For working writers and amateurs alike, there are a lot of commercial products out there to help you along the way with your writing career. The problem is that many of them are very expensive or have some kind of unnecessarily steep learning curve…or both. Here is some free software you can use to write and help you along with your writing. I’m gearing this article towards fiction writers, but this software is extremely useful to writers of all types.
It wasn’t until I got serious about my own writing that I realized just how awesome and powerful a tool yWriter is. It is a program for writers created by a writer. yWriter is billed as a word processor with extra features to help you organize your novel. But I think of it as more of a story management tool.
Not only can you write in it, but you can ORGANIZE with it. You can use it to break your work down by scene and chapter. You can make a database of characters, places, items and notes. In fact, of everything in this list, it is probably the most useful, versatile and powerful piece of free writing software. For each scene, you can add a description, POV characters, individual scene notes and goals. It’s all there. – http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html
yEdit is a simple text editor. You can think of it as notepad but with a couple of extra features. It is very no-frills and no-nonsense. This tool is useful for those of you that need to just type. Save the editing for later. To help with that, yEdit includes a target word count feature. For example, you put in 3000 as your target word count and you can watch it count down to zero as you type the words. This is helpful if you are trying to write with a daily word quota. – http://www.spacejock.com/yEdit2.html
Q10 is a full screen text editor. If you do not know what that means, think of the old word processors. It takes up the entire screen leaving you free of any background distractions. Much like yEdit, this can be a great tool for those of you that need to just sit down and write. It has word count settings and a timer alarm as well. For fun, or just to change it up, it can use typing sound effects.
I use Q10 whenever I want to just write. To put that in perspective, I use yEdit when I am writing segments or scenes. I use Q10 when I just want to pound out a few thousand words with no distractions, which is typically how I start most of my writing. – http://baara.com/q10/
Dark Room is similar to Q10. It is also a free full-screen writing environment. I have never used it, but I see it come up often, so I’m including it here as a bonus. – http://they.misled.us/dark-room
I LOVE Roughdraft. It’s so simple and it just works. Now, Roughdraft is no longer maintained, so it may look a little dated, but it also still works, which is the most important part. — “Although suitable for general use, it has features specifically designed for creative writing: novels, short stories, articles, plays and screenplays. It’s designed to be as practical as possible, offering all the features you need, but without being complicated or awkward to use.” —
I found Roughdraft very useful for organizing my writing along with my notes (which Roughdraft saves along with the current file in the same directory). That is to say, I think it’s a very useful tool for when you are first developing your story and just writing out some scenes as you try to figure out what it is all going to be about. – http://www.salsbury.f2s.com/rd.htm
5. Notepad
Yes, I said it, Notepad! You don’t need anything more than that to write. Notepad files take up very little space and the interface of notepad is very minimalistic. A bunch of icons, menu items and sidebars will not distract you. I honestly do not know why people do not use it more often.
Since it’s just plain and simple text, anything you write in notepad can then be imported into any other program including all of the ones mentioned above. If Notepad is not enough, there are other notepad-like editors available free with a lot more features. I personally like Notepad++ because it has tabs, which can really help when you need multiple text files open or if you want one to write on and one to keep notes etc. You can also try Notepad2 or TED Notepad or even WordPad if you want.
Now, there are a LOT more free writing resources out there, but I wanted to keep this to the things that I use most. There are also some excellent free word processing programs out there like AbiWord and OpenOffice. I will write another article on other free programs and tools, including free online-only apps.
In the spirit of finishing all the old stuff and not starting new stuff, I have been working on a fiction story I started and then abandoned previously. It’s a piece of contemporary urban fantasy that I started for NaNoWriMo last year and then put to the side after only a few thousand words.
I spent years thinking about and coming up with ideas for an epic fantasy, but realized that I just wasn’t ready skillwise to write it, so I decided to get back to this story tentatively titled Rattle and Thump🙂 I figured it would be short, and good for practice.
Patricia T. O’Conner on First Drafts
The reason for this blog post is so that I can talk to myself about what it is I’m doing. This is my first serious attempt at writing a whole novel. I’m having some trouble with it and honestly, this shit is hard. I’m about 20,000 words in and I’m shooting for about 100,000 which I can probably chop down to 80-90,000 once it’s done.
