What is the best word processor

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't go with black screen and green monospace text. This is a theme that I use a lot in FocusWriter. It's easier on the eyes than black screen and white text. But you can choose any color text/background. Or you can use an image for the background. And you can obviously change the font, too. I go back and forth between serif and sans, depending on how I feel that day. I just love how much you can customize the look.

 

Yair . . .

I have no idea what folks are on about with "tools" and "software" but I am at the keyboard for about five or six hours a day and get by fine using "MS Word" in it's most basic form.

In a lot of cases I believe it is the "hardware" that is the problem and cannot believe people would even try to write on a laptop.

When it comes to final presentation a manuscript is difficult (impossible?) to format unless you can display each A4 page at least at 100%.

I run a cheap little Asus laptop with a monitor in portrait mode and have just sent my latest novel to an agent knowing every one of the 459 pages has been displayed, proofread word by word, and spaced and indented to the best of my ability and then individually printed . . . you cannot do that if you need to scroll.

My two bob's worth anyway. (Big grin)

Cheers.

 

What do you mean by "spaced and indented to the best of your ability"? You didn't just use a standard style? And individually printed? Do you mean you hit "print" for each of the 459 pages?

I'm either misunderstanding, or you're spending a lot of effort on something few other people are likely to notice.

 

I use A4 on a laptop all the time in MSWord. So long as you set your margins, indents, etc the way you want them in the page settings they'll be the way you want on all pages.

 

I use Libreoffice. Wouldn't say it's the best, but it does everything it needs to do, I know how to set margins, indents, page numbers and headers and whatnot for submitting, and it's hard to complain about something that's free. An older version had some difficultly with bigger files and wanted to crash every time I saved my novel, resulting in tiny tiny heart attacks on the reg, but it never actually lost anything so hey.

Haven't used Word since they implemented the ribbon/banner thing. Well, I used it, but I wasn't happy about it.

I tried Ommwriter but eh ... not really my thing, I guess. I can see how it'd be great for someone else, but you'd still need a proper word processor for formatting anyway.

 

I wanna see a case where newName.length() < 0 please.

*waits patiently*

 

So I downloaded the trial of Scrivener for Mac, and I'm not in love with it in the slightest.

Any alternatives for Mac users? I can't afford Word for Mac right now, and I'm not about to try and use Mac's crappy word processor again. I miss having Windows ...

 

I'm not an Apple fan, so I can't speak from use but I think you can get LibreOffice for Mac.

 

Parallels?

 

Yep, looks like Libreoffice has downloads for both Mac and Linux in addition to Windows. It's a lot like Word so it should be pretty easy for you to get used to.

 

If you're after something along the lines of Scrivener, there isn't much for Mac AFAIK. WriteItNow might suit (it isn't cheap though) - new version just out. Story-writing tools great, but it's light-on for wordprocessing. Not much else that I know of - oStorybook might be worth looking into (it's free), and it's proposed to allow it to link to LibreOffice so you can do your writing in a WP, and still use the story structure tools (which are quite good, but very much inferior to WIN).

But if you're after a straight WP, then LO is hard to beat for the money. UI is a throwback to earlier releases of MS Office. You could look at AbiWord too.

 

I use word, and it's perfectly possible to change background and text colour in word too, so that alone shouldn't be a reason to switch to something else. Actually word does everything I need and the features I was attracted to in scrivener (I like to make a headline of the chapter number, for example, and make each chapter appea in the side meny where I can easily switch between them, or move them around or having to scroll the entire ms. Word is the best I've tried, scrivener didn't do it for me at all.

 

Can anyone tell me how to download the free trial for Scrivener? I'd like to try it, but all I see is the "BUY NOW FOR $40"

 

If you go to literatureandlatte.com and hit "Download Free Trial" it should take you to a page where you can choose between a Mac and Windows trial.

 

I have played around with the demo for WriteItNow and downloaded the trial of Scrivener. So far I am leaning way toward Scrivener. WriteItNow offers a good deal of options but seems so busy and distracting.

 

...

 

@BookLover

As far as Scrivener goes, I gave up. I exported my entire novel for the second draft from Liquid Story Binder, and struggled with Scrivener until the final draft. I moved away from it then and I don't think I've looked at it since. I've said a number of times, I find the UI to be something of a mess, but I can see its power - it just may not be for everyone.

It isn't possible to give a specific recommendation - I've said often enough what I use right now so won't repeat it - without knowing more about you, but these are links where examples of such software are mentioned:

https://www.writingforums.org/threads/do-you-use-a-program-to-write-a-book.139258/
https://www.writingforums.org/threads/best-writing-program.17547/

Download demos, try them, use the one you like most. And if it happens to be Word or LibreOffice, that's fine.

 

What is(are) the problem(s) you are having with Scrivener? I found a few problems I had were resolvable once I learned more functions.

 

I never read the tutorials, just start using it and look up how to do stuff as you go. @Wreybies is a good goto source if you really get stuck on something.

One thing I had to figure out: how to make a new chapter folder instead of a sub-file within a folder. Sub-files can't be moved around like folders can so now I make all my chapters new folders and I don't use subchapters.

I had to play around with delete and trash to get the hang of that function. It matters if you are clicked on the chapter side bar or on the text. And I found the trash was the last file in the side bar and not my computer's trash. Also I moved 'trash' to the far right of the top menu bar because I kept hitting it by accident when I wanted to add a folder.

I really like Scrivener because it's easier for me to build my novel with it. But in my case that's because I've played with chapter order quite a bit. I have two parallel stories I'm interweaving.

 

It took me about 2 hours to go through the tutorial, but I didn't do it because I expected to use every single feature, rather because I wanted to know what the program had to offer. While writing I only make use of a tiny part of all the features Scriv offers because I do not need to rest of them. I think that Scrivener won't be more complicated than you make it, so just find the features you want right now and then if there ever comes a moment where you think "it would be awesome if I could do this in Scrivener" you can simply Google it and see how it's done.

 

...

 

That's fair enough - and I wish you well. You'll be able to create templates (say, for characterizations - if not for this manuscript, then for your next), and there are some handy tools in Scrivener. I initially felt much the same as you did about Scrivener, but it didn't work out for me and I was glad to leave it in the end.

Your comments about the limitations of a regular wordprocessor are I think, correct - a novel is just too big and complex for efficient work.

Good luck, and I hope to see some of your work soon.

 

I really like to use Google docs, as its neat and simple to use and available everywhere I go.

 

It didn't take me long at all, but I was really motivated. Here's why....

I'm a Mac Boy. I wouldn't take a Windows machine for free. No thank you. The port for MS Word to Mac is horrendous and remains so to this day in 2015. It will make you pull out your own fingernails, glue them back in, and pull them out again.

I found Scrivener. Scrivener is as simple or as feature-rich as you want it to be. Too often (jesus help me, too often) Scrivener gets touted as this stonkingly complex bundle of bells and whistles and maybe, just maybe, there's a word processor in there somewhere. Wrong. As wrong as the Earth being flat and the moon being made of cheese. It's the exact opposite.

What makes it look complicated to people? It doesn't look like MS Word, that's what. And, if you are a Windows native user, and you have never ventured into Mac Land, Scrivener is unapologetically Mac in flavor and function, where things are and what they are called. This can be off-putting to some people. I learned Scrivener in a day. I've been using it since it came out of beta and was only for Mac users, no Windows, no Linux, just Mac. I would give you my right testicle before I gave you my Scrivener program. No lie.

 

I bought write way pro and like it. I also use windows office. Write way just made it easier to organize my ideas and thoughts, and keep everything in one place.