Exploring Book-Writing Programs

By Jason Boog 

ywriter.jpgConsidered blasphemy by some and life-changing by others, book-writing computer programs have helped push authors down the road towards writing the Great 21st Century American Novel.

A number of software companies sell pricey programs to help you write your next novel or screenplay, as this excellent list reveals. GalleyCat uncovered one popular and free writing program called YWriter. Developed by a novelist (he wrote “Hal SpaceJock“) and a programmer, will help writers organize a large project. If you have used any sort of writing program in your work, email GalleyCat to be included in a future feature.

Here’s more from YWriter: “It will not write your novel for you, suggest plot ideas or perform creative tasks of any kind. It does help you keep track of your work, leaving your mind free to create…I really struggled with my first novel because I wrote slabs of text into a big word processor file and I just couldn’t make sense of the whole thing at once … As a programmer I’m used to dealing with projects broken into source files and modules, and I never lose track of my code. I decided to apply the same working method to my novels … and yWriter was the result.”