Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
One of the things I did like about LSB is that it can be used portably - you don't actually have to install it. That is not only convenient, it speaks for the external simplicity (lack of OS configuration dependencies) which - I think - makes for good software. (Not all software can get away with it, but that which can, should.)
The fact that it runs okay under Windows 10 would seem to suggest it should continue to work for several more years even without developer support. If you do take the plunge, good luck with it.  |
O.M.G. LSBXE, the memories. I tried this YEARS ago, and it was damn near abandonware, then. If you stick with it, you'll find many things that are just useless about it. Much of it is glitz and gloss, and not actual functionality.
I said this before here, and someone jumped down my throat--I think that
LSB excels at making people FEEL like they're "real writers," with all the shiny. But the reality is, you can do pretty much everything you do in LSB
far more easily using Word. That's the truth. The storyline timeliner is
utterly and completely worthless--the YWriter timeliner is the best in the business, period. (I'm NOT affiliated with anything I discuss here.) While in Ywriter you can just write your scenes, and put down who is in what scene, etc., set the times, and YWriter does all the heavy lifting for you, LSB basiclaly is static--YOU have to put everyting in to it, manually. If you move a scene, oh, too bad, you'll have to redo EVERYTHING in LSB.
The storyboarder is also worthless--you can't create an outline, for example, in one module, and then have it automagically set up the storyboard for you, awaiting images. Nope...it's do it again time. So, set up your outline in the outline module, or your chapters over here, etc., and then do it all over again, in the storyboarder. Change those up, in the outline module? Tough bananas, redo it manually in the storyboarder.
I and several others tried to create a wiki, to create documentation on 'How to" for LSB, but when the developer basically walked away from updating it, well, that was that.
YWriter is woefully underappreciated, to be honest. It's not "pretty" like Scrivener or LSB, it doesn't sit there and stroke anyone's ego. It doesn't have a "put your favorite music here" section. It doesn't have an "inspiration board" or any of that, but it bygod has the nuts and bolts. You can list locations, objects (cars and other items that are always getting lost in stories, about which you invariably read here and there, how a car is at location X in chapter 2 and magically at location Y in chapter 3, with no explanation for how it got where...); the timeliner is first class. You can work in scenes--in fact, that's how YWriter works, is in scenes.
I think that folks get intimdated by Ywriter. It looks not-pretty, and confusing, at first, so they give up. It's a shame, because I've literally used every single type of writing software out there (we have to test everything, because we get everything from Word files to Pages to RTFs to Powerpoint to Scriv to younameit files), including programs that probably 90% of the writing community have never heard of--and of all of them, pound for pound--completely IGNORING MONEY, mind you--YWriter
simply does the MOST of any of them. Sure, it doesn't have the "corkboard" effect of Scrivener--but it has the same functionality. Honestly, I think that Scrivener is MORE confusing than YWriter, but Scrivener is also quite glitzy.
Once you spend a day or two with it, Ywriter is really quite simple to use. You want complex, hell, try Power Structure. That'll blow your skirt up, and it has a lot of "wowza" to it, too. There's Dramatica Pro, Novel Factory..the list goes on. But bottom line...while many of these programs are glitzy, the real functionality, of course, is being able to WRITE.
So, whatever gets you writing is the "write" program. (Sorry, couldn't resist the homonym error for the cheap chuckle.) But I wouldn't just abandon Ywriter, if you haven't given it a few hours' of time with a WEE peek at the instructions.
I WOULD urge you not to waste money on LSB, however. You're simply throwing money at someone that's made it patently obvious that he has no interest in maintaining or upgrading that software. Hell, check out the Yahoo group for LSB users, you'll see what I mean. I think I had one of the last Yahoo conversations with him, and yeah,
that was around 2011.
HTH.
Hitch