Does anyone else use Write Way Pro?

There is a tech forum for this

Scrivener is better though. It's almost the same. I have to guess which one is the copy?

The most I use out of Scrivener is the folder sections. Other than that, the fullscreen view.

You don't need the software. But it helps a small amout. I still stick to physical note cards and sticky notes.

Absolutely detest every such program I've tried, and I think I've tried all of them.

Never even considered using something like this, but then I am the least techy 34 year old man in the world. I prefer getting stuck into my first drafts, reading through, making a few notes and then rewriting.

I get by with plain ol' Word. I type notes in my iPhone, I have a separate file with notes from the current WIP and I dump there extra info. Or I use it as a placeholder while I work around the latest conundrum and then add the piece back there.

I use the comment feature of MS Word to leave notes at certain plot points.

OneNote for character profiles, etc.

An old version of Word suffices. It lets you add comments, has a flexible outlining feature, and supports multiple views of multiple documents in multiple windows. It's heading numbering system automatically updates chapter numbers. Spell-checker, thesaurus, automatic TOC and index, exports to html for e-book production and pdf for print edition interiors, good image and equation editors, automatic links, and on and on.

And it's a common format between author and editor.

I've tried some of the writer-specific programs and don't find anything in them that I need that Word can't do, and, with some of them, I find their enforced structure to be intrusive.

I've been thinking about using such a program. I love digital applications, though, so it's right up my alley.

I've downloaded yWriter and while it seems cool, I honestly don't have the time right now to sit down and figure it all out. I'm half way through my novel (my third actually) and have worked out a system that works for now and am not comfortable changing halfway through. However, when I start my new novel I think I'll experiment with two or three programs.

Right now I use Word, which is a pain because every time I add/delete a chapter, I have to renumber. There are some features I like, though, like Find/Change. Very useful for when I decide to change a name (which I do now and again) or have determine if I've used a memorable word or phrase previously.

I use One Note for all my notes, which are fairly exhaustive.

One thing I'm curious about with writing software is this: Can a project written within the software be exported to Word for formatting?

EarlyBird said:

Right now I use Word, which is a pain because every time I add/delete a chapter, I have to renumber.

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Not necessary. Make a style for chapter headings. In the Modify Style dialog, select Format/Numbering... Choose a numbering format you want or use Customize to build your own. Use that style for chapter headings. It automatically adjusts all the chapter numbers when you move, insert, or delete a chapter.

I keep the ms in separate sub-plot files, so the chapter numbers in those files each start with 1. But, when I use a Master document to organize them, the numbers work okay.

Or, if I merge the documents manually, the numbers adjust themselves.

I use a quill pen on papyrus scrolls.

Seriously, I actually carry around a plain old notebook and pen in my purse and scribble things down when they come to me. I do most of the "proper" writing in MS Word.

Yes, I use WriteWay Pro.

I have both Scrivener and WriteWay Pro (WWP). I've written novel length stories in both of them.

Scrivener has some nice features, like SnapShot. It is the software I tried and tried and tried to like, but it's Windows interface is so eccentric and arcane I ended up migrating all my work back to WriteWay Pro. If Scrivener comes out with an updated Windows version, I'll try it, but at the moment I find that, for me, it's not even close to as convenient and easy to use as WWP.

Getting documents back and forth between Scrivener and MS-WORD, which all my on-line writing group use to edit each others work, is a real hassle. In and out of WWP is as easy as copy paste, or a simple export of all or any portion. I can import a whole 107,000 word novel and have it automatically split into chapter and scenes in a matter of minutes.

That said, if you are MAC based, WWP is not an option because it is a Windows only application.

WWP is completely customizable. It doesn't dictate any part of the writing process. The 10 types of note card masters have 'something' on them but that's all easy to customize. I added a new one, Line-4-Scene, and customized the rest.

I run it both on a laptop when I'm away from home, and on a desktop that has three monitors when I'm at home. I've spread WWP out (dragged the main window) over the three monitors, research on the right one, outline (chapters and scenes) and composition on the middle one, character development window on the left. Going back and forth between them is as simple as moving my eyes. If a new book or story idea hits me, it's about a 10 second job to open the new story idea window, make a couple of notes, close it and write on in the current WIP. The same story idea window is always there even in different projects so it's cumulative and the ideas are all in one place.

