The Best Writing Software For 2023: It's Not The One You Think...

which writing software program should I use question I get asked Often by beginning writers or C posed in a lot of the social media groups that I'm in for authors and I get it because writing a book is hard enough you certainly don't need your writing program causing you headaches or making your output difficult or getting in the way of the drafting process it's actually a question that used to be a lot easier to answer because there didn't used to be as many options but that's changed a lot in the last few years there are a lot of writing programs and software that you can use so in this video we're going to break down three that I recommend talk about some of their pros and cons and help you pick the one that's right for you [Music] before we start looking at specific writing programs let's talk for just a minute in Broad terms about what a good writing software program should do for you what features should you be looking for aside from obviously just you know typing words which if that's all we needed we could just use a word processor but there are other things available that you want to include and make sure are a part of the writing program that you choose the first is that a good writing software program should help you to organize and keep track of all of the supplementary material for your story so that would be features like letting you develop scene cards or character profiles letting you keep track of and organize your research or your setting notes as you begin developing out your story there's a lot of things that don't fit into a chapter or a scene that you want to be able to keep track of and reference so that you it makes it a lot easier to not make mistakes like saying your characters eyes are green in one scene and then 10 chapters later you mentioned that they're blue there are writing programs that do a really good job of this but a word processor doesn't so any writing program that you pick you should make sure that it at least includes some of those helpful features because I can tell you from experience that's really useful for any writing that you're going to do for a book but especially if you begin writing a series that becomes really essential I have a standard template that I've created for my farshore Chronicles series that has a whole kind of bibliography section in it that before I even begin writing the first chapter of a new book it I have a point of reference for all the major characters and terminology the major ideas the places and the races it's a fantasy story so all that stuff anything that I have developed in a previous book winds up in my bibliography and then when I start writing a new book I have all that information to hand so if I need to go back and look something up or remember what I had called something or remember you know what a character's favorite meal is or whatever I have all that information available to me and as you begin developing a multi-book series over months or years of writing that can become really really important the second thing you want to make sure you're writing software choice will do for you is make the process of formatting and exporting your manuscript as a finished book file when you're done writing it as easy and effective as possible that's something you might not necessarily think of if you haven't finished a book or two already but let me tell you man it will save you so much time and headache down the road once you have the words of your story done you need to get it into the formats and devices that your readers are going to actually consume it in so that means ebook formatting that might mean print formatting and exporting all of those things if you only are writing in a word processor are going to be time consuming and frustrating and really really hard um you there are people who actually you can pay to do that stuff for you but if you use a writing program that has those features embedded in it automatically when you're finished you can just say give me my Epub file or give me this print ready PDF and let me go through and see what the format or the layout is going to be what are my bleed margins what are my trim sizes all that other kind of stuff and it saves you so much hassle and makes it that much easier when you're finally done writing the book to get it out there to your readers so it's definitely something you want to consider when you're looking for a writing software program the third and final thing that I think all writing software programs should do is make saving and storing organizing and transferring your files as easy and safe and consistent as possible I cannot tell you the number of nightmare stories I have heard from Friends where months or even years of hard work are lost because a hard drive got corrupted or they thought something was in Dropbox or their storage limit was overloaded and then something didn't back up when they thought it was going to or they lost the backup drive or whatever you're putting your heart and soul into your books and you want to make sure that every word you write is saved as soon as possible some writing programs are better at this than others and we'll talk about that when we get to our specific suggestions but in every case why not take advantage of a program that is going to help you in Saving and storing and organizing your files especially if when you begin writing multiple books again maybe in a series or different Standalone entries over time you want to be able to find something you wrote for years ago or five years ago you want to be able to keep track of the versions because you'll come back maybe and you'll do some editing and then you want to track that like this is the most current version of that file or this is the print version of that file or whatever so making sure that you're writing software program helps make your job of saving and storing and organizing your files especially if possible automatically as you go so that you don't have a brain fart and then forget to back up your files and then you know oops your bag falls out of the car and your laptop is broken or and you lose your hard drive or whatever you want to try and save yourself from that as much as possible so finding a software program that helps you with that is a really good idea so with those General features out of the way