Episode 195: The Best Writing Software

The Pulp Writer Show

In this week's episode, we take a look at the pros and cons of some of the most popular writing software, and a share a preview of the new HALF-ELVEN THIEF audiobook narrated by Leanne Woodward.

I'm hoping to start on SHIELD OF DARKNESS soon, so let's look back at some of the DRAGONSKULL audiobooks! This coupon code will get you 25% off the audiobook of DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store:

SPRINGSQUIRE

The coupon code is valid through April 23rd, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered!

Transcript

00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 195 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 5th, 2024 and today we are talking about the pros and cons of different types of writing software. We also have an update on my current writing projects and as usual, Question of the Week. Before we get into that, let's do Coupon of the Week. For this week's coupon, I'm hoping to start on Shield of Darkness soon. So let's look back at some of the Dragonskull audiobooks. The following coupon code will get you 25% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire at my Payhip store and that is SPRINGSQUIRE. Again that is SPRINGSQUIRE and that will be in the show notes. This coupon code will get you 25% off Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire audiobook, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills. This coupon code will be valid through April the 23rd, 2024. If you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered.

Now for an update on my current writing projects. The rough draft of Wizard Thief is done. It came to about 74,000 words, which means it is about 15,000 words longer than the first book. I suspect no one will complain. I am now writing Thief’s Favor, an ebook short story set in the world of Wizard-Thief. Newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Thief’s Favor when Wizard-Thief comes out, hopefully before April is over. I am also 19,000 words into Cloak of Titans and after Wizard-Thief is published that will be my main project and then once Cloak of Titans is done, it'll be back to Ridmark and Andomhaim with Shield of Darkness.

In audiobook news, the audiobook of Half-Elven Thief is done, as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward. You can get it at all the usual audio bookstores, Audible, and all the others except for Google Play. For some reason, they seem to be having slow uptake on audiobooks for the last couple of weeks, and hopefully that should be cleared up soon. Otherwise, you can get Half-Elven Thief, as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward at all the usual audiobook stores, and we will include a sample of the audiobook at the end of this podcast episode. So hang around for that.

00:02:13 Question of the Week

Now, for this week's question of the week, which we do have interesting discussions on my blog and Facebook page. This week's question of the week was: what was the first musical album you ever purchased with your own money? No wrong answers, obviously. The idea for this week's question arrived because over Easter weekend I helped someone set up a device for ripping LP records to MP3. This was an interesting experience because it was in fact the first time I had ever attempted to use an LP record in any form, since by the time I became interested in purchasing music (more on that at the end of the segment), the LP era was well and truly over. Or was it? I thought it was amusing that vinyl outsold CDs in 2023 because as I learned firsthand, when I was setting up this LP ripper, vinyl is so much more cumbersome and fragile than either CD or streaming. Anyway, we asked people what their first album they purchased with their own money was and here are some of the answers.

Malcolm says War of the Worlds LP vinyl.

Justin says Rush, A Farewell to Kings on cassette tape. In the mid ‘90s, my daughters found my box of cassettes, a legacy of my military days, and it immediately became theirs.

ABM says my first album (well in this case, CD) was Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt.

Chris says Grand Funk Railroad, Survival. I’m that old, lol.

Bonnie says Chicago Transit Authority and K-TEL Hits of the Month. Had “Cover of The Rolling Stone” on it.

Brad says Jaws 1975 and that set me on the path of being a lifelong fan and rabid collector of film music.

Venus says: my last day of 8th grade, I bought Annihilator-Alice in Hell and Metal Church-Blessing in Disguise. Same day, same store, same transaction.

Cheryl says my very first purchase at the age of 14 back in the ‘60s was an album by the Walker Brothers from a secondhand shop. The first new album was Sticky Fingers, Rolling Stones, 1971.

Tom says the Trainspotting soundtrack.

Pamela says the Letterman 1968 Going Out of my Head.

Michael says the soundtrack for Mad Max-Beyond Thunderdome, a musical feast of Jean Michel Jarre crossed with Tina Turner. On cassette tape, naturally.

Scott says Guns and Roses, Appetite for Destruction.

Brandy says Sisters of Mercy, Vision Thing.

Rhion says I grew up in a college town and by age 4 I had a full, green milk of LPs from the discount bin. By five, I had four. I had my own personal collection and my own stereo because my uncle would go to dorm dumpsters at the end of the semester to grab stereos, et cetera, to refurbish. My first purchase was Oingo Boingo's Only a Lad and my second was Men at Work. They were $0.75 each. I remember because it was $0.25 over my budget. I had to ask for a quarter from my uncle.

