yWriter4

yWriter4 provides novelists with a tool to not only create their new story, but keep it tightly organized. This no-frills layout and inventive categorization may help bring that story from daydreams to the page. The program’s cluttered interface, full of buttons with no onscreen direction, practically begged us to visit the Help file. Luckily, while there, we discovered a wizard that walked us through the process and made everything much less confusing. The program required us to do a lot of prep work before we even wrote a word. However, we quickly learned that setting up databases of characters, settings, and scenes helped us down the road. Once we started filling out our chapter outlines and inputting the bulk of our text, we simply pulled the aforementioned people and places from their database to help create a heading that laid out the scene. Once chapters were written, we could click and drag their order and content around with ease. The only thing this program sorely lacked was a spell-check option. yWriter4 really hit its stride with its storyboard feature. This took all the character, location, and story information and created a flowchart that allowed us to see the dramatic peaks and valleys of our writing. yWriter4 is a freeware program. It leaves folders behind after uninstall. With its inventive approach to writing novels and getting organized, we recommend this program.