necessarily looking for writing software that also functions as a story planer like Scrivener.
BTW2- I'm using Windows.

Thanks for any advice.

On the rare occasion that I do submit something, I use Libre Office but convert it to plain text before posting.

 

[Areala-chan]

Ghostwriter's Hemingway Mode sounds like the single most destructive thing I could do to my own creativity. More power to anyone who is helped by not having access to the backspace key, but I'm entirely too indecisive for that to be a good idea.

 

[Britva415]

Annlain-text editor.9

What could be plainer, simpler, or cleaner than a text editor. I use Cot Editor. Formatting? A few HTML tags, mainly for em-dashes and italics, suffice for stories on Literotica.

Same here.

Not Cot Editor but basically any plain-text editor. Frickin’ Notepad, why not. Actually I use BBEdit but that’s just a fancier plain-text editor. Bold and italic HTML tags are the only formatting any story ever needs. I’ll own it and say, for my stories, certainly. But I reserve the right to believe the same when I encounter other people’s stories which seem to lean on formatting rather than on, y’know, words.

 

[TheLobster]

Ghostwriter's Hemingway Mode sounds like the single most destructive thing I could do to my own creativity. More power to anyone who is helped by not having access to the backspace key, but I'm entirely too indecisive for that to be a good idea.

I'm not using it either, but the rest of the editor is great so it shouldn't be discounted based on the presence of that (mis)feature alone.

 

[onehitwanda]

I'm a nerd.

https://www.lyx.org/Home

Doesn't try to correct me, doesn't try to tell me what to do. Just sits there and quietly records what I write, in a sane format, without spying on me, selling my vibrator preferences to Google, or attempting to place orders for things it thinks I might like from OhHellNoKitty.com

I've been using it for writing since I wrote my University Honours project in it, and I've never regretted it.

 

[Yogma]

Thanks for everyone who recommended LibreOffice Writer. Now I've got it looking like MS Word (for easier transition), I'm really liking it.

A special thanks to WaxPhilosophic for the Writer to tagged plain text converter. I didn't realize how good it was until I tried the drag and drop HTML function, which makes it extremely useful.

After much playing around over the last few days, I now think I have a workflow that I'm happy with and will consistently transfer what I see on the screen onto Literotica.

I really appreciate all the advice given