The spelling checker on WWP leaves something to be desired so I don't use it. Other than that, I have few complaints.

Writers and their processes vary all over the map. Some like sticks in sand or charred sticks on birch bark, others a dipped quill pen on parchment, some a pen or pencil on paper, others a simple text editor, some WORD or an equivalent word processor. There's probably somebody someplace trying to write a novel in Edlin (talk about punishment). I know one person that likes to write on an iPad. She's pretty fast with it too.

I like WriteWay Pro for writing, Aeon for tracking timelines, Edraw Max for diagrams and flow charts, Scapple for quick and dirty mind maps, MS-WORD with change tracking for revisions. It works for me.

Your mileage may vary.

Fitch

Fitch said:

I have both Scrivener and WriteWay Pro (WWP). I've written novel length stories in both of them.

Scrivener has some nice features, like SnapShot. It is the software I tried and tried and tried to like, but it's Windows interface is so eccentric and arcane I ended up migrating all my work back to WriteWay Pro. If Scrivener comes out with an updated Windows version, I'll try it, but at the moment I find that, for me, it's not even close to as convenient and easy to use as WWP.

Getting documents back and forth between Scrivener and MS-WORD, which all my on-line writing group use to edit each others work, is a real hassle. In and out of WWP is as easy as copy paste, or a simple export of all or any portion. I can import a whole 107,000 word novel and have it automatically split into chapter and scenes in a matter of minutes.

That said, if you are MAC based, WWP is not an option because it is a Windows only application.

WWP is completely customizable. It doesn't dictate any part of the writing process. The 10 types of note card masters have 'something' on them but that's all easy to customize. I added a new one, Line-4-Scene, and customized the rest.

I run it both on a laptop when I'm away from home, and on a desktop that has three monitors when I'm at home. I've spread WWP out (dragged the main window) over the three monitors, research on the right one, outline (chapters and scenes) and composition on the middle one, character development window on the left. Going back and forth between them is as simple as moving my eyes. If a new book or story idea hits me, it's about a 10 second job to open the new story idea window, make a couple of notes, close it and write on in the current WIP. The same story idea window is always there even in different projects so it's cumulative and the ideas are all in one place.

The spelling checker on WWP leaves something to be desired so I don't use it. Other than that, I have few complaints.

Writers and their processes vary all over the map. Some like sticks in sand or charred sticks on birch bark, others a dipped quill pen on parchment, some a pen or pencil on paper, others a simple text editor, some WORD or an equivalent word processor. There's probably somebody someplace trying to write a novel in Edlin (talk about punishment). I know one person that likes to write on an iPad. She's pretty fast with it too.

I like WriteWay Pro for writing, Aeon for tracking timelines, Edraw Max for diagrams and flow charts, Scapple for quick and dirty mind maps, MS-WORD with change tracking for revisions. It works for me.

Your mileage may vary.

Fitch

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I'l stick to quill and parchment. God, I'm glad Shakespeare didn't live in the age of computers.

Does anybody else think the proliferation of technology might be getting in the way of producing good writing?

caw

blacbird said:

Does anybody else think the proliferation of technology might be getting in the way of producing good writing?

caw

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I don't.

Good writing doesn't come from a pencil, or pen, or quill, it comes from a mind. Garbage in garbage out applies to pencils as much as it does to word processors.

In fact I'd say there are some good stories that happen only because of technology.

I've used Google Earth a lot because I couldn't travel to some place. With an accurate timeline, date and time, I can use online weather services to get the right weather (temperature, precipitation, etc.) for that date and location. Probably nobody but me cares, but the realism of having the weather right, if I can, matters to me.

My WIP required a private plane flight. It had to be put off a day because the weather didn't work for a VFR rated pilot (I had a pilots license long ago), which changed the story slightly.

My stories are spy/thriller which are either now, or within the last 20 years. It's nice having the right weather for the date. That would be at least very difficult, probably impossible in any practical sense with out the technology.

I also don't think there would be nearly the volume of fiction being produced with out the technology of word processors. They are a terrific writing tool.

I started writing on a typewriter when I was in high school. I outlined them by hand but I wrote all my research papers and lab reports in engineering school on a typewriter (I'm a huge fan of outlining).

I haven't written very much by hand, other than college bluebooks and post it notes, since I took typing in ninth grade. Well, I printed on drawings, but everybody printed on drawings 50 years ago.

