Literature and Latte

Home

Scrivener

Forum

Blog

Free Stuff

Links

About

Links

Literature

WritersNet		A site with forums where writers can discuss their craft and the road to getting published, and also get critiques from other writers (and would-be writers). Be warned, the folks over there can be quite harsh.
SFWA		The official site for Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. Don't worry if you're not interested in writing in these genres - this site has some great articles on writing in general.
The Gutenberg Project		An amazing repository of free e-books. Volumes upon volumes (18,000 of them) of classic literature that is now in the public domain can be searched and read online, from Dante Alighieri to Emile Zola.
Wikipedia		A great free online encylopedia - a fantastic resource for research. You can even edit it yourself if you think something is missing (though bear in mind that because it is editable by anyone, you should always double-check facts when using it for research).
NaNoWriMo		National Novel Writing Month. Okay, so it's a bit more than national - I'm English and NaNoWriMo is a U.S. site, so these days IntNoWriMo would be more accurate. Still, a fantastic venture with a lively community.

Writing Software for Mac OS X

There is a lot of good writing software out there for the Mac. Most of the programs linked to below are direct competition for Scrivener. I provide links because the writing process is different for everyone. Scrivener suits the way I write, and hopefully some others too, but if it doesn't suit the way that you write, then you may want to check out some of the excellent software below to see if any of it fits the way you work.

WriteRoom		WriteRoom is a dedicated full screen writing application for distraction-free writing. Imagine a better-looking TextEdit that can operate in a beautiful full screen mode. WriteRoom has deservedly caused quite a buzz among the Mac writing community for its simplicity, style and ability to help you concentrate on the text.
Ulysses		Ulysses, by Blue-Tec, was one of the first programs on the Mac to be aimed specifically at creative writers. It was also, to my knowledge, the first to offer a full-screen view for text-editing. It is a beautiful piece of software, though it only allows plain text editing and makes you use tags to define where you want italics to go, which never quite did it for me. The designers have a very strong design philosophy - if that philosophy matches the way you work, you will love this software; if not, you might find yourself frustrated at the lack of rich text and hierarchical organisation capabilities.
CopyWrite		CopyWrite is perhaps the most popular creative writing software available for the Mac. As I understand it, CopyWrite has a similar gestation history to Scrivener: the author liked Ulysses but was frustrated by its limitations, so came up with his own writing management software. CopyWrite is rich-text and features full-screen editing and versioning. Personally, I find the the lack of hierarchical organisation limiting (there is only one level of categorisation), and I've always found it a little quirky in many ways, but plenty of people rave about it and it's definitely worth checking out.
Jer's Novel Writer		Jer's Novel Writer is another popular Mac writing program. Currently free whilst it's in beta (but very stable and perfectly usable nonetheless), Jer's is rather unique: it allows you to annotate your text using margin notes (which I suspect influenced the way Apple decided to handle comments in Pages), and provides an outline of "text blocks" in a drawer, with which you can move around chunks of text. It also lets you keep notes on your whole text and provides a basic database for storing ideas, character information and research.
Avenir		Avenir is a piece of writing management software written by the same developer, Todd Ransom, who is writing Montage, the new Mac screenwriting software, for MarinerSoft. There are a lot of similarities between the two. Avenir provides scene, chapter and character management capabilities along with the ability to annotate your text. Todd is very responsive, and from correspondence with him I believe that Avenir and Scrivener are headed in similar directions.
Storyist		Storyist is the new kid on the block (along with Scrivener) of writing software. It's a little like Jer's (see above) but with a page layout view. It shows an outline on the left and your text on the right, and provides templates for character and location sheets. Specifically aimed at novel and story writing, as of 1.0 the import options are a little limited, but it looks like a promising application and is well worth a try.
PaperToolsPro		PaperToolsPro has an interface that vaguely resembles that of Ulysses (see above), but it is mainly aimed at writers of research papers, dedicated to helping you assemble the paper whilst keeping track of references and avoiding plagiarism.
DevonThink		Not so much writing software as a great database tool for your research, DevonThink is a very powerful organisational tool and does provide basic text-editing capabilities.
OmniOutliner		OmniOutliner is probably the most powerful - and certainly the most popular - outlining tool available for the Mac. It's so good, that the basic version comes free with most new Macs these days. OmniOutliner provided inspiration for the outlining capabilities of Scrivener.
WriteItNow (Mac and PC)		WriteItNow was originally designed for the PC, so the interface isn't quite as pretty as the other writing software mentioned here because it isn't written in Cocoa. Nonetheless, it provides hierarchical organisation of your work and some powerful research tools, and is worth a look.
MacJournal		MacJournal is blogging software rather than creative writing software, although you could bend it to creative writing if you really wanted to. It is very powerful, very easy to use, and has a lovely tabbed interface. It has also provided some inspiration for the new Scrivener interface. Recommended.

Writing Software for Windows

If you don't have a Mac, you can't use Scrivener (sorry). In that case, you will probably want to check out what writing software is available on the PC. Here is a selection of some of the best and/or most popular.

PageFour		PageFour allows you to edit and organise your writing in a tabbed interface. It provides word processing and outlining capabilities, and is probably the product closest to Scrivener on Windows. It also provides versioning (called "Snapshots" in PageFour - the direct inspiration for Scrivener's implementation of versioning; and yes, I shamelessly borrowed the name of the feature, too). Highly recommended.
RoughDraft		RoughDraft is a great piece of organisational software that allows you to create and edit rich text files in a tabbed interface, organise them in a Windows Explorer-like side panel, and to keep notes on each one. Unlike other writing software mentioned here, RoughDraft doesn't keep your files inside its own package, but instead just aids you in organising them on your hard drive. Recommended.
WriteWay Pro		WriteWay Pro is a designed to be a professional writer's tool. It restricts you to using Acts, Chapters and Scenes, but other than that it is fairly freeform, with a "scratch pad" for storing ideas or scenes you don't know what to do with. It has decent word processing capabilities, but for me it's a little over-complicated and clunky, with the option to fill in numerous forms about characters, what should happen in chapters and so forth. I prefer my software not to prompt me, but to leave me to get on with things. Nonetheless, WriteWay Pro seems powerful and relatively flexible, and it is fairly popular.
Liquid Story Binder		The developers of Liquid Story Binder seem to have had a similar idea to me: to allow writers to store and view their research in the same application as they do their writing. It lets you view pictures and multiple files, although it does force you to do so in different windows. It also features a decent labelling system and various other tools aimed at the creative writer.
StoryView		StoryView is an intriguing idea and potentially very powerful. It is essentially an outliner, except that as well as being able to view your story synopsis in a traditional(ish) outliner, you can also view it as a hiearchical storyboard. So at the top, you have a very wide box that may be a description of your book as a whole; underneath that, you might have three boxes describing the three main sections of the book; beneath each of those, you might have several boxes describing the chapters in each part; and so on. Definitely worth trying out.
NewNovelist		NewNovelist seems to be one of the more popular creative writing software titles available on the PC. I'm not a big fan of it myself, but it seems to have gotten quite a good review from the Sunday Times (according to their website), and I do owe NewNovelist a big debt as it gave me the initial spark of inspiration for Scrivener. The trouble with NewNovelist is that although it keeps a list of your documents over on the left and allows you to create the text and edit on the right, it is very rigid and formulaic. It forces you to divide your writing into twelve parts, which are based (through various annoying onscreen prompts) on Christopher Vogler's twelve-step interpretation of Joseph Campbell's work on the hero's journey. So if you want to write anything that doesn't fit that particular structure, you are out of luck. Still, all these limitations did give me the idea for a piece of software without such limitations...