I’ve seen a lot of posts on reddit recently on what’s the Best Software/Wordprocessor/Plotting system to use for the beginning writer and thought I’d give my two cents here, where I have some control over the flames. Keep in mind this is personal- Your Milage may, and in fact will vary.

Wordprocessor- Open Office Writer. Yes, there are smaller, faster, more responsive programs. But nothing matches the power of Open Office for the proce (Free). Completely MS Office compatible, you can replace the 60 day trial version of Bill Gate’s office suite for no investment. I also use the Writer’s Tools Plugin, and this Open Office Book Writing Template.

For My Online presence, I use Gmail and iGoogle- I Have iGoogle tabbed for research, blog reading and news to support my websites.

Plotting? I’ve tried a lot, but nver found anything I liked as much as How to Write a Movie in 21 Days. I use the 9 Minute Movie to begin to plot, and expand as needed. I also have found King’s insights in how you age affects your writing to be spot on. I’ve also copied the scene summaries from the Writer’s Dream Kit 4.0 into the template above: That helps keep me on track. However, I’ve found using the actual Dramactica system cumbersome: It’s too jargony and tries to go about re-inventing the wheel.

Submission tracker? SONAR by Spacejock

That’s basically my set up right there. I’ve been playing with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, having upgraded from the useless Essentials to the Standard when i went to Windows 7. Personally, I find it too slow and too full of errors to work as a straight dictation system for writers. Right now I’m experimenting with using a Sony Voice Recorder during my commute and then Playing it back into a dictation window while I prepare and eat dinner. right now, I’m getting about an extra fifteen minutes of writing in this way while I drive, but it’s taking almost as long to correct the dictation and save it.

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WHat Does this have to do with writing? Nothing. I just like the planning, the creativity.

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God, I Can’t wait for this to come around here.

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My Story Writer writing software brings technology to the creative writing process so that you now have a structure for organizing all of your writing projects. You bring the ideas or use the brainstorming functionality to create some and My Story Writer delivers a way to control the writing process the way you want to from conceptualization of your story idea to the day when you submit your manuscript for publication.

With your all of your ideas about characters, plot, setting and story details centralized and organized, you can stay focused on the most important task at hand: writing your novel.

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