So, like I was saying, this is just me talking to myself about what’s going on with this story. I wanted to keep a record. Maybe it can also help new writers figure out how to get started with their own stuff.
First off, I’m something of a discovery writer. That means I tend to not plot and outline ahead of time. I just write and see where it goes. The downside of this is that there’s a good chance that a large chunk of what I’m writing is going to disappear when I start the next draft. That is to say, a big chunk of the discovery process is…discovering. So that’s a lot of fruitless writing. However, I also do outline a little. I just do it as I go, as things change in the story. Once I can see where I’m headed, then I can start outlining more and plotting ahead more.
To put this in perspective, when I started writing, I had a definite ending in my mind and a start. However, I had no idea how I would get from one to the other. So I just started writing. After a few thousand words, I have a bunch of new ideas, and I know the material slightly better. Now I have several little scenarios that I know must happen to bridge the gap between beginning to end. So the challenge becomes how do I get from A to B in order to eventually reach Z.
This creates a new set of issues. I don’t even fully know what’s going on yet, and my characters haven’t become human yet, that is to say, I barely know them. The fantasy elements are also a problem. I’m not sure of what type of magic system or what types of beings populate this world. I’m 20k words in and I’m still not absolutely sure if I’ll have the vampires and werewolves and shit like everybody else.
But to go back to the A to B thing. In trying to get to B. In making that attempt, I learn a bunch of new things and the story moves much differently than I expected. Now that changes my pseudo outline and even my ending and also my beginning. I’m not sure, but I think this might be something that stops a lot of writers. Because now, the desire to go back and start over is really strong. You want to make the stuff you wrote previously match the stuff you’re writing now. However, all of the years of writing advice I ever heard tells me this one thing: Finish the rough/first draft!
That is the advice I’m following. I am going to finish this draft before I change anything at all. If I get caught up constantly going back and changing shit and rewriting things, then I’ll never finish. And I’ll also get bored with it, a problem that I am very, very prone to (hence the whole getting old stuff finished thing).
Ernest Hemingway on Writing the First Draft
On a more nuts and bolts level, I’m noticing that it is very, very easy for me to fall into passive voice. I use it all the time. And as somebody that writes articles and copy for others, I realize this is the 666. But I can’t help it. That means that when I go back to do the second draft, I’m sure it’s going to be a super tedious, sentence by sentence rewrite…and that scares me.
One thing that I didn’t realize, and a lot of writing books and writing podcasts don’t talk about it, is that I’m supposed to be writing in scenes. It seems obvious, but it came to me as something of an epiphany. I always thought of chapters flowing from one to the other with each chapter technically being something of a scene. But then I realized that each chapter itself is made up of a series of scenes. I came to understand that was the missing element preventing me from seeing how to segue from one point to another. I didn’t have to write everything between A and B, I just needed to write a series of individual scenes that steer the narrative that way.
This record is my attempt to tell myself that I’m serious this time. I can’t get better unless I write and I have to finish one of these stories. Besides, I may be gone before 2012 lets out. I want to at least make an attempt at doing something I love. Let’s see how it goes and how far we can take it. Unfortunately, working on this story and thinking about it constantly has stalled my work on a bunch of other, non-related stuff…but we’ll figure it out.
If you have any questions about this process, or want me to get into more detail about something particular, feel free to leave a message here or drop me a line and I’ll answer. Maybe we can figure this craziness out together! 🙂
In the next post, I’ll add a bunch of links to people more accomplished and talented than me talking about writing first and rough drafts. I may even add some audio.
Here are 3 poems, written quickly and posted to either to my facebook page, or twitter stream. It seems that since I wrote my post on iambic heptameter, I’ve been stuck writing most my poetry in a sorta semi-rhyming, faux-blank verse version of it (I don’t know the term for it:)) I also learned that I naturally tend towards heavy usage of enjambment…who knew. Well, here they are, enjoy 🙂
Yes, I know I’m late with this. This post is just a quick note for people looking for info. I’m not going to get into all of the details of what NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is all about, I’ll assume you know or at least have access to Wiki…which states:
National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo) is an annual internet-based creative writing project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel between November 1 and November 30.
