Weird! Atomic Scribbler just got rebranded to "SmartEdit Writer" and now comes tightly integrated with SmartEdit for free. SmartEdit for Word and SmartEdit Pro will remain available as separate commercial products. I was just getting ready to buy SmartEdit for Atomic Scribbler when Darren announced this move. He gives pretty good reasons in his blog (it came after a talk with a marketing consultant) and he assures us that SmartEdit Writer will remain free, though he remains mum on his overall marketing plan. Which is fair, I guess, THAT is none of our business. I was thinking that once I bought SmartEdit for Atomic Scribbler, I would likely abandon Scrivener completely. I'm only waiting for the release of V3 for Windows to make my decision final. At least I saved myself $50-$60 US.
I still write mostly on Mac, but I do like Atomic Scribbler. I'll have to download the SmartEdit Writer program and check it out.
I use Word from MS Office 2016 and for me, it's the best choice I could ever make. There were times when I was looking for something better, dedicated only to writing prose. I've tested a few, especially Scrivener and yWriter, but I couldn't help to go back to Microsoft. Windows's writing programs have been in my life for the very start of using computers (I remember from my childhood this old Windows Millenium with WordPad; comparing to Word nowadays it's quite miserable but back then it was hyped by my older cousins) and they're very comfortable for me to use, especially Word 2003 and higher. I don't need tools dedicated to writers (at least, I'm not a professional one); the blank virtual piece of paper is enough. There are financial reasons too that pay a huge role. What is more, I use OneNote from Office 2016. It's a great tool for organizing notes, hyperlinks, pictures and print screens. I use it for non-writing purposes too. Obviously, I don't want to advertise it. I think that everyone needs different things for different purposes. At last, there are plenty of writing programs to try.
Yeah, I think OneNote is on almost everyone's list of secret 'goto' software. It's just so doggone useful, and cross "platformy", that it's hard not to boot it up when you've got a documentation/research/notetaking issue to deal with. Anything that can lend itself to a fairly rigid Notebook/Section/Page/sub-page organization can find a home in OneNote, and with a little ingenuity, that's a lot of stuff. And the ability to take those notebooks with me using virtually any consumer OS device is wonderful. For me, however, its weak point is the miserable tagging and search capability especially with the newest Online and Win 10 versions (OneNote 2016 too, for some things). I'd love to be able to create and maintain different sets of tags for different types of notebooks. How often am I likely to need a #Chicken tag for anything outside of a recipe database? Why should I have to see it in my "World Bible" database? Another weak point is there are no further sub-pages below the first sub-page level. If you need a broader-based tree structure or wiki-like database, OneNote is not the tool you need, but it has been my experience you don't always know you need that sort of tree structure until you've already got the higher levels of the structure entered into OneNote. I doubt the recent 'cloud' emphasis will allow an ever-expanding complex feature set. Some things can be done theoretically, but from a practical POV, it would cause more hard feelings than it would sooth. However, Microsoft could alleviate some of that pressure and make ME very happy if they chose one lucky open-source tree structure note taking DB, like, say Zim, or CherryTree and allowed a direct import/export in that format. Right now, It's a bit hit or miss if your Imports/Exports will even work with the traditional Tree-based DBs. And as a former DBA, OneNote probably isn't all that different (on the code inside) from those tools. It's twiddly and tweaky and I think being able to move back and forth between these types of database applications would make OneNote much more useful to more people. OneNote for Windows could be advertised in a manner similar to Microsoft Access. That is, it is an excellent text database in its own right, but could be used as a sort of nonconnected "front end" to some other, more complex text database. (Simple import and export utilities would work fine for text.) It's probably too good an idea for Microsoft to adopt, but that's what would make it perfect for me.
Personally, I have done everything I can to push OneNote into the basement and lock the door. Very rarely I let it out to see the sun, but most if the time it's sitting in there so that it can't annoy me with (for me) useless things.
I use Standard Notes. It's free (with like 3 bucks a month you can get a dark theme + all sorts of stuff), private, and you can bring it pretty much anywhere. But I'm a comic book writer, so not many people will actually read the words! Haha. And it's also very private as well, so you won't have to worry about anyone reading your work without your permission, so long as you practice common sense.
The problem you describe is an issue for me too. I write really long notes, carefully formatted and divided into many sections and subsections and when I want to find a particular thing the only solution is scrolling because I can't create any sort of table of contents there to find this "1.1.1" section quickly. To be honest, I'd be happy even for the possibility to create a table of contents via headings styles, like in Word.
How about using a markdown-enabled editor? I use iA Writer (which is multiplatform and shares with any cloud service). Like any markdown editor, you can structure and mark headings with #, ##, ### and so forth, and then you just type {{TOC}} at the beginning of your file, and you get a Table of Contents in the preview that is clickable to go where you want (with auto-numbering and kept up-to-date). There are other markdown editors that do it differently – the beauty of markdown is that it's just ASCII text with a bit of convention on top, so it's easy to share between apps with wildly different functions. Now, iA is commercial and costs money, but there are tons of markdown editors, a lot of them free, with similar functions. It doesn't matter much which one you have, you can share files between them. Unless you want/need the handwritten notes part and drawings ... markdown is pretty much only text (you can include images, but the production of said images has to be somewhere else.) ETA. There are markdown extensions for certain diagrams that can be done with a bit of source code text, like flow-charts, bar and pie charts etc.
That's the problem. I insert lots of scanned documents in PDF format, print screens, hyperlinks and images into my notes, sometimes I draw too and OneNote is perfect in these fields. What is more, I print some of them and then font matters to me. At least, nothing is without flaws.
