Hey everyone!
The last time I posted a suite of writing tools has been quite a while. Some have become defunct and others have had a great number of updates since last time. So, I'll go ahead and edit the original post and have this be the new listing.
Let's start off with my personal favorite - Scrivener.
Scrivener was originally written for Macintosh OS-X, but they've had a Windows version available for a while now, and now they've recently come out with an iOS version for Apple portable devices.
"Why should I use Scrivener?"
Simple - Scrivener was originally intended for screenplay writers (but it's just as good for other forms of writing, ie: novels) and so it has virtual cork boards with index cards you can use to 'storyboard' your story. Even better yet, you can establish a hierarchy for these cork boards, like scenes within a chapter, chapters within a volume, and volumes within a greater project.
Unfortunately, those are the only tools relevant to keeping track of the plot, and the character development tools are weak at best (they do allow you to attach notes and custom metadata, though).
However, Scrivener has two other wonderful tools - a distraction free mode and a compiler.
Distraction Free Mode is like with any other distraction free writing application. It allows you to write, undisturbed by notifications from the internet, aps, or even your own PC/Mac. You can set a timer for when distraction free mode ends, as well as a word or character count target. You can even set a relaxing background image and adjust he font settings to how you like it, however there are no transparency features like in FocusWriter (I'll get to that later).
Finally, Scrivener's compiler is a wonderful tool. While others have something similar, Scrivener's is robust with a myriad of features and output formats for just about everything you can imagine, including (but not limited to) Word Documents, ODT, PDF, EPub, HTML, and even good old plain text. Additionally, you can set up various styles for a given output so it looks like exactly the way you want it. It even permits you to select what parts of your project to include in the compile, so if you have a HUGE project divided into volumes then it's no problem, or you can even nix individual scenes if you'd like to.
Oh, and let's not forget about the Research Folder!
This is quite probably the most remarkable part about Scrivener. It's a folder where you can drop in virtually any file type and have it saved internally to the project file on your hard drive. There, you can pull up the material whenever you need it. I've even dropped video clips and music into the folder! It's magnificent!
Now, as you probably guessed by now, Scrivener is certainly NOT free. HOWEVER!!! They do have a very generous trial period - 30 days of ACTUAL USE. Meaning that if you only use Scrivener for 3 days in a week, then you've only used 3 days in the trial period instead of a whole week! Pretty awesome of these guys, huh?
And Scrivener is actually not that expensive for what you get: US$40. I often see games that cost more than this.
Get it here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
Now, from the makers of Scrivener comes a very odd program called Scapple.
What does Scapple do?
That's right. And, like Scrivener's research folder, you can drop in a myriad of file types - it's like the Research Folder on Crack and Methamphetamines!
Best of all, Scapple has Scrivener's trial period, and again, only costs US$40.
Get it here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple/overview
So, Scrivener has a great stoyboarding tool, but sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes you needs something that's a little more nuts-and-bolts when it comes to working out how your story's plot is gonna go.
Enter oStorybook.
No, that's not a typo. I gotta explain. Thing is, these was another project simply called Storybook. It was Freeware - just had a little note whenever you started it asking for donations. There was a donor's version of the software that did not have this notification. However, despite this online panhandling, the project could not go on the way it was organized, and Storybook became Abandonware.
But this was not the end.
Along came a fellow by the name of Franz-Albert Van Den Bussche, along with their friends, Jean Rebillat and Bruno Raoult. These wonderful programmers not only picked up where the original project left off, but have improved vastly on the original.
"So what's great about oStorybook?"
In just a sentence? PLOT THREADS AND AUTO-GENERATED TIMELINES!!!!
oStorybook is an EXTREMELY technical bit of writing software and it's perfect for someone who's big on world building. You can not only set up unlimited plot threads (with scenes that can be linked to any number of these threads), but you can also set the time frame of the story, character birth- and death-dates, as well as create a library of places and plot relevant objects (ie: Buckaroo Banzai's Oscillation Overthruster, Sailor Moon's Silver Moon Crystal, or MLP:FIM's Elements of Harmony) that can all be associated with different plot threads.
And with this this software, once you have everything filled in, you can look into the timeline features to make sure that everything is lining up properly. You can see when and where characters appear, an overall who is where and when, or simply just at what points certain objects or places show up in your story.