Fitch

I use Word and OneNote, and OneNote is a recent addition that's worth its weight in gold. I love the features it offers because it's no more complicated than I need but allows me a lot of room for bells and whistles as desired.

blacbird said:

Does anybody else think the proliferation of technology might be getting in the way of producing good writing?

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No. It's mostly superfluous, but I don't think it does any harm. In the end, it's just words.

When I first started writing, I used Wordstar and it was an
infinite pleasure writing in it. Then came Word 6.0 and
I loved the interface.

Unfortunately I stopped writing until recently that I felt
I needed to write. Unfortunately for me, I no longer had
Word 6.0 (nor would it work on these modern day systems),
so I started reworking on my old WIP (and started a bunch
of new ones) on Word 2010. Painful to say the least.
I even version-controlled the docx files, which was another
mistake. (Version controlling binary files is really a bad
idea if the said binary files are supposed to be text.)

Now, I use Scrivener exclusively and the docs are all in
RTF files which go handy with version control.

I just looked at Write Way Pro and it does bear some
semblance to Scrivener (not that I'm saying one is the
copy of the other). Will stick with Scrivener though.

But at the end of the day, it's just text. Probably any
ol' text editor would do just as well (vi, emacs, etc..)

blacbird said:

Does anybody else think the proliferation of technology might be getting in the way of producing good writing?

caw

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If it weren't for technology, I couldn't read most of what I wrote. It's not that I'm incapable of legible writing, but I have to focus on letter forms first and content second, which is not how I think when writing a story. I just plain think better sitting at a keyboard than I do when using a pen or pencil; my brain just gets going faster than my fingers, and before I know it I've covered a page with something akin to Linear A glyphs as written by a drunken chicken, and just as impossible to decipher. Granted, this is likely because I grew up in the computer age, and my education didn't emphasize developing legible penmanship; we were praised when it happened, but it wasn't like there was a penalty for sloppy handwriting or anything, so long as it could be read. But that doesn't change the fact that, for me, typing just works better for getting stories out of my head.

As for the original question: I own and have used Write Way Pro. I also own and have used Scrivener. Granted, I haven't used either to full capacity, taking advantage of all the bells and whistles, but they both helped with organizing larger works. I found I preferred the layout and features of Scrivener, though - it just clicked with my brain a little easier. But I'd recommend both if you're looking for dedicated writing software.

I still use Word for short stories and general spitballling, though.

I didn't know that software existed. I fell into Scrivener and have been loyal ever since.

blacbird said:

Does anybody else think the proliferation of technology might be getting in the way of producing good writing?

caw

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Nope. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I started writing on a Smith-Corona mechanical typewriter and the utility of every upgrade since then has made them more than worth it.

Thomas Vail said:

Nope. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I started writing on a Smith-Corona mechanical typewriter and the utility of every upgrade since then has made them more than worth it.

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Yeah, that's why slush piles are far, far, far worse now than they were when I first started reading them.

I started with a Smith-Corona manual, too, but all I've seen each advance in technology accomplish is making people think they can actually write well because they can now write easier and faster. Trouble is, for most, easier and faster means worse, not better.

With delete keys, with cut and paste being a snap, with a word processor that lets writers break up stories into all sort of parts and pieces, that lets writers write as fast as they can think, it's all wonderful now.

Except for quality.

I have no doubt technology has helped some talented writers who know how to control it, but I also have no doubt this same technology is responsible for flooding the world with horrible writing that would not have been there at all before the invention of the word processor.

Jamesaritchie said:

I have no doubt technology has helped some talented writers who know how to control it, but I also have no doubt this same technology is responsible for flooding the world with horrible writing that would not have been there at all before the invention of the word processor.

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If that was something worth spending even a second worrying about, I would. But since it's not, I won't.

Atlantis was mentioned in a similar thread a few weeks ago. I like the ebook formatting feature and unlike word it produces clean text. I write in Scrivener even though it still has bugs-think I'll be formatting in Atlantis.

Jamesaritchie said:

I started with a Smith-Corona manual

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I started on a Groma Gromina. Am I special now?

Jamesaritchie said:

Trouble is, for most, easier and faster means worse, not better.

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I doubt that. For most, quality and speed are mostly unrelated.