And finally, John says Leonard Nimoy Sings at a garage sale for twenty-five cents. It had The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins on it. Oh dear. If you have never seen The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, which is a song about Bilbo Baggins sung by Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame, once you've finished listening to this podcast episode, go to YouTube, search for The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins and watch the music video of Leonard Nimoy singing The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. It is hilarious.

Thanks to everyone for their comments for Question of the Week. For myself, my answer for what the first musical album I ever purchased was a bit odd because it was, I suspect it was later than most of the people who mentioned this and the reason for that is I have a very odd relationship with popular music because for some reason I almost always have a hard time understanding song lyrics. Song lyrics usually sound like either monotonous droning or warbling to my ear. I don't know why. My brain just works that way. One of the few exceptions is Johnny Cash, who I can usually understand on the first try without any difficulty. Because of that, I've never really connected with most popular music, whether way back when I was a teenager or in the modern age. To this day, I still gravitate towards the soundtracks of computer games and movies that I like.

So the first soundtrack I deliberately purchased with my own money was part of a computer game collection, specifically, the Quest for Glory collection, which came out in 1997 and that came with a CD of Quest for the Glory 5: Dragon Fire soundtrack, which I wanted. I already had all the Quest for Glory games on CD or in some cases floppy disk, but I bought that collection just so I could have the soundtrack CD. 27 years later, I still have it and I listened to that soundtrack while working on the final scenes of Wizard-Thief.

00:07:12 Main Topic: Pros and Cons of Writing Software

Now let's venture into our main topic of the week, the pros and cons of the best writing software. I got thinking about this because a few years ago I was at the gym. Usually when I'm at the gym, I go on the treadmill and I bring a tablet with me with an ebook and whether I'm running or walking or whatever, I will read on the treadmill. While I was doing this, an elderly gentleman came up next to me on the next treadmill and asked if I knew of any word processing programs that would work on an Android tablet. Boy, did I have answers for him. I started to describe the various pros and cons of different writing software, and he very quickly got bored, made a polite excuse, and wandered away.

However, this is a writing podcast with people who are interested in the business of writing, and so I thought it would be a good topic for this week's show because if you ever want your book to be read by other people, if you're not just, you know, handwriting it in a journal for your own emotional satisfaction, then at some point you will probably have to convert your book to a digital file and you will need a software program to do that, and if you're really serious about writing, you will probably need a word processor of some kind or a similar program.

So the first one we're going to look at is one that many indie and traditional writers swear by. It's called Scrivener, and it is a program specifically designed for writing books or novels. The pros: it is designed specifically for writing. It has features for outlining, breaking documents into chapters, and tracking writing goals, etc. It has a one-time cost of $60.00 US instead of a subscription, which is increasingly rare nowadays since everything seems to require a subscription instead of a one-time price. And as an added bonus, they offer a free trial so you can try it out and see if it is to your liking. They offer a student discount, where if you buy it with a valid.edu address, you should be able to get a discount.

So now here are the cons. The learning curve on Scrivener is pretty high. For basic writing, for something like Microsoft Word, you just open up Word to a blank document, start typing, and if you just want to do that, then the program will definitely meet your need. Scrivener is a bit harder to learn and you would probably benefit from watching a few tutorial videos on how to use it beforehand. I personally do not use Scrivener, though I don't object to it obviously because I know many indies and tradpub writers who know what they're doing swear by it, but for me it is kind of overkill and I don't use it.

If you are thinking about Scrivener, it's probably good to ask yourself, will you actually use the extra features? Because my own writing process is pretty simple. I just type out an outline in one Word document, and then I type out the rough draft in a different Word document, and I don't need fancy outlining software or something like that for my process. That's not to say you can't use fancy outlining software, or that the software isn't good.

You might remember last year on podcast I had an interview with Troy Lambert of Plottr, which is a very excellent program designed to help you outline your novel but if that's not something you're interested in doing, then Scrivener will probably be overkill for you. Scribner is probably best for people who take extensive notes on their work, especially if they're trying to organize research based on the chapters where it's needed. It may be best for the kind of people who enjoy curating Notion and Trello accounts and they're able to think about their book in a visual way. It is also good for people who extensively revise blocks of text within a chapter or move chapters around a lot. If that sounds like your writing process, and it sounds like something would be good for you, then it is definitely worth giving the free trial of Scrivener a try.

Now let's move on to a more general word processing program and one that probably many people out there are familiar with: Google Docs. That is part of the Google suite of office software. You can do PowerPoint-esque presentations, spreadsheets, and documents in Google Docs. The biggest pro of Google Docs is that it's free. All you need to do is sign up for a free Google account and then you have free access to Google Docs and can start typing.

