Why Use yWRITER?

When every successful author you know is using scrivener!

REASON #1: WHAT WRITING TOOL YOU USE DOESNT MAKE YOU FAMOUS!

I think as fans of these famous bloggers, authors and bestsellers we get wrapped up in wanting to be in there shoes. Needing to know their secret’s of success, that we automatically want to use the same things they do. Newsflash, Harry Potter was written with plain old pen and paper. But does that mean I’m going to go out and invest in a quill pen (yes they still sell those) like Shakespeare in the hopes that I will someday be recognized. Absolutely not check your fangirling/fanboying at the door and find what works for you.

REASON #2: THE FEATURES ARE COMPREHENSIVE.

I’ve written two fanfiction novella’s and just finished my first original novel on yWriter so I can speak from experience on this. It does everything that every other software you download or register with online does. It features a word count and saves your document intermittently. Remind me to tell you the story of the black out in the comments.

I might as well tell you now its pretty short. I’m writing my novel and the water company outside cuts the power. I had completely forgotten that they were scheduled to do that. When it comes back on my work is still there exactly where I left it. Anti-Climatic right. Well, when your writing a novel or school dissertation or article. You need anticlimactic, as cool as those what happened when I lost my docs stories are. You still lost your docs and caused yourself untold amounts of stress and panic as you tried to recall everything you wrote.

So every time my husband pulls the chord out of the wall because I’ve been writing to long. Or my clumsy prone brother trips over it. I don’t even bother to check if it’s still there because it is. Waiting on me when I return the next morning or fix the chord. I can’t buy that kind of relief and I don’t have to because its free. #StarvingWriter

Second best feature is the speech engine. You can have a voice actually read the document aloud to you. So you can catch those errors that you become blind to. You may frown and say, I’m not interested in those robotic GPS type voices, but you can actually set the speed of the speech engine. Virtually eliminating that he. . . .ran . . .down. . . the. . .hall, type talking some programs do.

REASON #3: EASE OF USE

Setup matters as well, at least to me. YWriter breaks down your chapters that can be further split up into scenes. When I was deciding whether to go with this program or not. It was important for me to be able to see my story the way it would be in the book. And not something that I would have to glue together later. That’s mostly a preference issue.

Other things that make a big impact on choosing this program or not is that you can add more details to each scene. Such as what time it is in the scene and how long does the scene last. Writing a historical adventure that sets place over several weeks. This actually helped me keep up with whether it was day or night and how much time had passed. And yes writing almost 106,000 words you can forget if your characters supposed to be getting up or going to sleep.

There are many more features that I haven’t even mentioned. Like inserting characters, locations and objects/items all aimed at keeping you organized. Or in my case helping me remember my minor characters and their backstories. And I do use them all to a lesser extent. The program also lets you input an outline, draft and first draft etc.

At this point you maybe asking yourself and me, well that’s all well and good, but you are contradicting reason number 1. And my answer to that is no because although I think YWRITER is a solid program. It’s not going to be right for everyone. I challenge my readers to find a free program that is before succumbing to Scrivener and its prices.

CONS:

REASON #1: LIMITED SAVING CAPABILITIES

It only saves your book in RTF and HTML format. So far I have not come across any issues with others opening it. This could be a deal breaker for some.

REASON #2: INTERFACE ISN’T VERY PRETTY

It didn’t matter to me, but compared to some of its rivals it looks like something that a web designer came up with in there basement circa 1999.

So here are other free programs that will do the true starving artist/student/teacher justice:

Scrivener isn’t a lot of money, but in the world of self publishing where you are paying for everything. Which I am. I could use a break on my writing tool. But if scrivener is the tool that works for you at least you have done your due diligence to ensure that there’s nothing better out there for you.

DISCLAIMER: I have since switched to Open Office due to a nifty trick I learned with formatting. Simply because it helps keep me motivated to keep writing, but I’m keeping this article up here because its still true. Find what works for you.

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