[Hitch]

Okey-dokey:

So, I downloaded and tried Writer's Blocks, and it would be hard for me to say just how underwhelmed I was. I think if someone uses index cards NOW, pasted up on, say, a wall or a corkboard, then this would be awesome, especially for outlining scenes. For those kinds of visual creatives, it's likely great for that sort of brainstorming, etc.

But, man...it doesn't do much else, IMHO. The blocks themselves have some neat features (for example, you can search for every block that has the word "blue" in it, and change the color of the block--say, to blue), but I can't imagine writing in the damned things, as an actual manuscript. That would drive me bonkers. (I'm sure someone will now pop up and say, "you don't write in them, you do that over there," and tell me about some functionality I missed.) I did take the tutorial. I did not read the entire PDF manual. But for me, it's a no-go.

Again, it has basically none of the awesome features that I love about YW5; no scene goal-conflict-outcome/reaction-dilemma-choice; I didn't see any timelining; I didn't notice anything particularly special for characters. Nor anything about locations, either. I think (again, not claiming I spent 5 hours with it; I spent about two) it's primarily a digital method of using what are effectively index cards, on a big "board," for brainstorming. That would be where I would see it fitting in with someone's writing methodologies.

I still haven't really done much with the other one, WIN5. There really is something about the interface that I find very off-putting. (And, for those of you that thought that YW5 is busy, oh, man, wait until you see this one!). Also, it's a teeny bit hard to judge, because in the demo version, you can't save anything, so it's hard to put it to a decent test. But my 45-minute impression is, nyah. Still doesn't have everything that YW5 has, although, of all the other programs, it has the MOST of what YW5 has.

One thing I've noticed--I think because it's not flashy, it's easy for people to underestimate just how powerful YWriter5 really IS. In assessing all these programs, I've been consistently surprised at seeing just how poorly they really stack up against it. No, it isn't all "pretty pretty" like Scrivener; but man, it does a hell of a lot more. (Yes, Scrivener can output to ePUB, and YW5 can't; but obviously, that's not functionality that matters to me at all. I can see how it would to others, but again, someone would be giving up a lot just to get that.)

So, at the moment, like a great white shark scouring the ocean for chow, I still haven't found THAT program. The "does everything" one. (In fairness: if the developers of LSB had put some more effort in, it actually COULD have been THAT program. It had character outlining and development that was not dissimilar to SNPro; it had myriad methods for outlining; you could have used the "index card approach" of Writer's Blocks, and you can do multi-level outlining in their Planners and Lists. BUT, it had some fatal flaws, not the least of which is, nobody's done bupkus with it in nearly 5 years now, and some of the functionality that you'd expect really wasn't "there" yet. Moreover, it output really funky RTF, and that is a definite failure. Oh, and of course, it had all the foofy crap--store music, pictures, set the background of your "writing board" to whatever color/image/yadda you want, etc.)

AND in fairness, if YW5 had the multi-level outlining that Scrivener has, I wouldn't be using Scrivener. I'm still not sure why I really tried it. As I said, in hindsight, I can do what it does, what I'm really using it for, in Word. What Word can't/doesn't do, quite like Scrivener, is let me use the outlining function with the ability to see the scene NOTES. That is the one thing that isn't quite there, for Word. (Arguably, I could use Word's outlining function, give each scene its title, and make the notes a subhead beneath it, but the tabular layout in Scrivener is easier to read. So, there's a point for it.)

Ergo, still at Snowflake Pro + Scrivener for outlining in 3 levels + YWriter5 for actually doing the writing work. Not the cheapest or simplest solution, but it's the most thorough, for someone like me. I freely admit, most creative folks probably don't want to be quite this OCD. :-) But I'm sort of obsessive about story structure, which I've always felt is the (mostly) unsung hero of successful storytelling. Using these tools helps me keep on track with that.

Offered FWIW.

Hitch