Like Michael Hyatt, I strongly believe in recommending programs I use a lot. I’ve found if I keep silent about a program, it just… disappears! Like Quicksite Website Builder. I loved that program back in the 1990’s.
So what am I using, and for what? Let’s take a look!
Scrivener. I can’t talk enough about how great this program is. I’ve written blog posts both recommending it, and trying to expose the madness of trying to use Libreoffice, Open Office or Microsoft Office to write a book. Scrivener has a million features that speed up the writing process alarmingly. No more “seven years to write a book”! Scrivener has a corkboard to pin ideas and scenes on, templates for locations and characters to fill in descriptions and bio’s, and more! I also write this blog in it. The eBooks I’ll be giving away in the future will also be written in Scrivener. And once I take the plunge into social media, I’ll be planning my writers’ platform campaigns on it.
Dropbox. Dropbox is more than just a cloud backup service. If you connect to a publisher or a producer via a shared folder, they know when you’re working on something. Just enough to make you paranoid when you get the dreaded message, “so and so edited your shared file…”. A recent corruption of my Windows and the mess from resetting everything has made me a sincere believer in Cloud Storage. I save all my movie scripts and my Scrivener writing files to Dropbox!
Evernote. The description of this I got from Michael Hyatt really wasn’t enough. He described it as a “note taking research tool” – but Evernote’s staff describes this as “Your brain on the internet”. They’re not wrong! I used to print PDF’s on my hard drive for later study and research, but that stopped when I got Evernote. Many Evernote users are transferring to OneNote, which makes no sense to me… I’m finding a million uses for Evernote. Seriously, I hope this service keeps going for another 50 years, so I don’t have to live without it! I clip images, web pages, Zillow house listings, articles, bookmarks! I make to do lists, notes to my self, journal entries (when I remember to! Aaaugh!), ideas, lists, appointments, contact info… and a hundred other things I’m forgetting.
Final Draft. There is no substitute for writing Screenplays. I think that Screenplay writing is a necessary skill for novelists to learn – nothing else will teach you how to be CONCISE with your words, and hard hitting with dialogue, beats and emotional impact. I know there’s other software out there for writing Screenplays… but this is really the only one you should get. Save up for it, and try Fade In until you can afford Final Draft.
Dramatica. It’s huge, bulky, poorly explained it its documentation, clunky, ugly… and there’s no substitute to make you THINK your way through your novels! It asks a million really annoying questions about how your characters interact. Your supporting character has a character arc … so how does that impact the protagonist? ARGH! A Million questions like that! It’s great. Expensive. Use Contour while you save up for it.
Conclusion
These are the five programs I cannot do without as a writer!
