![]() Scrivener and StoryMill were the most obvious choices and both seemed to have a solid set of features. Most challenging however were the range of very mixed reviews. Rather than repeating a great many other feature comparison reviews I'll summarized with the key features unique to each: Scrivener by far had the most positive, while StoryMill ranged from exceedingly high marks, to very frustrated and disillusioned users. Scrivener: Cork board, outline, scratch pad StoryMill: Timeline, characters, locations, and specific breakdown of chapters and scenes. There are other unique features however these have been the most significant in my use of the two applications. By and large, StoryMill has a longer learning curve and is more complicated, but once learned the applications allows writers to create very complex narratives. If you write fiction and non-fiction StoryMill is probably the best fit. Scrivener on the other hand has a sleek, easy-to-use interface that allows for easy gathering and re-arranging of information. While it can be used in a similar fashion to StoryMill for narratives, it is a more flexible program for research and writing of more technical or informational pieces (anything non-narrative in nature). For those with more flexible needs or who want to be up and running faster, scrivener is probably the best option. Price points on both are fairly aggressive for both programs and a mere $5 between the two should not drive a purchase decision since you will be spending many hours in front of the computer and should be choosing the best program for your work, not the cheapest. I can't give this product any kind of fair review as I can't quite figure out what it's for. If I had to guess, I'd say this - and the similar Scrivener - are for writers who may indeed have the prose chops to get the job done but can't get a handle on how to organize longer manuscripts in their heads, and they also like to keep absolutely everything on their Macs. The Timeline feature I thought would be the most useful - dates are something I do sometimes flub - as I expected I'd punch in a scene, give it a date, it would show up on the timeline. Apparently, however, you have to associate scenes with events, and the timeline is then TOO detailed: I don't need to see hours, let alone minutes, but rather just an overview so that I can at a glance see where I probably haven't misdated a significant event having cascading effect on future events, or to which preceding events ultimately arrive. Sometimes, not infrequently, I need to see a span of DECADES all on one line, all at one time, and this seems impossible with the software.įoremost, StoryMill and Scrivener are not models for how novelists I know actually work.
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