Software For Writers

It may seem strange to start off a series of articles on writing by discussing software, however I firmly believe that if you want to work efficiently you need the proper tools. For a writer the major tool, if you are using a computer, is a good reliable word processor. In my introduction I made reference to Microsoft’s own offering with their award-winning software MS Word. It has become the de-facto standard in publishing circles and with just cause, it is a wonderful piece of software. However, it does come with a rather hefty price tag. Alright, I already hear some of you saying, “Yes, but I can get a copy for free.” I can not condone copying of copyrighted software, not when there are freely available open source alternatives to just about every copyrighted software on the market. My intention is to present as many of these FREE alternatives as I can that may be of interest to both traditional, screenwriters and technical writers. When possible I will review both the Windows and Mac versions and indicate when a Linux version is also available. OpenOffice Writer Let’s start with word processors, my favourite by far is Open office writer. Open office is a FREE Open Source office suite alternative to Microsoft Office. The suite offers a fully functional, feature-rich word processor along spreadsheet software, a presentation program much in the vein of PowerPoint, a very capable vector drawing program and wraps up with a powerful relational database. For those of you that are still with me, the main part of the suite I’m touting is the word processor called Writer. It is fully compatible with MS Word so one can write using Open Office Writer, save documents to Word format and send the documents to editors, agents and publishers, without them ever knowing you didn’t produce it with MS Word. Writer is feature-rich and includes all major document editing functions such as bullets, outline numbering, image insertion, drawing tools, styles, headers/footers, footnotes, etc… Being free it is definitely worth a try. More information on the entire Open Office suite is available at the following link: http://www.openoffice.org For those of you using Apple Mac OS X there is a X Windows version of OpenOffice that will run on a PPC Mac, but you have to install the X Windows environment. Those of you wishing to run a native OS X version can download NeoOffice, an OS X port of Open Office. It is usually a few version behind the latest Open Office and tends to run a little slower than the Open Office X version or in the PC environment. However, I have been running NeoOffice now for over 2 years without a problem and find it just as stable as MS Office on my Windows machine. Abiword Those of you who don’t need a full-fledged Office suite, but require a simple light-weight Word Processor compatible with MS Word may want to take a look at Abiword. It is a capable word processor and perhaps not as powerful as Open Office Writer, but it is much lighter on your computer’s resources and will do just about everything Writer will do and is fully compatible with MS Word. I recently put AbiWord through its paces with a sample document comprised of simple text, pictures, tables, footnotes, headers and footers and an assortment of fonts, sizes, symbols and everything else I could think to throw at it. Once done I saved it as a MS Word document and opened it in Word and was pleasantly surprised to see it formatted everything correctly. For most general word processing work AbiWord will do just fine. Windows, Mac and Linux versions are available from the Abisource web site http://www.abisource.com Mac users: A word of warning to Mac users, the native version of Abiword for Mac OS X is a few versions out of date and unfortunately suffers from font kerning issues. If you don’t know what font kerning is don’t worry, let’s just say the text looks awful on the screen and renders Abiword on the Mac practically unusable. Bean Our next offering is only available for those of you using Macs, oh pity! Bean, yes strange name for a word processor until you realize it runs as a native Cocoa application in OS X, is a very capable word processor, but a bit short in the features department. Written more to supplement the default text editor packaged with OS X, Bean is somewhat between a simple ASCII text editor and a full-fledged word processor. In my own tests I created documents with varied fonts, tables, numbered lists and inserted images. In the latter the images can only be inserted in-line with the text and there are no provisions for resizing the images nor changing the text wrapping. When inserting lists the user can configure each level of numbering or listing individually thus giving a limitless possibility for outlines and numbering in documents. Numbering can also have a pre-defined prefix and suffix, a feature that might come in handy for certain documents. There are many things Bean does not do, but if you simply need a quick, light-weight word processor to type the occasional letter or simple formatted document, you could do much worst than Bean. You can find Bean at the following website: http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html As this website is intended primarily for writers I thought I would include three word processors specifically geared to creative writing. Roughdraft Touted as a word processor for writers Roughdraft runs in Windows only and has a simple user interface and features that can help in writing novels, articles, short stories and screenplays. I haven’t tried Roughdraft yet, but plan on testing it and a few other writer-oriented software in the upcoming weeks. You can download Roughdraft at the following webiste: http://www.salsbury.f2s.com/rd.htm yWriter While doing research for this article I came across yWriter and thought it was worth a closer look. The website for yWriter states that it allows a writer to break down their novel/screenplay into scenes and chapters. I found this quite intriguing as I write based on scenes and often find myself having to re-arrange scenes within chapters and even move my chapters around. Having a piece of software that can facilitate this would be very helpful. As with Roughdraft, I haven’t yet tried yWriter, but it is the next software on my list. Unfortunately it is only available on Windows and so this will have to be relegated to my notebook computer. I promise to have a full review of yWriter in an upcoming article devoted entirely to specialized software for writers. Meanwhile, you can try yWriter for yourself by downloading it from the website below where you can also download the software author’s first novel written with yWriter at: http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html Celtx Last but certainly not least we have Celtx. This is much more than a mere word processor or writer’s aid. It is a full blown pre-production software allowing the user to go from a concept to a full production of anything from a theatre piece to a Hollywood blockbuster. It is so complex and feature-rich that a short brief description would not do it justice oh and yes folks, it’s completely FREE! The best thing you can do is head on over to Celtx’s website and read the overview of the software and all the myriad functions it can accomplish. I’m currently in very pre pre pre-production phase for a short upcoming video and plan on using Celtx to document my project and help with the production. You can find Celtx at their website – http://celtx.com

Posted in Software, Writing Tools