Honestly, they're all the same at the end of the day. They might have their little quirks or features that one person or another might prefer, but at the end of the day it's all about getting words on the page, for me. Word is just fine. OpenOffice is cool. I've used a couple other programs in the past that I can't recall the names of. So yea, Word is sufficient for me.
Scrivener is the choice for me. It's reasonably priced but has a learning curve to use all features. You can chop your story up by whatever means you need, scene by scene, chapter by chapter, have reference material, jot down notes and even compile it into an instantly usable word program. It also has an ios and mac version. I could not function story wise without the ios version. it's a snap to dropbox my stories, sync it and go. If you use multiple computers just plop your dropbox into the C drive of all the computers so scrivener knows exactly where each piece is, for the sory.scriv file tells scrivener where they are. Make sure all computers and devices are synced before you open them and close scrivener before you move on to prevent problems. Scrivener even zips up the project at the start and end with the windows/mac versions if you like. They're even dated and timed! That's really handy for the paranoid people out there and it is a lifesaver for me when I accidentally opened the files before they are completely synced. Put the backups in dropbox under their own folders by computer for easy access. You can always abort it if youre sure about it. Scrivener is totally customizable, from the fonts to the quick buttons. Personally I like the Georgia font, every computer has it and it looks spiffy. I enlarge the binder and the rest of the fonts to create a pleasing interface that's a snap to read. Take a look at my preferred interface. To create that scene I watched multiple sunrises from the ISS until I had it memorized. Anyhow, it's entirely up to you what you want to use. I find scrivener suits me to a T. I've tried countless programs but only Scrivener lets me be free as a writer and have a way to let me be creative. I have a scrivener cookbook, reference project, my old paper routes that are divided up by streets and even my resume. As you can see Scrivener is a multi use program that can fit many people.
I read somewhere the other day that G.R.R. Martin still uses WordStar 4.0 to write with. I tried it out and didn't really much care for it, but I can see why he would, so I tried Word 5.5 because it had a similar look but was something I was already familiar with (plus it's legally free). The bare-bones front end and single task aesthetic is like putting on a set of distraction free blinders, so if focus is a problem I would recommend giving either of them a try. Because they're older programs, though, they don't handle modern formatting very well, so another program to do that in would probably be a good idea, but formatting isn't writing so I think they get a pass on that.
I am a huge fan of Scrivener and always recommend it. Don't let the learning curve or feature list scare you off as you can you as much or as little of it as you want. You will find the more you use it the more you will appreciate those features. My only con to Scrivener is no support for Chromebook as that is my portable writing solution at the moment, but there has been talk of them releasing an Android version at some point. I wouldn't expect that until 2021, but worth the wait.
It depends on what I'm doing. I've used MS Word for years. I have Office 2011 on my computer and use Word for creating resumes and formal letters. I have used it for my creative writing and the vast majority of my writing library is in .docx format. It's only been in the last couple of years that I've switched to Scrivener. Having the ability to organize my scenes and chapters in an almost operating system like file tree feels so much more natural to me than trying to convince my actual OS (Mac OS) to get what my OCD nature wants out of organization. Drag and drop. Simple, simple. And I can export to Word if need be. Or import a Word file into Scrivener. That said, I don't use Scrivener for all of my writing projects so I'm trying other software. Poor old Word is 32 bit and my computer is (mostly) 64 bit. Word tends to load very slowly even with the amount of RAM my computer has. I'm giving LibreOffice and Pages each a try. So far, leaning on LibreOffice. It just seems more capable than Pages. One is about as quick to load as the other on my 2011 iMac. They both use their own file formats but each can export to Word. And they are both relatively clutter free. You'll need a Mac to use Pages, though, which can make for very expensive free software.
Hey. I use latex to write my albums and I think this is the best way. Yes, sometimes you have problems, but after solving them, you have a tool for all your books. Formatting, inserting pictures has become much easier. Just say what you want and latex will do it.
I remain oddly attracted to Mellel because it seems to be predictable and reliable. I haven't done much with Mellel's new ebook export features, but I suspect you can do everything in Mellel that you can do in Vellum. The story points feature seems nice, too. I think Mellel may be the only conventional word processor out there with a means of keeping track of settings, characters, and their intersection. If it supported multiple windows and mailmerge, Mellel would be perfect. On the other hand, I spent long years working in Solaris environments where vi was everywhere and vim nowhere. I fell out of the habit of using multiple windows. Over the past week I re-learned the commands to manipulate windows and buffers. If I had to give up everything else and write with vim, I wouldn't be terribly unhappy. But I like to be able to use features like footnotes and endnotes for documentation. For the nonce, I write in Mellel.
I really like ProWritingAid. Its not meant to be a word processor, but I find myself just writing the whole story into it...because me and Microsoft Word hate each other.
I don't think I've ever had any actual, useful, help from any of Microsoft's help functions. There are terrible, no matter how specific, or how general you make your query. I find it's way better to type your question into google and get an answer from a fellow frustrated user of their products.
I often hear about the "scrivener" program. Is it really the best? I use Open Office now. But I was looking for a more professional program. I find myself with many open pages with many notes. And I realize that this makes me waste time, and write badly.
I wouldn't say that Scrivener is the best writing program, because it's a very, very subjective topic. I personally love Scrivener but I also know there are people on here who couldn't stand it and prefer using MS Word or Google Docs instead. I suggest you take a look at the Scrivener thread here on the forum as there is plenty discussion in there.