we're ready to start taking a look at the specific writing programs that I'm going to recommend to you take a look at some of their pros and cons but before we do that if you're enjoying this video if you're finding the information helpful please take a minute to hit the like button to help other people find it as well and consider subscribing to the channel for more writing and storytelling content to come so the first writing program that I will recommend to you is scrivener scrivener is probably the most well known of all of the various writing software because it's been around for a while and a lot of authors use it for good reason it does most of the three things that I mentioned as being important and we'll get to each of those in a moment but let's talk first about some of the pros of this grivener program so the first pro is that scrivener has probably the most complete and comprehensive Suite of tools available it can do so many interesting things as far as like tracking when certain characters show up in scenes color coding keywording um there's a whole host of different features and things that it can do Beyond just the writing of the words I I have always really liked the way that it organizes the files in the binder so that you can drag and drop and move things around really easily or keep files in a folder related to a scene that aren't actually included in the scene so I often will have in every single scene that I write I'll have the scene text but then I'll have a separate file that is editing notes and that's where I keep track of things that I want to do to the scene in revisions when I get back to it and it's really a powerful tool kit to help you plan and organize especially longer manuscripts as you work on them another Pro is that it has pretty good um formatting and exporting features so when you're done writing your book in scrivener it takes a little bit of learning curve to understand all of the settings to get the export that you want but again because of all of those Dynamics you can get really fine-tuned and exactly how you want your files exported into different file formats and structures so once you're finished you don't need to find a different program to create the files that you need to be able to go and publish your book the third Pro of scrivener and I actually think it's a really big one is that the program itself is only a one-time purchase um I think it is still currently about fifty dollars uh as opposed to a subscription which some of the other powerful software Solutions which we'll talk about in a minute actually have more of a subscription model so I really like the fact that you can just if you need to save for it you can buy it once you buy it you have it you don't have to keep paying for it um and that can be a big deal if you're on a bit of a budget but with the pros out of the way let's talk about a few cons because scrivener definitely does have some negative points and some friction points that you have to be aware of if you're going to decide to use it full disclosure I have used scrivener for years but I am definitely considering this year making the switch to a different platform for some of these reasons the first con of scrivener is for all of its powerful features and everything that it can do it has a really big learning curve using those features is not necessarily intuitive in fact there are a whole lot of YouTube videos and blog articles about how to use scrivener and how to learn scrivener there are courses on how to learn scrivener which on one hand is a good thing because the resources are there but on the other hand um it kind of sucks that you need to go through a whole course just to learn how to use this program but especially if you want to use more of its Advanced and Powerful features expect a big learning curve and a few moments of frustration going wait a minute why is it when I click on this like this thing happens over here or doesn't happen over here and that is also especially true of the formatting like it take took me a while to figure out how to get the final versions of the files exported looking the way that I wanted them to look within all the formatting and exporting settings that are available so yes it has a lot of features but those features come with a pretty steep learning curve the second big con of scrivener though is I think in some ways the more problematic I mean a learning curve is a learning curve uh I have figured out how to utilize all of the features of scrivener that I care about and yeah there are features I don't use but so far I haven't minded that and it's worked well for me to write the books that I have written and published so far so yeah it's a problem but it's a solvable problem the second issue with scrivener though is that it doesn't have uh it's not a native web app like it's a program you install on your Mac or your PC um and so because it's not a native web app and it doesn't have automatic Cloud syncing and cloud storage say you have to save and transfer and backup all your files manually I've had to really get good at remembering and I'm still not great at it and then I realize like oh my gosh it's been months since I've backed up my files I've just been writing and yeah they're saved in my folders on my hard drive but that's not a great idea because stuff goes wrong um and that would man if I lost months of working on a manuscript that would be pretty heartbreaking and I have friends that that has happened to so that's something you need to keep in mind if you're going to decide to use scrivener yes it's powerful yes it has a lot of features and in some ways because it's been around and it's more popular there are a lot of helpful people and guides and forums and things that you can use to figure out how to use it but at least as of now it has no native web support and so you're gonna have to develop your own habits and your own consistency for saving and backing up and storing your files so in light of some of those cons let's take a look at our second software solution which I'm going to recommend to you and actually I'm bringing you for this one two different platforms for the price of one well not actually for the price of one like you have to pay for them separately you get what I mean two different programs and I'm bringing you two programs because they broadly do more or less the exact