Another writer’s software we have found through one of the many newsletters we get from other writers is called yWriter. It is a free, fully-functional writers software package that was created by a writer and offered for free on his website. You can register your copy for $11.95/$24.95 which he states up-front doesn’t really entitle you to anything special right now. It is just a way to help support further developments of the software and he may give registered users access to the future beta versions before offering to any other users. He also offers eBook formatting assistance and manuscript evaluation services which registered users get a discount on.
Who designed it?
I’m Simon Haynes, the designer and programmer. I have twenty-five years computer programming experience and I’m also the author of a science fiction comedy series and a new middle-grade science fiction comedy for ages 9-12. ALL of my novels were written in yWriter.
Because I’m an experienced programmer AND a published author, yWriter contains a bunch of tools a working novelist will find useful, and nothing some marketing expert came up with to promote additional sales.
yWriter is a stripped down version of Scrivener in that it only includes the essential elements for writing fiction stories and not so much for non-fiction books. It does help you compartmentalize your writing and breaking down into chapters, scenes, characters, locations and the like. You can add pictures, and other files to reference during your writing which is nice. It has a compiler to create your first draft. The programmer also has an app for the program that costs only $4.99 using DropBox for porting your work between the two. So for those who are writing a fiction story why not give it a try. It shouldn’t take you very long to figure out how to use it and might even be able to create more books a little bit faster once you become comfortable using it.
