Annual Writing Software Review in Writer’s Digest
One of the Writer’s Digest features I most look forward to each year in the annual review of software for writers. This year’s review is now available in the August issue, currently on newsstands. I presume it will eventually make it onto the magazine’s website, but it’s not yet there.
This year the review is written by WD Contributing Editor Jenna Glatzer. She’s certainly done her homework. Out of 39 products reviewed, twenty-three are new to me. Twenty-three! And I make it my business to track down such software programs. On the other hand, only nine of them are freeware, which is more of my focus, since I never receive evaluation copies from program developers. Out of curiosity, I got out my calculator and discovered I would have to pay $1590.55 to buy them all, not counting shipping costs. The commercial packages cost from $19.95 to $299.95.
Equally surprising to me are the omissions. Virtually none of the programs I actually use are listed. And I have on my computer only six from the WD list.
General word processors are not included. But the article does review a number, though by no means all, of the word processors developed especially for writers.
With all those observations registered, the article still is extremely valuable. Each software gets a paragraph or two, identifying its focus and where it fits into the market. I especially like the tear-out, single-sheet chart listing all the of programs, along with their websites, price, operating system and capability. The chart is divided into three sections: general writing, fiction and scriptwriting. Some of the programs assist with story and character development, plotting and structure. The scriptwriting programs tilt toward formatting assistance, some with story development aids tossed in. Therer are grammar and style checkers. On the business side, the review identifies several submissions trackers, as well as bacoup programs.
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I only discovered your blog a couple of months ago, so perhaps you’ve covered this already and I just missed it, but I have to ask: what are some of the typical features of a special “writer” word processor that would make it superior to just using a regular one? My day job involves a lot of technical writing, and we have different templates for each type of document we need to do. All the formatting gets done more or less automatically so we can concentrate on the content. But all the templates are used in the same word processor.