Writer’s Blocks version 3 is best used on XP although it ran without crashing on my 64-bit Windows 7 system, some interface elements looked distorted, and the application was slightly sluggish in scrolling and responding. I found the interface a little too chunky for my tastes, however. The program has a number of features for sorting, connecting, and displaying the blocks, too.
Your manuscript consists of all or some of your blocks you can add and edit text that isn’t in the blocks, if you desire. I was able to run the program on my Windows 7 64-bit machine, but the developer has not confirmed functionality beyond Windows XP.Īlso following the divide-and-conquer strategy is Writer’s Blocks, which chops your work into “blocks” of text that you can arrange into columns. Rough Draft lacks most other advanced features, but it is free, which neither Scrivener or WriteItNow can match. It also allows free use of multiple fonts in a document, something the other applications do not have (as a means of getting you to concentrate on the words, not the looks). The program has a built-in file browser and formatting tools aimed at making it easier to write screenplays. WriteItNow’s interface is a bit cluttered–and not Windows-standard–but its feature set is deep.Ī somewhat older tool than either Scrivener or WriteItNow, Rough Draft hasn’t been updated in a while. It integrates the corkboard, an outliner, and a text editor, and it includes the ability to view disparate snippets of text as a continuous document.Īnother authorial tool is the $60 WriteItNow, which offers a lot of specialized features such as forms for characters, events, and locations, along with charts to help you remember that Bill loves Mary but Mary loves Joe and Joe is actually the evil clone of Harry, who is secretly Sam’s father. Scrivener takes a “corkboard” approach, showing your notes and ideas as pinned to the board, and allowing you to stamp “Final,” “Rough Draft,” or the like on top of them. Scrivener is famous in the Macintosh world, and has a free open beta for its Windows edition (the final product will be $40). PagePlus Starter Edition at least makes it clear which features are “live” some teaserware waits until you try to use the locked features, and then slaps you with an error message.Īuthors often have special needs (the significant others of authors are nodding their heads, here), and several programs focus on making fiction writing easier.
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The Starter Edition has no time limits or advertising, but it is a good example of what I call “teaserware”–software that shows the menu items and buttons for features available only in a commercial upgrade (in this case, the paid version is $100). It provides most of the standard desktop publishing features, such as master pages, column flow, and easy ways to place, move, and lock text boxes and images. If you want that kind of fine control over positioning and output, one alternative to look at is PagePlus Starter Edition, which is free. Microsoft Word has a lot of layout options, but it isn’t really a desktop publishing program. “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like your thumb,” or so the saying goes. When I tried it in, I saw some errors in the layout all of the text and images were present, though, and things were just a bit misaligned.) is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux/Unix systems, making it useful in cross-platform situations. (I have a test document containing complex formatting with every bell and whistle that Word offers. The interface is closer to pre-2003 Office, with standard menu bars instead of ribbons, and for the most part it can open Word 2007 documents. This article focuses mainly on programs that offer a significantly different function set, interface, or purpose than Word, but we would be negligent not to mention the free, an open-source office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, database, and more) that provides functionality roughly equivalent to that of Microsoft Office at a 100 percent price reduction.
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