Writing & Publishing What is the best book writing software?

I was looking at the new one that he mentioned, Atticus. Sounded interesting. Though I wouldn't need any of them for a novel. I guess they would work as well for nonfiction. Haven't checked them all out yet.
 
zx1ninja said:
I have ProWriting aid. It has helped me a lot. And I got it with a one time lifetime payment.
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my husband has been quite happy with ProWriting aid too and we did the same thing - it made such a difference from one book to the other that we felt the lifetime payment was worth it.

The only thing that we don't like is that we can't download a copy that can be used offline
 
I've been wondering what I should be using myself. I have been using MS Word, and creating PDF's to send to the publishers, but I'm sure that I'm doing a lot wrong. It seems to have for now worked out to be OK for print, but it seems to be problematic when it comes to E-Books. (I guess it was never designed for this).

The main things I like about MS Word are:

- I have a navigator that will allow me to jump to certain headings (aka chapters)

- I can set different headers and footers for different sections (and include page numbers at the bottom, and the book title / chapter on odd and even pages)

- I can easily change the paragraph style. So when I write, I have double-space between paragraphs, but then can easily change this to double-spacing per line for manuscript printing/editing, or down to no spacing and tab-indent automatically for each new paragraph just by changing the 'style' properties for the main content.

- It costs me nothing (I already have a copy of it).

- It's local. (I'm not storing or trusting my work to some companies 'cloud' system)

I'm just wondering what people here use, and why it's better than word?
 
I use Scrivener. It also has a tree structure that allows me to quickly jump to different places in my document, but I can drag and drop scenes or whole chapters around in the book.

If you're already using styles and bookmarks, I wouldn't say it's better than Word, I just prefer it.
 
The biggest problem I'm finding with MS Word at the moment is the use of Drop Caps. Everything else from what I can tell can be automated and updated easily with styles. But the Drop caps seem to need to be manually done, and in the place where the paragraph uses indents, it appears to be operating weird for me, meaning that each first paragraph of a chapter I have to use a different style on compared to the others:

As an example:

screencap-1.png

Because my paragraphs have automatic indenting (I don't use the tab key so I can easily change the format depending on how I want it exported), it appears as though I would need to change the style of the first paragraph to not use indenting - which seems like manual interaction, and prone to errors/missing something along the way.

I can skip back and forth using MS Word with the navigator between scenes/chapters very easily using the styles.

The only other thing MS Word misses out is the ability to collate things like characters, locations, etc which would be very handy. For now, I use use a separate document with a navigator and styles to track these, but admit a dedicated piece of software would be nice, if it did it all.

Alternatively, if I can find a way around this first paragraph issue with Drop Caps, I'd be pretty content with MS Word.
 
I wouldn't worry about Drop Caps at this stage of the game. You can do all that fancy typesetting in the end after your book is written. For 99% of the novel's development, you don't need to worry about that. Just get the text on the page and then you can use another app like Atticus or Vellum to do all your final formatting for publication.
 
Johne said:
I wouldn't worry about Drop Caps at this stage of the game. You can do all that fancy typesetting in the end after your book is written. For 99% of the novel's development, you don't need to worry about that. Just get the text on the page and then you can use another app like Atticus or Vellum to do all your final formatting for publication.
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Thanks Jonhe,

I'm at the stage for printing. I ended up getting 4 books printed from the printers earlier this week. (The book was originally for my daughter's birthday which is only a few weeks away), so I'm out of time for any further editing/changing.

The other books are to share with families and friends that have shown an interest in the storyline already. Depending on feedback I may consider paying for an editor and sharing the story further afield if I think I can recover my costs for editors, etc.

Atticus looks interesting. My main concern with that is that it's still reliant on the cloud. Call me old fashion, but I like my software to be able to run completely independently for all features. But if I really get into this writing stuff and it's a better solution, I may have to reconsider my stubbornness. ;)
 
As I said I use MS Word but I also use ProWriteAid. The latest version is great. I find it helps me to straighten out my sentences using the Stick Sentences faculty which give suggestions. It also helps me identify overused words and similar words used in the wrong context. At the the moment I have a 2 yr subscription but when it runs out I intend to get the life time sub.

The one thing I noticed in the article is that it did not mention Fictionary - this also allows you to organise your characters and chapters. You can drop your completed MS into it and get a line chart matching its plot points against the genre plot arch.
 
Shamrock said:
As I said I use MS Word but I also use ProWriteAid. The latest version is great. I find it helps me to straighten out my sentences using the Stick Sentences faculty which give suggestions. It also helps me identify overused words and similar words used in the wrong context. At the the moment I have a 2 yr subscription but when it runs out I intend to get the life time sub.

The one thing I noticed in the article is that it did not mention Fictionary - this also allows you to organise your characters and chapters. You can drop your completed MS into it and get a line chart matching its plot points against the genre plot arch.
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I just checked out ProWriteAid. I like how it integrates with MS word, and might subscribe for a month to see how I go. Thanks for the suggestion!
 
I'm against ProWritingAid now, ever since it suggested I use "more gender inclusive language."
 
suspensewriter said:
I'm against ProWritingAid now, ever since it suggested I use "more gender inclusive language."
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Did you switch to anything else, or have you just stopped using the service?

From what I can tell, it looks like I can turn on and off certain suggestions, so I could (and would) disable that if I go to set it up. I like that it interacts with MS Word so I can do everything locally, but if there's something else about I'm not against researching it either.
 
as mentioned before, you can turn off suggestions in ProWritingAid.

What tipped the scale for us to using ProWritingAid instead of Grammarly was that we could purchase a lifetime sub for ProWritingAid, so it quickly paid for itself in a few months.

But I'd suggest try both and stick with the one you like best!
 
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