It is very easy to use between multiple devices since it runs primarily in a web browser. If you are using one computer, you can close out and open a web browser on a different computer and use it that way. There are dedicated apps for both Android and iOS devices. It's very easy to share between multiple people and accounts and collaborate in real time, and this is honestly its biggest advantage over Microsoft Office besides the cost. Autosave also works extremely well.

However, like everything else in life, there are cons. One of the cons of Google Docs is that it gets really slow with large files. I did try to write a book in Google Docs once and I tried a couple of short stories. The short stories are fine. If you try to write a novel in Google Docs, I found that starts to get really slow after about the 25,000 word mark or so. For obvious reasons, since Google Docs is an online service, it is very hard to use without an Internet connection. Perhaps the most important con of all is to be sure to back up to an additional location. If you lose access to your Google account for whatever reason, that means you lose access to all your files, including the book you were working on in Google Docs. So if you're using Google Docs, it's a good idea, it's in fact an excellent and imperative idea, to download your document every so often and save it in another location.

Now let's move on to probably the most common word processing software on the planet as of this recording, Microsoft Word. Full disclosure, that is what I use most of the time. In fact, my podcast notes are in a Microsoft Word document. The pros are that you've probably already heard of it and many people are familiar with this product through work or school. If you've had an office job, you've probably used Microsoft Word at some point. And if you have gone through the modern educational system, there's a very good chance that you used Microsoft Word or Google Docs in school. Another advantage is that it's very easy to find online tutorials from Microsoft Office products. Another advantage is that Word is essentially the industry standard for publishing, which makes it a lot easier to share with the editors, translators, beta readers, etcetera. There are a couple of cons, though. Microsoft, like many other software companies, has been switching heavily to the subscription model, so I believe they still sell individual licenses for Office where it's a one-time fee, but then it's tied to a specific computer forever. If you want to really use Office, you have to get a Microsoft 365 subscription, which is often kind of a bummer if you are on a limited budget, which is why it's good there are free options like Google Docs available.

Another con of Microsoft Word is that the program is, at this point, 41 years old. The first version of Word was released in 1983. Obviously, it has changed a great deal since then but feature after feature has been built up and piled onto Word to the point where in all honesty (this is as someone who uses Microsoft Word pretty much every single day for the last 15 years), it has a monstrous maze of overlapping and interlocking features. There's a common meme about how if you try to move a bullet point half an inch in Word, you'll start hearing sirens and explosions outside and your entire document will be messed up. This is not far from the truth. For just straight typing, Word is fine, but for more elaborate stuff it quickly becomes a big headache.

Another con is that the real time collaboration features like Google Docs has are definitely lacking, and you really can't do that well with Word. If that's not something you do, it's not something you need to worry about but if you do a lot of collaboration, that is something to keep in mind. Again, in full disclosure, I could sit here for the next two hours and talk about the various bad experiences I've had with Microsoft Word, but the fact of the matter is, I've written 150 novels and I've written most of them in Microsoft Word. So it is right now the program I use to write.

So on to the next writing suite of software. I wrote most of my books in Microsoft Word, but the ones I haven't written in Word I've written in LibreOffice, which is a free office suite that you can download for free. It doesn't require an Internet connection once it's downloaded. So let's go to the pros. It's free and open source. The interface kind of sort of looks like Microsoft Word, so if you are familiar with Word, the learning curve is not terribly steep. Some think that LibreOffice is faster than Word. Depending on how your system is configured, LibreOffice can be quite a bit faster than Word, having used both. LibreOffice is probably the best for privacy advocates, especially for those who are concerned about Microsoft and Google storing their work in their cloud services and possibly training various AIs on it.

For myself, that's not something I worry about a great deal, because all my stuff has been pirated extensively for years, and as we all know, most of the big AIs out now were trained on pirated data, which they're getting sued about now. From my point of view, the horse is already out in the out of the barn for this, so there's no point in worrying about it. LibreOffice also has the advantage of being interoperable with most file formats. By default, it saves in what's called the open document format, but it is mostly cross compatible with the Microsoft Office formats.

The cons aren't quite as many as Google Drive in my opinion, because it doesn't have to be online. Even though the user interface is very similar to Word, it's not identical and some people don't care for it. LibreOffice also has no built-in cloud storage functionality like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, so if you need to store your documents in the cloud somewhere for backup, you have to piece it together with another storage option. Though this is the other side of one of the pros, because LibreOffice does not require an Internet connection in order to work once you have it downloaded. So those are the pros and cons of some different writing software. Which one you pick is up to you and your particular writing needs.

So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A quick word of thanks to my transcriptionist for helping me pull together the research for this episode. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on the official website at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

And now let's close out this week's episode with a preview of Half-Elven Thief, as narrated by Leanne Woodward.