same set of things and that is living writer and novel pad so living writer and novel pad are both a cloud-based web based software Solutions which is really their first big Pro because of that they have pretty much word for word Auto saving features where everything that you're writing is being saved and stored to the cloud as you go and you don't have to remember to do that for yourself which is a huge peace of mind and quality of life Improvement and it's one of the big reasons why I am considering possibly making the switch to one or of these options this year another thing that I really like about them is because they're both newer Solutions their user interface is a lot more intuitive they have most if not all of the same kinds of robust organizational features that scrivener offers so seen in title cards character profiles research notes a lot of other really cool things but all those features are are developed and presented in a more intuitive way which makes it a lot easier and more instinctive to use and I think it presents a little bit less of a barrier to entry and learning curve to get up to speed with using all of their tools and features the last thing I'll mention is because they are web-based and are more automatically Cloud accessed both of them have some really nice collaborative tools I have actually co-written a book series with an author friend of mine in scrivener and I will tell you it was a pain having to tr like email each other the right files or keep them in Dropbox and then like it was a hassle so if you are ever planning to do any collab operative writing or editing like being able to invite your editor when you hire an Editor to work with you on revising and improving your manuscript draft being able to invite them to do it in a non-destructive way in your Cloud solution where you can see the changes that they're making and recommending and everything again is saved and updated automatically is a really really big time and quality of life Improvement overall so with all those Pros what's the cons well there's really only one honestly that I can recommend but it may be a big one and that's the fact that both of them are subscription-based platforms so you're going to be paying for them pretty much permanently for as long as you want to use them which it does suck like I like the fact that with scrivener you can just you know how much it's going to cost and you just buy it and even if you go with the annual option for those you're still going to be getting billed annually so they are quite a bit more expensive and over the Long Haul of multiple years there's quite a bit more expensive so that is definitely something that you need to keep in mind and factor into your decision making if you you do decide to go with either of those options they both have a reasonable period of a free trial so you can take a look at them sign up for the the free trial and try it out for a little while and that should hopefully help you decide if the features that they offer are worth the price for you so with scrivener on the one side and a cloud-based solution like livingwriter or novel pad on the other for my third suggestion I want to point your attention to possibly a middle ground option that might be a great fit kind of mixing some of the best of both worlds and that is using Reese's book editor so reedy's book editor is also a cloud-based browser-based editing program but the main difference between it and the two that I mentioned previously is that it is free and readsy claims that they're planning to keep it free forever so that's a pretty big deal being able to use a free online writing program uh it has because it is cloud-based it does some of the same things of automatic saving and and collaborative editing which can be really really great and because readsy as a company or as a platform is really really focused on publishing support it's formatting an output is excellent I think it's probably the best of all of the ones that we've mentioned so far in terms of being able to customize the format outputs that you need depending on which like which specific online print on demand solution you're going with or where you're going to be uploading your e-files and things like that so it those features uh it does do extremely well and the fact that it's free is obviously really really nice its main downside is that it is missing some of the more fancy or more advanced organizational tools that some of the other programs has it does do a decent job of you know letting you keep track of your chapters and your back matter and you know you can create files for things but it doesn't have it natively built into quite the same extent to do like character profiles or keep your research notes or some of the things that we have talked about already you can do it a bit but it doesn't do it to the same extent as something like novel pad would do it doesn't have all of those same features it's a little bit more Bare Bones and distraction free which again can be a good thing depending on what it is you're looking for so with those three recommendations or four recommendations out of the way I will say I think the most important thing is to find a program that gets out of your way and doesn't cause you added hiccups or friction or frustration as you are working on your writing I highly recommend that if you are working on a book that you choose a program that is designed to support you in doing that and don't just write in a word processor because there's no reason really not to I mean at the very least I would absolutely use readsy's book editor over a word processor because it is free but some of those extra features that we've already mentioned will make your life a lot easier both as you're writing your book and once you're finished and you're ready to begin formatting and exporting and Publishing your book so let me know in the comments as you take a look at those three which one stands out to you which one did you decide to use is there a different program you're aware of or that you've used before that you think would be a good recommendation drop that in the comments as well and until next time I wish you a year of great writing productivity

Channel: StoryCastle

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Length: 17min 18sec (1038 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 15 2023