It's a perfect environment to fine-tune your story and ensure that everything forms a coherent whole, and best off all it is flat-out freeware.
The only fly in the ointment is that it runs on Java, so you need to have an up-to-date version of the Java Runtime Environment installed. C'est la vie.
Get it here: http://ostorybook.tuxfamily.org/?lng=en
Okay, so now what about character development? oStorybook has some features, Scrivener has fewer, and though Scrapple is great for mapping out how everything connects, you still need something that helps put you in the right direction in regards to your characters' motivations.
I have two pieces of software here that do pretty much the same thing: Character Writer and Persona.
Both run on Windows and Macintosh, and both do not require Java.
What's great about these is that they give you defined archetypes (each one having two sub-types), though Persona goes a bit further by expanding and organizing this list by gender. Conversely, Character Writer seems to have a smaller set, but also lets you set the gender of the character in a separate setting.
What makes Character Writer stand apart from Persona is that it focuses more on mental issues by giving you two additional choices to make - a selection of three mental states (a good, bad, and in between), as well as how you want the character to end up with their mental health (better, worse, or no real change). It is then able to use the personality archetype, subtype, and mental health toggles to give you a rough idea of how your character MIGHT develop. Additionally, Character Writer supplies a sampling of the most common mental health defects seen in people today, and shows you how this may apply to your character.
Persona's character archetypes are similar to that of Character Writer's, except that each archetype is divided on a wheel into wedges, with gender and heroic and villainous alignments shown in layers around the circle (Hero, Heroine, Villain, Villainess). This makes Persona's archetype selector something of a one-stop shop, though you still need to choose between on of the two subtypes.
NOTE: Perona does not draw a hard line between heroic and villainous alignments - it simply shows how two people of differing alignments may get along with each other. Much like how you can have a party in a DnD campaign that has both evil and good alignments represented - there's nothing that says that these two cannot find common ground and work together as associates, even if they're not exactly friends.
What's great about both pieces of software is that they let you see how any two characters might interact and influence each other which goes quite a ways towards helping authors overcome writer's block - the whole "But how would my character react under these circumstances?" problem. And thusly, these two programs provide you with a skeleton to develop your characters from.
There are a couple of flies in the ointment here.
Character Writer costs a whopping US$70!!! Persona costs much less (US$40) however it is clear from the minor glitches that abound that this is not as polished as it should be. They do have trial periods, but they are not as generous as Scrivener's. (Whose is?)
Get Character Writer here: http://www.characterpro.com
Get Persona here: http://marinersoftware.com/products/persona/
Now we get to some more utilitarian stuff: research tools!
The two that I'd like to endorse are Google Keep and Evernote.
Google keep is nice because of it's cross-platform capabilities granted to it by its web-based nature, although there is an Android app available for it. However, compared to Evernote, Keep is somewhat bare-bones. You can definitely upload photos, and you can also make a 'hand written' note that can include doodles.
Evernote, however, features a 'web-clipper' add-on for Firefox and Chrome that lets you take selections from a web page and save them i several formats, as well as the ability to store just about any file type in its portfolios. It also has a mobile app for iOS and Android so you can snag pictures, video, audio, and annotate them on the go, and even a desktop for both Mac OSX and Windows. It's programmed in C++ so you don't have to worry about Java here, either.
But here's the downside: the basic Evernote service (free) only allows 60 megabyte of uploads to their cloud per month. Yes. That's right.
60
MESELY
MEGABYTES
Oh, and you can only sync up two devices to the cloud service.
They do have paid plans that offer more. (A LOT more.)
The Plus plan allows for 1 Gigabyte of uploads to the cloud per month, and the ability to sync up an unlimited number of devices.
The Premium plan gives you 10 Gigabytes a month to play around with.
Both are yearly subscriptions, with Plus at US$34.99/yr, and Premium at US$69.99/year (however, Premium has a Student discount at 50% off the subscription price).
And then... there is Evernote Business.
And boy, do they mean BUSINESS.
Evernote Business allows for an unlimited number of people to share the same account, and grants you a whopping 20 Gigabytes of uploads to the cloud every month, PLUS! an additional 2 GB for each user on the account.
