Getting Creative: Writing Software

If you’re a writer of any kind, you’ll know that sometimes your regular word processors just don’t cut the mustard and you need something a little extra. This is especially true for creative writers, and even more so if you don’t want to find yourself buried in piles and piles of loose pages and notebooks. With this in mind, we’ve taken a look at some of the best writing software to recommend to you creatives out there, in the hopes that you’ll find something to make your life a little easier and keep your creativity flowing!

Fantastic writing software

Microsoft Office/OpenOffice/Libre Office

Starting off with the obvious, but a word processor is all you really need when it comes down to writing. As long as you can get your words down, you’re good and all of the above do this perfectly well. Microsoft Office now comes in the form of a subscription service, but both Open Office and Libre Office are free software packages which mimic Microsoft Office’s functions. While the Microsoft offering has slightly more features, on the face of it all three do basically the same thing – no frills word processing.

Scrivener

For something a little more fancy that caters particularly well to writers of all creative paths, try out Scrivener. Scrivener is a paid software package from Literature and Latte, and really is the daddy of writing software. While the software isn’t the cheapest, they offer frequent discounts to “winner” of NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month) that makes it infinitely more affordable – sometimes up to 50% off.

Scrivener offers templates for a wide number of project types, and allows you to create plenty of different boards and sub-categories for every little thing in your writing project, including notes, characters, chapters, and so on.

Novlr

Novlr is relatively new to the writing scene, and totes itself as being created “for writers, by writers.” It’s a browser based subscription service currently priced at $10 a month and is fast growing in popularity. The features are limited at the moment, but there are plenty new features on their way as demonstrated by the “features map” displayed on the website.

The Novlr team are committed to taking direction and input from their users, constantly asking for feedback on their social networks and allowing users to vote on proposed features that are in the pipeline. The current features include a pretty decent writing screen that allows users to split their work into chapters and notes, very comprehensive writing statistics with a goal screen for NaNoWriMo participants and the ability to write without distraction.

Write or Die

Write or Die is a little different to the software we’ve already spoken about, in that it aims to encourage you to write and stay focused as well as providing you a screen in which to do so. It encourages the writing by offering a plethora of “punishments” for stopping writing during a set time period, and even encouragement by playing the music you want to hear when you’re writing and fading the music out when you stop, amongst other things.

Although the actual word processing part of Write or Die is pretty no-frills, it is a great way to get more done. You can use it in your browser for free, download a paid version to your desktop or even make use of their mobile app for getting creative on the go.

Offcloud, your cloud-based download manager

When you’ve chosen the software you’d like to use to make your life easier, and enrich your day to day life, it’s important to make sure you back it up so it doesn’t get lost, and cloud storage is a great way to do that. If you’re just looking to try out Offcloud’s cloud storage service and the range of other brilliant benefits we offer, you absolutely can. You’ll get 10GB of storage with 100 direct links with a free account right off the bat, so you only need to sign up to a paid account if you like what you see! You can back up your software installers and and of your creations with Offcloud, easily, for access any time, any where later on.