Jer's Novel Writer 1.1.6 review

Gallery

Verdict:

Needs Mac OS X 10.4 or later

Review Date: 14 Aug 2008

Price when reviewed: (about £15)

Reviewed By: Nik Rawlinson

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

It may have a more conventional interface than Storyist or StoryMill, but Jer's Novel Writer is so simple it could be just what you need to get the creative juices flowing. It also has one unique feature - margin notes.

The primary strength of this application - and the one thing that makes it unique in the group - is the way that you can view both your main text and your planning notes at the same time. With the other applications, you spend a lot of your time clicking backwards and forwards between the two. Jer achieves this by employing a tabbed drawer that holds your outline, your notes, and a database of your characters, scenes and locations.

Sections can be added and removed at will, and you can hide any that you are not working on at any point, in order to remove clutter from your document. You can also set bookmarks throughout your work, which given logical names - you can set your own or settle for the default - and a keyboard shortcut, allow you to quickly skip backwards and forwards through your work.

New writing projects are defined through an extensive tabbed dialog box, through which you set up the styles of each section or chapter, specify the layout of your cover page (a nice touch) and tell it what should appear at the top and bottom of every manuscript page. The defaults don't match the industry standard - it used Helvetica for starters - but it's good to be able to define them at the outset.

Jer's Novel Writer is certainly no looker, but as we say in the StoryMill review, writing novels isn't about sitting back in a beautiful, inspiring, incense-filled room and waiting for inspiration to take hold. It's about cracking on with the work, getting on with writing, planning carefully and rewriting obsessively. In each of those respects, Novel Writer will serve you well.

Prev Next

Get more reviews, tutorials and in-depth advice, every month with Computer Shopper.
Click here to try 3 issues for £1

< Previous Reviews : Business software Next >

Sponsored Links

Be the first to comment on this article

You need to Login or Register to comment.