And yes, there are a few rules as well:
Participants’ novels can be on any theme and in any genre, and in any language. Everything from fanfiction, which uses trademarked characters, to novels in poem format, and even metafiction is allowed…Starting at midnight November 1, novels must reach a minimum of 50,000 words before 11:59:59 PM on November 30, local time. Planning and extensive notes are permitted, but no earlier written material can go into the body of the novel, nor is one allowed to start early and then finish 30 days from that start point.
Participants write either a complete novel of 50,000 words, or simply the first 50,000 words of a novel to be completed later…Some participants set higher goals for themselves, like writing upwards of 100,000 words, or completing two or more separate novels. To win NaNoWriMo, participants must write an average of approximately 1,667 words per day…There is no fee to participate in NaNoWriMo; registration is only required for novel verification.
No official prizes are awarded for length, quality, or speed. Anyone who reaches the 50,000 word mark is declared a winner.
Anyway, here’s some things that might help ya and keep ya motivated
NaNoWriMo Desktop Calendars
Note 2016 – some of these links are no longer relevant as they are for previous years nanowrimos – I updated the list with Margie’s 2016 Calanders
Zabé has created some gorgeous November 2011 calendars with the accumulating word count for each day of writing. It goes up to 50,000 words, but she says that if you have a different goal, she’ll make one for ya 🙂 http://zabe.net/blog/2011/10/nanowrimo-2011-calendars/
Dan also has some Calendars as well – His are more humorous in nature and more varied. He has some for just one week, as well as whole months – check them out here: http://surlymuse.com/2011-nanowrimo-wallpaper/
Margie seems to update her calanders every year – here’s the link to her 2016 calanders.
http://nanocalendars2016.tumblr.com/
NaNoWriMo Word Count Trackers and Report Cards
I always loved the word count trackers. These are Excel sheets preformatted and coded with all the nice little formulas to help you track your word count and your progress. There’s a lot of them out there and it’s easy to find an old one and update to the current year.
I’m not going to get much deeper into it, just like the calendars, these spreadsheets can be found all over the place, try this search. I made this post because I noticed a lot of people were searching for nanowrimo and related info and finding my site. So I’m obliging them. I like being helpful.
If you want more info, or would like to know about some free tools you can use that may help you with your writing, let me know and I’ll speak on that as well.
Below you will find an exercise and an explanation of how fourteeners and iambic heptameter works in writing poetry. You will see three different versions of the same poem with the changes highlighted.
I want to preface this with the fact that I may have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. Always do your own research. That’s why I supply hyperlinks!
Here’s an exercise in creating some traditional (European) forms of poetry. It started with me writing a quick, off-the-cuff poem on my Facebook page. Now, this poem was not meant to be blogged or advertised or anything. It was just something quick and dirty.
I wrote the poem in rhyming quatrains without really thinking about it. This is not unusual as I tend to automatically fall to quatrains a lot when I’m just writing. I suspect it comes from me writing a lot of lyrics, specifically rap lyrics, which I tend to think of in terms of quatrains (16 bars — 1 bar being a line — is 4 quatrains for me).
I found myself wanting to share something of the poetry writing process with my audience — such as it is. Especially those who ask me about my process. Well, this is not specifically my process, but it is a process that you can use.
So here’s the poem. I even recorded it, which you can hear in this post. The recording is the original, unedited version. I may re-record the final version.
The king in all his wisdom saw that something was amiss
The priest, forever pious, saw that something did not fit
And both saw a solution that they knew did not exist
Genocide of mind created so that they could get their wish
Well the king he knew the way he simply told them what to do
And they did it; he was pleased but felt that something was not true
Do they do it off his word or is it just what people do?
Are they slaves by birth or slaves because he wants it to be true?