And the crazy part is that it only costs US$12/month per user. But there's the rub - that's a MONTHLY subscription. And while easier to swallow in the short term, Evernote definitely gets their money's worth because even for a single user that's US$144 yearly - a little over what TWO Premium subscriptions cost.
So, it's up to you what you want to do. There are other features that are exclusive to each successive tier, so it all depends on how much you REALLY want to get out of Evernote.
Start using Google Keep here: https://keep.google.com/
Get Evernote here: https://evernote.com
Finally, we get to my favorite part - the stand-alone distraction free writing environment.
FocusWriter is a very robust word processor with distraction free features. What's nice, though, is that you can relegate FW into a window instead of full-screen mode, so you can jump between apps as you please.
FocusWriter has a full bag of basic tools to help writers, such as a timer that lets you set aside a certain amount of time in your day to focus ONLY on writing, as well as variable targets for word or character counts per day. It even keeps track for you, marking when you're on a 'streak' of consecutive days for hitting or exceeding your targets.
FocusWriter also allows you to set themes, each with their own unique background image (or just a flat color), and you can even set your font, font color, background color for the text, and whether this has any transparency effects. When they say 'fully customizable' they frickin' mean it!
Additionally, FocusWriter will work in several file formats, and you can have multiple documents open at any given time.
Best of all? IT'S FREEWARE! HELL YEAH!
Get FocusWriter here: https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/
I do have one honorable mention here, something I have not yet had the time to delve into called The Novel Factory. At first glance, it seems to combine elements from oStorybook, Scrivener, and Persona. However, I suspect that this software is more of a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none deal. However, it does have a polished look to it, so we'll see.
At the time of this posting, they were running a special - a 50 day trial period, and until December 7th you can get 30% off the price using the code NANO2017.
They do have a web-based version with cloud features as well, but that's pretty pricey stuff. The plans are all billed on an annual basis. I'd rather just buy the desktop version, but if you're jumping from machine to machine a lot, then this might be a solution for you.
Get the desktop version here: https://www.novel-software.com
Get the web version here: http://www.novel-factory.com
Welp, hope someone finds this stuff useful. I certainly have been.
The last time I posted a suite of writing tools has been quite a while. Some have become defunct and others have had a great number of updates since last time. So, I'll go ahead and edit the original post and have this be the new listing.
Let's start off with my personal favorite - Scrivener.
Scrivener was originally written for Macintosh OS-X, but they've had a Windows version available for a while now, and now they've recently come out with an iOS version for Apple portable devices.
"Why should I use Scrivener?"
Simple - Scrivener was originally intended for screenplay writers (but it's just as good for other forms of writing, ie: novels) and so it has virtual cork boards with index cards you can use to 'storyboard' your story. Even better yet, you can establish a hierarchy for these cork boards, like scenes within a chapter, chapters within a volume, and volumes within a greater project.
Unfortunately, those are the only tools relevant to keeping track of the plot, and the character development tools are weak at best (they do allow you to attach notes and custom metadata, though).
However, Scrivener has two other wonderful tools - a distraction free mode and a compiler.
Distraction Free Mode is like with any other distraction free writing application. It allows you to write, undisturbed by notifications from the internet, aps, or even your own PC/Mac. You can set a timer for when distraction free mode ends, as well as a word or character count target. You can even set a relaxing background image and adjust he font settings to how you like it, however there are no transparency features like in FocusWriter (I'll get to that later).
Finally, Scrivener's compiler is a wonderful tool. While others have something similar, Scrivener's is robust with a myriad of features and output formats for just about everything you can imagine, including (but not limited to) Word Documents, ODT, PDF, EPub, HTML, and even good old plain text. Additionally, you can set up various styles for a given output so it looks like exactly the way you want it. It even permits you to select what parts of your project to include in the compile, so if you have a HUGE project divided into volumes then it's no problem, or you can even nix individual scenes if you'd like to.
Oh, and let's not forget about the Research Folder!
This is quite probably the most remarkable part about Scrivener. It's a folder where you can drop in virtually any file type and have it saved internally to the project file on your hard drive. There, you can pull up the material whenever you need it. I've even dropped video clips and music into the folder! It's magnificent!
