Software for Writers

 Here's a piece of software that I came across and a very comprehensive and useful program it is too. There's an impressive list of features including: 150,000 word thesaurus, spell-checker and word count.
Each character can have their own profile, each location and even objects that are pertinent to the story can have theirs which you can edit and enlarge as the plot develops and are always handy when you want to check details. (Does she have blue eyes or grey?)
It will produce charts showing relationships between characters and a timeline of events. You can generate links within the story between characters and events. Imagine you're describing the heroine of your story and mention her childhood home. A link between the two can be set up. You can then link to her husband and any other character to show how they all relate to one another.
Version 4 (2009)
Ravenshead, the publishers, have now brought out Version 4 with a much improved graphical interface and lots of added goodies. Here's a brief look at three of them:
Storyboard and Scenes - Each chapter can now be broken down into 'scenes' or sections. These can be displayed on a 'storyboard' which helps you to see at a glance the construction of the chapter. Chapters are displayed one beneath another with their scenes alongside. You can move the scenes around within a chapter via the storyboard and the text is moved within the story at the same time. You can even move a scene from one chapter to another.
Web Links - This is great if you are writing a non-fiction book or a historical novel and draw some of your research from the web because Web Links does what it says and enables you to embed a link in the text that, when clicked, takes you to the website you drew the information from.
The new version also enables you to set Writing Targets to check how many words you have written or how long you have been writing each day. Then there's Writing Prompts which help build characters, plots, locations and much else besides, by presenting you with questions which you answer to build up a profile of who or what you are dealing with.
There is so much more to this program than I have room for here, but you can download a free demo version to try it out yourself.