To test the thought he gave some extra freedoms to one man
And saw the others did not like it, they couldn't comprehend
How one man ('cept the king of course) could be allowed to stand
Above the others, who was he that they should have to bend
They ridiculed him, cast him down and made of him a fool
The king was highly pleased at this and saw it as a tool
As long as scapegoats kept them riled they cared not that he ruled
Therefore, his rule was absolute; fair, unfair or cruel
The priest, he witnessed all of this and had a great idea
He saw that people were like sheep; in his mind it became clear
He would supplant the king and plant within them all a new idea
Once he had their minds and souls, their vision he would then make clear
For if they see what he believes (or at least what he claims to see)
They will see a promise greater than themselves, they will be free
"For you see, the king has made you slaves and I shall make you free.
But in order to be free you must believe and pay the fee.
And of course, that freedom is promised, when at last you lay to rest
Give money to the church and turn the cheek when you're beset.
So…technically, you're still a slave but when you die, you will be blessed!
So obey the king, but give to me...I mean give to God's request!"
The king in all his wisdom saw that something was amiss
The priest, forever pious, saw that something did not fit
And both saw a solution that they knew did not exist
Genocide of mind created so that they could get their wish
What is a Fourteener in Poetry Writing?
My first stanza contains three fourteeners. A fourteener is a 14 syllable line. Alone, you can consider a fourteener as a type of syllabic poetry — which is its own category of poetry types. You may have also noticed I used a repeating rhyme to introduce the king and then again to introduce the priest. You may also note I used the word “free” twice, back to back…like I said, this poem wasn’t for the mainstream.
A good chunk of this poem is already naturally written as a fourteener. This was not by design, it’s just how it came out. That’s how a lot of writing is, especially when employing any sort of rhythm. So, if you’re new to this, don’t beat yourself up trying to create a specific meter, just write and see what you get. You can make a better decision from there.
Let’s see if we can transform this poem into all fourteeners. In order to do this, we may have to change some lines up but still keep the overall meaning. Could be challenging. I’ll be right back with the results.
The king in all his wisdom saw that something was amiss
The priest, forever pious, saw that something did not fit
And both saw a solution that they knew did not exist
Create a genocide of minds so they could get their wish
The king he knew the way he simply told them what to do
They did it; he was pleased but felt that something was not true
Do they do it off his word? Is it just what people do?
Are they born slaves or slaves because he wants it to be true?
To test the thought he gave some extra freedoms to one man
The others did not like it, they just could not comprehend
How one man ('cept the king of course) could be allowed to stand
Above the others, who was he that they should have to bend
They ridiculed him, cast him down and made of him a fool
The king was highly pleased at this and saw it as a tool
As long as scapegoats kept them riled they cared not that he ruled
So his rule was absolute, whether fair, unfair or cruel
The priest, he witnessed all of this and had a great idea
He saw people were like sheep; in his mind it became clear
Supplant the king and plant within them all a new idea
Once he had their minds and souls, their vision he would make clear
If they can see what he believes (or what he claims to see)
They’ll see a promise greater than themselves, they will be free
"For you see, the king has made you slaves, I shall make you free.
In order to be free you must believe and pay the fee.Of course, that freedom is promised, when last you lay to rest
Give money to the church and turn the cheek when you're beset.
Technically, you're still a slave but when you die, you’ll be blessed!
Obey the king, but give to me! I mean, to God's request!"
The king in all his wisdom saw that something was amiss
The priest, forever pious, saw that something did not fit
And both saw a solution that they knew did not exist
Create a genocide of minds so they could get their wish
Okay, so now we got it formatted. Each line is 14 syllables long. You’ll notice that this made it flow smoother in some places, but made it really awkward in others. The reason for this is because I payed attention to syllable count but not meter.
Fourteener’s do no necessarily have to be written how I have it here. It’s possible to break the lines as long as they equal up to 14 syllables. In fact, most fourteener’s that I’ve seen are written in couplets and not quatrains like these.
They can also be broken further down, as long as they contain 7 feet and 14 syllables, which brings us to:
What is Iambic Heptameter in Poetry Writing?
So, we’re going to try to tighten this poem up further by attempting to restrict it to iambic heptameter. What was that you ask? What IS iambic heptameter?
Iambic heptameter is a meter expressed in 7 feet. A foot is a small measurement of meter, usually in syllables. For instance, an iamb is a two-syllable metrical foot. An iamb consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one or a short syllable followed by a long one. Think of it as “da-DUM” – that’s one iamb.