Now, as you probably guessed by now, Scrivener is certainly NOT free. HOWEVER!!! They do have a very generous trial period - 30 days of ACTUAL USE. Meaning that if you only use Scrivener for 3 days in a week, then you've only used 3 days in the trial period instead of a whole week! Pretty awesome of these guys, huh?
And Scrivener is actually not that expensive for what you get: US$40. I often see games that cost more than this.
Get it here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
Now, from the makers of Scrivener comes a very odd program called Scapple.
What does Scapple do?
FREE
FORM
SPIDER
DIAGRAMS
That's right. And, like Scrivener's research folder, you can drop in a myriad of file types - it's like the Research Folder on Crack and Methamphetamines!
Best of all, Scapple has Scrivener's trial period, and again, only costs US$40.
Get it here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple/overview
So, Scrivener has a great stoyboarding tool, but sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes you needs something that's a little more nuts-and-bolts when it comes to working out how your story's plot is gonna go.
Enter oStorybook.
No, that's not a typo. I gotta explain. Thing is, these was another project simply called Storybook. It was Freeware - just had a little note whenever you started it asking for donations. There was a donor's version of the software that did not have this notification. However, despite this online panhandling, the project could not go on the way it was organized, and Storybook became Abandonware.
But this was not the end.
Along came a fellow by the name of Franz-Albert Van Den Bussche, along with their friends, Jean Rebillat and Bruno Raoult. These wonderful programmers not only picked up where the original project left off, but have improved vastly on the original.
"So what's great about oStorybook?"
In just a sentence? PLOT THREADS AND AUTO-GENERATED TIMELINES!!!!
oStorybook is an EXTREMELY technical bit of writing software and it's perfect for someone who's big on world building. You can not only set up unlimited plot threads (with scenes that can be linked to any number of these threads), but you can also set the time frame of the story, character birth- and death-dates, as well as create a library of places and plot relevant objects (ie: Buckaroo Banzai's Oscillation Overthruster, Sailor Moon's Silver Moon Crystal, or MLP:FIM's Elements of Harmony) that can all be associated with different plot threads.
And with this this software, once you have everything filled in, you can look into the timeline features to make sure that everything is lining up properly. You can see when and where characters appear, an overall who is where and when, or simply just at what points certain objects or places show up in your story.
It's a perfect environment to fine-tune your story and ensure that everything forms a coherent whole, and best off all it is flat-out freeware.
The only fly in the ointment is that it runs on Java, so you need to have an up-to-date version of the Java Runtime Environment installed. C'est la vie.
Get it here: http://ostorybook.tuxfamily.org/?lng=en
Okay, so now what about character development? oStorybook has some features, Scrivener has fewer, and though Scrapple is great for mapping out how everything connects, you still need something that helps put you in the right direction in regards to your characters' motivations.
I have two pieces of software here that do pretty much the same thing: Character Writer and Persona.
Both run on Windows and Macintosh, and both do not require Java.
What's great about these is that they give you defined archetypes (each one having two sub-types), though Persona goes a bit further by expanding and organizing this list by gender. Conversely, Character Writer seems to have a smaller set, but also lets you set the gender of the character in a separate setting.
What makes Character Writer stand apart from Persona is that it focuses more on mental issues by giving you two additional choices to make - a selection of three mental states (a good, bad, and in between), as well as how you want the character to end up with their mental health (better, worse, or no real change). It is then able to use the personality archetype, subtype, and mental health toggles to give you a rough idea of how your character MIGHT develop. Additionally, Character Writer supplies a sampling of the most common mental health defects seen in people today, and shows you how this may apply to your character.
Persona's character archetypes are similar to that of Character Writer's, except that each archetype is divided on a wheel into wedges, with gender and heroic and villainous alignments shown in layers around the circle (Hero, Heroine, Villain, Villainess). This makes Persona's archetype selector something of a one-stop shop, though you still need to choose between on of the two subtypes.
NOTE: Perona does not draw a hard line between heroic and villainous alignments - it simply shows how two people of differing alignments may get along with each other. Much like how you can have a party in a DnD campaign that has both evil and good alignments represented - there's nothing that says that these two cannot find common ground and work together as associates, even if they're not exactly friends.
What's great about both pieces of software is that they let you see how any two characters might interact and influence each other which goes quite a ways towards helping authors overcome writer's block - the whole "But how would my character react under these circumstances?" problem. And thusly, these two programs provide you with a skeleton to develop your characters from.
