#scrivener

For various reasons, this is now a hot topic. I'm putting my favorites here, please add more in your reblogs. I'm not pointing to Microsoft Word because I hate it.

Local on your computer:

1.

LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/), Win, Linux, Mac.

Looks like early 2000 Word, works great, imports and exports all formats. Saves in OpenDocumentFormat. Combine with something like Dropbox for Cloud Backup.

2.

FocusWriter (https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/) Win, Linux.

Super customizable to make it look pretty, all toolbars hide to be as non-distracting as possible. Can make typewriter sounds as you type, and you can set daily wordcount goals. Saves in OpenDocumentFormat. Combine with something like Dropbox for Cloud Backup.

3.

Scrivener (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview) Win, Mac, iOS

The darling of so many writers. Too many things to fiddle with for me, but I'm sure someone else can sing its praises. You can put the database folder into a Dropbox folder for cloud saving (but make sure to always close the program before shutting down).

Web-based:

4.

Reedsy bookeditor (https://reedsy.com/write-a-book) Browser based, works on Firefox on Android. Be aware that they also have a TOS that forbids pornography on publicly shared documents.

My current writing program. Just enough features to be helpful, not so many that I start fiddling. Writing is chapter based, exports to docx, epub, pdf. You can share chapters (for beta reading) with other people registered at Reedsy.

5.

Novelpad (https://novelpad.co/) Browser based.

Looks very promising, there's a youtuber with really informative videos about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHN8TnwjG1g). I wanted to love it, but the editor didn't work on Firefox on my phone. It might now, but I'm reluctant to switch again.

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did as instructed, but these are the only files inside. everything is (or was) synced on dropbox.

trying really hard not to panic idk what to do 😭

If not Ellipsus, is Scrivener worth it? It's a little pricey for me even with the new user and/or student discount. Have you imported google docs over to it before? Specifically a lot of them.

How is either platforms with cross-device writing? I use my phone to write a lot so that's pretty important to me. I have a windows laptop, iPad and iPhone (I know :/) and I use all three to write. How are either with having multiple documents open at once? With the multi-draft and outlining tools they advertise? Are they good with really long (300+ page and 100K plus) documents? Is the learning curve bad?

I've become a multishipper.

I just checked my project statistics, and as you can see in the screenshot above, the Scrivener file for Fantasy Worlds Collide (FWC) has officially crossed a massive milestone: 520,924 words (and over 3.2 million characters) and a total of 1,489 pages if this was a paperback.

To put that into perspective, this single digital file is now significantly larger than most epic, doorstopper published novels. Even though a massive chunk of this total is pure, deep-dive worldbuilding rather than polished prose, seeing the sheer scale of it laid out in numbers is wild.

For anyone new to my blog, FWC is an original project of mine that weaves in elements of fan fiction, specifically drawing inspiration from Final Fantasy VII (FF7).

The truly crazy part? This half-million-word count is just the digital footprint. It does not include the stacks of physical notebooks filled with Bianca's original concepts dating all the way back to the late '90s and early 2000s, which are currently sitting in storage boxes from the move from my home state to NY. If we factored those in, who knows where the count would be!

Anyway off to continue writing chapter 2 of Child Whisperer