Heptameter is a word that means a meter of 7 iambs. So, 7 iambs gives ya 14 syllables…get it?
There are other types of feet as well, so you don’t have to stick to just iambs, you can mix and match em with others…as long as you know what you’re doing. Let’s get into some examples with this piece.
“The king in all his wisdom saw that something was amiss” – this line is perfect. It flows correctly in iambic heptameter. 14 syllables, 7 iambs – well, maybe not perfect. Depends on how you read it.
But this is how we want ALL of the lines to be.
Oh, one more thing. Did you notice the strikeout I put on the word “and” in the third line? It’s because that word does not have to be there to keep the meter straight. A space of time can be the same as a syllable. Understand?
So, let’s see if we can tame this poem into iambic heptameter.
No, I’m not going to go through this word for word. Instead, I’m going to read it out loud. Wherever I stumble or become unsure of how I should say it, is a place where the meter is screwed. You can also try to read it with a metronome, that can be a great help as well.
Something you should remember though – not all strict meter is always good. You don’t have to constrict your verse for the sake of meter. Many great poets break meter regularly to keep the flow tight. Or to make a specific sort of statement.
For instance, I was okay with how this poem originally sounded when I read it out loud…more or less. By tying it up with meter, I’m less satisfied. Meter can force you to sound almost robotic when it’s not mixed up a bit now and then. Also, a fourteener does NOT have to be in heptameter. They traditionally are, but it’s up to your own discretion.
The king in all his wisdom saw that something was amiss
The priest, forever pious, saw that something did not fit
And both saw a solution that they knew did not exist
Create a genocide of minds so they could get their wish
The king he knew the way he simply told them what to do
They did it, he was pleased but felt that something was not true
Do they just obey his words? Was it just what people do?
Are they born slaves or slaves because he wants it to be true?
To test the thought he gave some extra freedoms to one man
The others did not like it, they just could not comprehend
How one man ('cept the king of course) could be allowed to stand
Above the others, who was he that they should have to bend
They ridiculed him, cast him down and made of him a fool
The king was highly pleased at this and saw it as a tool
As long as scapegoats kept them riled they cared not that he ruled
So his rule was absolute, fair or foul, unfair or cruel
The priest, he witnessed all of this and had a great idea
The people were like unto sheep, his purpose became clear
Supplant the king and plant within them all a new idea
Once he owns their minds and souls, it’s their vision he’d make clear
If they can see what he believes (or what he claims to see)
They’ll see a promise greater than themselves, these devotees
"For you see, the king has made you slaves, I shall make you free.
In order to be free you must believe and pay the fee.
Of course that promised freedom, comes along with final rest
Give money to the church and turn the cheek when you're beset.
Technically, you're still a slave, when you die, you’ll all be blessed!
Obey the king, but give to me! I mean, to God's request!"
The king in all his wisdom saw that something was amiss
The priest, forever pious, saw that something did not fit
And both saw a solution that they knew did not exist
Create a genocide of minds so they could get their wish
Well, that’s that. Now, there’s a bunch of different things I could have done to mix it up and make it fresh. I could have broken the rules of meter, or I could have used something other than iambic heptameter. I could have used alternating 12 and 14 syllable couplets or something. There are an infinite amount of possibilities.
In fact, a more traditional way of breaking up a fourteener in iambic heptameter is to split it between two lines, typically 4 iambs on one and 3 on the other:
The king in all his wisdom saw That something was amiss
The priest forever pious saw That something did not fit
But that would have created an overly lengthy looking poem. However, if I were to take the next step in constricting this poem even further, I would go about breaking it down into this 4/3 iamb structure…but this post has gone on long enough.
Even as it is, I’m sure I didn’t fully accomplish what I was trying to do. The poem needs more work. Maybe somebody who studies these things will chime in and let me know where I erred. This was actually my first time — outside of writing a sonnet in high school — intentionally trying to dissect my verse to give it a specific meter.
I notice, the more practiced make it seem so fluid smooth
I’ll try to practice up until I too can do that too
For further application, you can use these poetic tools in writing other things as well. Apply them to lyrics if you’re looking for a specific sort of cadence — especially devastating when applied to head nodding beats. Use meter in your prose or fiction when you want to convey a specific feeling.