There are a couple of flies in the ointment here.
Character Writer costs a whopping US$70!!! Persona costs much less (US$40) however it is clear from the minor glitches that abound that this is not as polished as it should be. They do have trial periods, but they are not as generous as Scrivener's. (Whose is?)
Get Character Writer here: http://www.characterpro.com
Get Persona here: http://marinersoftware.com/products/persona/
Now we get to some more utilitarian stuff: research tools!
The two that I'd like to endorse are Google Keep and Evernote.
Google keep is nice because of it's cross-platform capabilities granted to it by its web-based nature, although there is an Android app available for it. However, compared to Evernote, Keep is somewhat bare-bones. You can definitely upload photos, and you can also make a 'hand written' note that can include doodles.
Evernote, however, features a 'web-clipper' add-on for Firefox and Chrome that lets you take selections from a web page and save them i several formats, as well as the ability to store just about any file type in its portfolios. It also has a mobile app for iOS and Android so you can snag pictures, video, audio, and annotate them on the go, and even a desktop for both Mac OSX and Windows. It's programmed in C++ so you don't have to worry about Java here, either.
But here's the downside: the basic Evernote service (free) only allows 60 megabyte of uploads to their cloud per month. Yes. That's right.
60
MESELY
MEGABYTES
Oh, and you can only sync up two devices to the cloud service.
They do have paid plans that offer more. (A LOT more.)
The Plus plan allows for 1 Gigabyte of uploads to the cloud per month, and the ability to sync up an unlimited number of devices.
The Premium plan gives you 10 Gigabytes a month to play around with.
Both are yearly subscriptions, with Plus at US$34.99/yr, and Premium at US$69.99/year (however, Premium has a Student discount at 50% off the subscription price).
And then... there is Evernote Business.
And boy, do they mean BUSINESS.
Evernote Business allows for an unlimited number of people to share the same account, and grants you a whopping 20 Gigabytes of uploads to the cloud every month, PLUS! an additional 2 GB for each user on the account.
And the crazy part is that it only costs US$12/month per user. But there's the rub - that's a MONTHLY subscription. And while easier to swallow in the short term, Evernote definitely gets their money's worth because even for a single user that's US$144 yearly - a little over what TWO Premium subscriptions cost.
So, it's up to you what you want to do. There are other features that are exclusive to each successive tier, so it all depends on how much you REALLY want to get out of Evernote.
Start using Google Keep here: https://keep.google.com/
Get Evernote here: https://evernote.com
Finally, we get to my favorite part - the stand-alone distraction free writing environment.
FocusWriter is a very robust word processor with distraction free features. What's nice, though, is that you can relegate FW into a window instead of full-screen mode, so you can jump between apps as you please.
FocusWriter has a full bag of basic tools to help writers, such as a timer that lets you set aside a certain amount of time in your day to focus ONLY on writing, as well as variable targets for word or character counts per day. It even keeps track for you, marking when you're on a 'streak' of consecutive days for hitting or exceeding your targets.
FocusWriter also allows you to set themes, each with their own unique background image (or just a flat color), and you can even set your font, font color, background color for the text, and whether this has any transparency effects. When they say 'fully customizable' they frickin' mean it!
Additionally, FocusWriter will work in several file formats, and you can have multiple documents open at any given time.
Best of all? IT'S FREEWARE! HELL YEAH!
Get FocusWriter here: https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/
I do have one honorable mention here, something I have not yet had the time to delve into called The Novel Factory. At first glance, it seems to combine elements from oStorybook, Scrivener, and Persona. However, I suspect that this software is more of a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none deal. However, it does have a polished look to it, so we'll see.
At the time of this posting, they were running a special - a 50 day trial period, and until December 7th you can get 30% off the price using the code NANO2017.
They do have a web-based version with cloud features as well, but that's pretty pricey stuff. The plans are all billed on an annual basis. I'd rather just buy the desktop version, but if you're jumping from machine to machine a lot, then this might be a solution for you.
Get the desktop version here: https://www.novel-software.com
Get the web version here: http://www.novel-factory.com
Welp, hope someone finds this stuff useful. I certainly have been.