[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Both yWriter and WriteItNow 5 are messy and non-intuitive monkeys.

yWriter, due to its plethora of confusing clickable menus and old-sytle '90s-ish Windows commands, and windows that bring up other windows that bring up other choices and then duplicate other menus in other locations, etc.

Yeah...see, to me, that doesn't bother me, especially as a lot of the options that LOOK like they are repeated, aren't. As I mentioned....two posts ago?...for example, the "Characters" (as just one example) menu item at the top of the main screen and the Characters menu at the Chapter level and the Characters menu at the scene level all do different things. I kind of like that. But it's not for everyone, I guess. ;-)

WriteItNow 5 - which also has a plethora of windows-within-windows craziness, DOES, however, offer a number of interesting features. But it, too (having been ported over from the 'PC world'), has an old-style '90s-ish look with little itty-bitty buttons and indulges in the menu-craziness that yWriter shares.

Yea. Something about it was just too busy even for my OCD brain.

Basically, these types of programs appeal to various ways the mind works when writing. None of them are bad, in my opinion. They just have different approaches to the same goal.

There must be a reason that Scrivener is the most popular program out of all the programs that are available.

Honestly, I think it's because Scrivener is so damned simple. I mean, when you think about it, it's not a complex program, in the same ways as WIN5 or YW5. But, as I said somewhere in here--a lot of people aren't nearly as anal-retentive as I am about structure and other things that I track using YW. {shrug}. There's no right way or wrong way. Whatever gets you to story is what matters.

However, for some people, Scrivener is overly complicated and also non-intuitive. Other people love this program. I don't love it, but I think it's a wonderful program. It's the program I go to for my writing

See...while Scrivener has a big long tutorial/sample document, I don't think it's complicated at all. I mean...what's complicated? The big bang is the outline pane, on the left (whatever they call that), which heavily mimics Word's Document Map view. That's where you drag-drop files. And the "bottom," where they mimic a sub-directory/folder where you keep your freeform "stuff." I mean, to me, having a folder for "character sketches" in which you just put pages about Suzie that you TYPE is...not exciting.

I suppose it's arguable that some of the tagging options, maybe, could be complicated, but...I think that people like Scrivener just because it's so damn easy. And it's fairly attractive; I think that's what makes it very popular. (You can always tell when something was crafted for Mac first, can't you? The appearance of the thing is always glossier, no matter what the functionality.)

One of the things that became very apparent to me, after trying/using LSBXE, and reading what people had to say about it, was that glossy beat actual functionality, hands-down, every time. People were really attracted to LSB's pretty-pretty, how you could change the "writing desk" (background of the program), and all that. The fact that it was a fairly cumbersome program to use, and that things that you'd THINK would happen, in any rational sense, never did--that was less important. (For example, and this used to drive me insane--it had a "storyboarding function." You could type your scenes in, load an image if you had it, or a storyboard, yadda. And you could drag-drop them around. BUT, here's the thing--if you had chapters associated with those scenes--in other words, if you had text files that went with those scenes--when you were done rearranging them, the program itself did NOTHING. It didn't rearrange the scenes in the new order. You still had to open up the Planner/Outliner, and manually rearrange the scenes in the same order you just rearranged them in the Storyboarding function, even THOUGH the scenes were all identified. I couldn't figure out what the HELL the developer thought the point was. In case I wasn't clear--it would be like using Scrivener's Corkboard function, dragging/dropping the index cards around, and then having to do it AGAIN in the document pane on the left-hand side. Utterly idiotic.) I even asked about it, to be sure I hadn't simply missed the "how to," but no...that was the way it was developed. Beats the hell out of me. But it was glossy and very "important-looking" as a writer's program.

So, when we talk about these programs we are offering a subjective view of what works best for us.

My opinions, if there is any doubt, is stated in the paragraphs above.

Your opinions, if any member wishes to state them, can be conveniently posted below my post.

Isn't it wonderful how opinions can differ? And how no one gets mad?

That reminds me about what my Drill Sergeant once said to me: Oh, wait! I just realized this is a family-friendly site, and some of you may still be eating.

Yeah. Well, who could possibly get MAD about that? I mean, they're just opinions, and half the reason people are contributing to this thread is to offer their opinions about various writer's programs for other people who are looking. (As MY old Drill Sergeant said, "drop and give me 50!" or, "Smoke 'em if you got 'em!," but that was a different time. )

Come on, surely, somebody ELSE around here tried all these programs? Sheesh!!!

Hitch