Meter doesn’t mean rhyme. Blank verse consists of unrhymed poetry written in a specific meter. You can use that sort of thing with any writing, not just poetry. Experiment with other forms of meter and different feet. I’ll do the same.
For more information on iambic heptameter and poetry writing:
Things I Have Loved – Frankie (@idowhatilike) – has a blog where pretty much every post is written in iambic heptameter. She hasn’t been around for some years now, but the words are still there.
communal iambic heptameter – forum thread I found with a communal iambic heptameter thing going. It’s probably the best for seeing how different people use it. Some of them are real witty.
I see her dancing with the night she tells me I should come – along
And dance and dance and dance to her song
I glance askance cuz something seems wrong
There is no music – there is no day
There’s just the darkness, the silence of the grave
Walking with my hands out searching for the wall
Looking for the thing that will save me from the fall
Dead dead tired wanna die before I crawl
Don’t wanna get dirty for these lies that stain us all – let’s play
And dance and dance and dance to her song
I glance askance cuz something seems wrong
There is no music – there is no day
There’s just the darkness, the silence of the grave
Oh why do I feel in the end like I’m searching for you
Why did you just leave me here and go searching for you
What did you find – did you find yourself
Or did you find that you were ever nothing more than a ghost
Where did you go – was it better there
Did he tie you up, did he pull your hair
Deliverance, does it come from you
Or does it manifest in the things that I choose to do – last chance
To dance and dance and dance to her song
I glance askance cuz something seems wrong
There is no music – there is no day
There’s just the darkness, the silence of the grave
Yea Though I walk…
*Just some alternative lyrics – I wanted to practice a little to see how out of shape I was in this regard…I may even record them. They are unfinished (as all of my alternative lyrics are) but the words definitely tell a clear story in my head. Maybe I’ll finish these and some others one day and put together a whole alternative album for you guys 🙂 All 3 of ya 😛 * For more of these types of posts, check this tag and for all of my posts with lyrics in general, check this category 🙂
It’s the first part of a planned 3-book series collectively titled Eternal Figments of Reality. It was available to download absolutely free here on the site, but after almost 2 years and over 2,000 downloads, I decided to remove the links. You can now purchase e-book versions from various retailers, as well as print versions.
However, since the individual poems are still on the site, you can use the link above to read them all for free.
Share one man’s journey through a world of poetic verse. Start the voyage with his humble beginnings. Continue down a path of introspection. Join him as he comes to the eventual realization that everything flows ever on. Explore through stanza after stanza of unrestrained free verse. Whether rhy…
Share one man’s journey through a world of poetic verse. Start the voyage with his humble beginnings. Continue down a path of introspection. Join him as he comes to the eventual realization that everything flows ever on. Explore through stanza after stanza of unrestrained free verse. Whether rhym…
The color, the fruit
…the color of the fruit
The word, orange
It used to be called yellowred
One word not two
Things change
Her favorite color was orange
Can you guess her favorite fruit?
She mastered the fine art
Of peeling the skin
In one whole piece
Slowly she would push
Her slender fingers into
The center and divide
Sharing with me the slices
We would watch the sun set
Yellowred on the horizon
She would peel off the
Hard, uncompromising
Cynical armor
Of my outer self
Leaving me raw but whole
She carefully removes
The remaining pith
Slowly, she would push
Herself into my center
And force me to divulge
The secrets of my inner self
Wet and sticky
We share the slices
Bitter and sweet
We plant the seeds
She…squeezes
We entwine
Orange, the unrhymable word…
The subject of this post, “orange”, was suggested to me by Ivy. See this post for more details.
