1/12/2023 0 Comments Storyist vs storymillNET technology - notoriously clunky), or the complexity of the function that is to blame. The question is, is it the developer’s lack of skill, the coding environment (I think IM uses. It seems to me that this in and of itself is crying out for a software… IdeaMason is built to do this arduous work, but seems too unweildy. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be in a long history to track all the footnotes and sources. However, there are many tasks in nonfiction that could be made much more quick and painless with the right software. Well, I suppose it is true that nonfiction is often-though not always (think of the great true crime accounts)-more linear than fiction, so might need less emphasis on structuring tools… so an information manager and a word processor would certainly serve one’s purpose. With non-fiction, the information-gathering phase is where most help is needed. For pulling it all together, a text editor will do me just fine.įor fiction, on the other hand, specialist software such as PageFour, or Movie Magic Screenwriter for scriptwriting, do help the writing and outlining process.Īlthough it’s risky turning this one example into a broad generalization, I think many fiction writers need more help from software later in the process. Finding the perfect ‘data dump’ has been a never-ending search. Wearing my journalist hat, I find that the key piece of software for me is the one I use for data gathering and retrieval. Freemind, on the other hand, advertises its suitability for writing a philosophical treatise, using only Freemind’s native capacity. MindManager, for example, has a special pricey module for screenwriting. Screenwriters, for example, have standardized, I think, on a Mac program.Īlso, fiction writing has particular demands, to which ordinary tools are poorly adapted. I wonder about the distribution, if you limit it to Mac users. >for nonfiction would have a broader market potential. >journalists and scholars are all writing nonfiction. >U.S., but I assume it is the same elsewhere) than books of fiction. >There are far more nonfiction books published each year (at least in the For factualists there are as you say only the apps you mention and in addition perhaps Tinderbox. Incidentally there are several more pieces of fiction software than you mention: apart from the WriteItNows, Power Structures and Power Writes, there are New Novelist, Bookwriter, MyNovel and this new one (which you may have seen elsewhere). And of course as you point out, non-fiction may have functionality demands that fiction does not. I am sure that the market for non-fiction writing is “real” (or whatever the opposite of “aspirational” is). But as a wise man once said: “Everybody thinks they haves a book inside them - and that’s where it should stay.” Everyone seems to think they can drop down to the local Starbucks for a few hours a week with their laptop and special software, having read Vogler, McKee or Field, and churn out a well-turned tale. If the market for fiction-writing software is growing, so is the market for “how-to” books. support for tables, formulas, footnotes, indices, etc…)? Or am I just not aware of or remembing the scads of software for nonfiction?Īnyway, this is just an observation and I’m curious to see what others think.įiction is an “aspirational” market, or wannabe as you say. Is the issue that fiction writing requires more specialized tools than nonfiction? Are there more “wannabe” fiction writers than nonfiction writers? Are the demands of nonfiction writing more complex and therefore harder to code (i.e. On the PC, there are IdeaMason, Nota Bene, and ndxCards. There are applications that have a foot in either genre:Īnd, of course, there are the basic word processors.īut I can’t think of one Mac-based application that is designed specifically for nonfiction. (I am doing this from memory, so I know I’m forgetting some.) Scrivener (which can be used effectively for nonfiction, but which is definitely aimed at novelists) On the Mac side you have the following applications geared for fiction: So it would seem that software for nonfiction would have a broader market potential. Additionally, journalists and scholars are all writing nonfiction. There are far more nonfiction books published each year (at least in the U.S., but I assume it is the same elsewhere) than books of fiction. Seeing Hugh’s note about Writer’s Cafe on the previous thread got me wondering why it is that there are more applications geared toward fiction writing than toward nonfiction.
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