Writer's software
 

Hey people, got a question what type of software do you use for writing?

I just got a new laptop, with windows 10, and I downloaded the free trail of grammarly, well it screwed windows up bad. I tried to get the software off, but I had to do a factory reboot (6 hours, to reboot, not fun).

So, bottom line, what software are you using, and what platform (Window 10, apple, or ?) are you using, and what do you think about it.

Thanks Michael.

LibreOffice (on Windows and Linux). The price is right...

I write everything on my iPad Air 2. In Pages. The standard iOS software. For longer stories, I use a Bluetooth keyboard.

I love it. I can set the keyboard to English and just go. I like that I can immediately export to PDF or whatever format I like. Plus, it allows me to write anywhere; slumped on the couch, in bed, at the beach....

I have Windows 10, and I am a cheap student. I got Microsoft Office 2016 365 for €3,99 a year because I am a student. And had a subscription on Grammarly via school, but that ended half a month ago now (unfortunately).

Either I ...
... write directly in a post on getDare and use the (paid) Grammarly plugin.
... write in MS Office 2016 365 (offline) and use the Grammarly Chrome plugin afterwards on getDare before I post it.

Wow, thank for that, and yea, can't beat that price, compare to MS office.

Ok, i'm like techie old fashion. I believe something has to have weight to it. When I first learn to type, in the military, it was a old typewriter, a manual one, back in 1980. So, iPad Air, I look at it, it's like voodoo magic to me. And I used to laugh at my parents when they asked me for help to reset the clock on the VCR machine. (I wonder how many people on the site know what a VCR is, I'm getting old)

Well, Guess what, I guess I'll be going back to Grammarly, because, after rebooting back to factory resetting, it wasn't the software screwing me up, it's the hardware. For some strange reason, my laptop, left clicks itself, so the cursor jumps all over the page. Either I have to return the laptop, or bluetooth a mouse to it to stop it.

Hi from Germany
 

I am journalist and author and wrote nine books in the last seven years. I used MS Office since the first one as the good old Adobe Pagemaker was no longer supported.
After 5000 pages - had no problem whatsoever (and I am no fan of Microsoft).

I agree office is great, but you can't beat the price of LibreOffice. It's 0.00
And I have wrote with MS too, and it's great. But you kind of get tried of them raising their price every year, and not making major changes.

Sorry, as a professional writer I don't care about the price. It has absolutely no importance for me. could be the double or more, I deduct it from taxes.:cool:

For me the ease of using the program, the support, the updates and the possibility of trouble free writing are the major points. It's like the tools of my car mecanic - they are the best there is, no matter the price. And Office is for me a tool to create my books. I don't especially love it, Adobe Pagemaker could do some things better, but after many years I live with it and use id every day.

Yea, I can understand that. But also there seems to be a lot of new software out for writers this year. Like critic, it tells you if your repeating words, for example, "John turned to sally and said," and if you keep on repeating it, it warns you to switch it up, use different words, and so forth. Bla, bla, bla.

When I think of the other software that I thought was interesting and can be helpful, i'll come back. I'm just finishing off at work, and my mind is Shot.

I see. But please never forget that I write my books in german...so I would need a software with language plug-ins and a rather complete thesaurus for this. And I really haven't found anything useable in "day to day writing" ( I write every day between three and 15 pages), with a "search" function (I need often to find some facts in the 400 or so pages that I have already written for a specific book I work on) and a grammatic-control with the newest grammar rules (for german).
This definitely reduces the choice....

In my software experience there are usually multiple software at all different prices ranging from 0 to hundreds and not always for the best reasons. But the one thing I have found is that for ultimate compatibility with different plugins and languages there is some type of charge as there is more coding involved and if you don't use those plugins it is easy to believe that you are being over charged compared to another software that is capable of doing the job you want to do.

It is for that reason that my answer would be its not what software do other people use that is the real question it is what software can do the job you need it to at a price you find acceptable.

That said I use MS Office, because I can and I am used to it, though in history I have also used a range of other writing programs including open office that is a close second to MS O without a price tag.

I write short stories in Scrivener (used to be macOS only, now also available for Windows). Commercial, but a number of unusual features, like character sheets and scratch areas to drop bits of text or research until you know what to do with them. It has a number of presets for formatting, although I haven't used the ones for scripts at all.

For short films and serials I've always used CeltX (which is annoying sometimes, but free). For articles and essays I tend to write in OpenOffice (predates LibreOffice I think, so mostly habit), which I've used for non-fiction for a very long time, going back to the first book I wrote ages ago.

I tried the Grammarly plugins for a while last year, and was disappointed with what it thought was poor grammar and I thought was good style. In particular it struggled with the fiction I was writing for various reasons.

You know what you just said is surprising to me. When I hear Germany, I always think, quality tech, and ahead of it times. Guess I was wrong.

First off, thanks for the reply Miss
What I'm leaning towards to do with the new laptop, is go with MS (so far), and I order some additional hardware to make it easier on myself typing, like a mechanical keyboard, also I won't wear out the keyboard, like I did on my last laptop.

A lot of the software, I have already tried, I didn't like. For example, Plotting, there was one were sticky notes would of been more effect, for a minor outline on the chapter. But MS, or something similar is going to be at the root of my writing.

Ok, that's one of the software I want to try, Scrivener. I glad to hear that you like it, and I'll look up CeltX, and see if it can be helpful to fiction writing.

Thanks.

Betamax was the best system, ah retro tech!

Word processing
 

Then of course there was Lotus AMIpro.

I was a huge fan of Ami Pro. It was such a relief to be able to leave WordPerfect that I still remember my joy. (I think I used it both on Windows and on OS/2.) I never got along with WP - to which I came from WordStar.

AmiPro still works with Windoze, not sure after XP, but no long filename support, Microsoft tend to buyup rival software then either cripple it or bin it.

I've used MS Office (expensive but one of the best there is) and Google Docs (free, just online only). They are my go to, office is worth the investment in the long term. I've written 80,000 word manuscripts there & it has not failed me

Websites/apps like Wattpad, Quotev & Movellas are good for drafting, you can use it a bit like google docs, no need to publish it there. It's good because you can add chapters and create books, then transfer it over to what you want. (Wattpad is my fav of the three). You can write directly in to Literotica too if all you want is a place to save drafts... good communities too if you want more places to be publishing work but be careful with wattpad, q, and movellas, tag everything appropriately!!! I cannot stress this enough.

Scrivener, Evernote (good for transferring between devices & free), Pages (ioS only), Zen Writer are good programs.

Grammarly isn't the best for me... It's good, but I've had too much stuffing around with it. There's free alternatives like Hemingway Writer and Slick Write, etc.