![gonewiththewind2[1]](https://silenciobarnes.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/gonewiththewind21-858x400.png "gonewiththewind2[1]")
![just-another-day[1]](https://i0.wp.com/silenciobarnes.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/just-another-day1.jpg?ssl=1 "Another Day 4")
![1332776386_desolateumbrella_409156[1]](https://silenciobarnes.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/1332776386_desolateumbrella_4091561-1024x580-858x400.png "1332776386_desolateumbrella_409156[1]")
![nothing-rhymes-with-orange-header[1]](https://i0.wp.com/silenciobarnes.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/nothing-rhymes-with-orange-header1.png?ssl=1 "Orange, The Unrhymable Word 10")
![ts_solarflare_free[1]](https://silenciobarnes.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/ts_solarflare_free1-220x160.jpg "ts_solarflare_free[1]")
10 Apr 2012
2 CommentsFree Novel and Fiction Writing Software
Free Novel and Fiction Writing Software
For working writers and amateurs alike, there are a lot of commercial products out there to help you along the way with your writing career. The problem is that many of them are very expensive or have some kind of unnecessarily steep learning curve…or both. Here is some free software you can use to write and help you along with your writing. I’m gearing this article towards fiction writers, but this software is extremely useful to writers of all types.
1. yWriter
It wasn’t until I got serious about my own writing that I realized just how awesome and powerful a tool yWriter is. It is a program for writers created by a writer. yWriter is billed as a word processor with extra features to help you organize your novel. But I think of it as more of a story management tool.
Not only can you write in it, but you can ORGANIZE with it. You can use it to break your work down by scene and chapter. You can make a database of characters, places, items and notes. In fact, of everything in this list, it is probably the most useful, versatile and powerful piece of free writing software. For each scene, you can add a description, POV characters, individual scene notes and goals. It’s all there. – http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html
2. yEdit
yEdit is a simple text editor. You can think of it as notepad but with a couple of extra features. It is very no-frills and no-nonsense. This tool is useful for those of you that need to just type. Save the editing for later. To help with that, yEdit includes a target word count feature. For example, you put in 3000 as your target word count and you can watch it count down to zero as you type the words. This is helpful if you are trying to write with a daily word quota. – http://www.spacejock.com/yEdit2.html
3. Q10
Q10 is a full screen text editor. If you do not know what that means, think of the old word processors. It takes up the entire screen leaving you free of any background distractions. Much like yEdit, this can be a great tool for those of you that need to just sit down and write. It has word count settings and a timer alarm as well. For fun, or just to change it up, it can use typing sound effects.
I use Q10 whenever I want to just write. To put that in perspective, I use yEdit when I am writing segments or scenes. I use Q10 when I just want to pound out a few thousand words with no distractions, which is typically how I start most of my writing. – http://baara.com/q10/
4. Roughdraft
I LOVE Roughdraft. It’s so simple and it just works. Now, Roughdraft is no longer maintained, so it may look a little dated, but it also still works, which is the most important part. — “Although suitable for general use, it has features specifically designed for creative writing: novels, short stories, articles, plays and screenplays. It’s designed to be as practical as possible, offering all the features you need, but without being complicated or awkward to use.” —
I found Roughdraft very useful for organizing my writing along with my notes (which Roughdraft saves along with the current file in the same directory). That is to say, I think it’s a very useful tool for when you are first developing your story and just writing out some scenes as you try to figure out what it is all going to be about. – http://www.salsbury.f2s.com/rd.htm
5. Notepad
Yes, I said it, Notepad! You don’t need anything more than that to write. Notepad files take up very little space and the interface of notepad is very minimalistic. A bunch of icons, menu items and sidebars will not distract you. I honestly do not know why people do not use it more often.
Since it’s just plain and simple text, anything you write in notepad can then be imported into any other program including all of the ones mentioned above. If Notepad is not enough, there are other notepad-like editors available free with a lot more features. I personally like Notepad++ because it has tabs, which can really help when you need multiple text files open or if you want one to write on and one to keep notes etc. You can also try Notepad2 or TED Notepad or even WordPad if you want.
Now, there are a LOT more free writing resources out there, but I wanted to keep this to the things that I use most. There are also some excellent free word processing programs out there like AbiWord and OpenOffice. I will write another article on other free programs and tools, including free online-only apps.
I have been writing articles and poetry for a good long while now, if you want to follow me on my journey to writing my very first novel, then you can start here: https://silenciobarnes.net/writing/writing-the-first-draft-of-my-first-novel-01/
For those that are curious, on this novel, I am using yWriter and yEdit heavily. That’s probably why they got the top spots on this list
https://silenciobarnes.net/writing/writing-fiction/
Share this:
Like this: