NewNovelist 2.0 Novel Writing Software Review

3 Different Review

Review 1

newnovelist isn't worth anywhere near fifty dollars. The story types/categories are extremely limiting and don't even come close to portraying the full range of possible genres that a novel can fall into. Once you finish the "wizard" (which is where you title your story and choose a category) the program isn't interactive at all. There are no prompts and the help is vague and doesn't cover more than the most basic principles of how a novel is structured. You learn more about writing a novel by reading good books than you do from newnovelist's help sections. There's no text/grammar editor. There's not even a spellcheck. The one saving grace is that it does allow you to take extremely detailed notes about every possible element of your novel, and to access them conviently while you're writing. However, it doesn't offer any help in creating a timeline or outline for your story, so there's no real way to bring those notes together. All it has is a universal notes section where you can write your own timeline without any help from the program. It's slightly more convienient than keeping your notes in Windows Notepad and having it minimized while you work, but outside of it's organizational properties, it does virtually nothing. Microsoft Office 2000 offers more in depth and useful advice about writing structure and style than newnovelist does. Because I already have it, I'll keep it just because it DOES help me with my notes, but given the choice again, I wouldn't buy it.
EDIT: I would like to add that when I emailed the people at newnovelist to complain, their response was fast and courteous. They actually went to the trouble of calling me on the phone to remind me that newnovelist comes with a money back guarantee. When I told them that I had done too much work on my story with newnovelist to return it, they offered me a free copy of the upgrade, which is coming out later this summer. They also told me that the 30 day guarantee is basically a guideline and that if I still wasn't happy when they send me the upgrade, I could return both for a refund. I've never encountered a company that took the satisfaction of its customers so seriously. Although I haven't gotten the upgrade yet, I've been told that it not only has a spellcheck and editor, but that it also addresses several other concerns that I had directly. I look forward to using the new program, and I'll come back and let everybody know if it's any better.

Review 2

I ordered this a few days ago, the package arrived yesterday and I'm absolutely thrilled with this program. I consider myself to be an experienced writer, but it has taught me many new things and I'm very pleased with it.

It takes you right from the beginning of writing any kind of story, and takes you through each step. It doesn't give you all the answers, and the finished result won't be a clichéd or formulaic story. Don't think that this program will just hand you the skeleton for your story. Rather, it shows you examples of other skeletons and informs you about what pieces you might think about including. At no point does the program restrict your creativity.

The software is divided into sections, where you can design the book's different worlds and locations (including sections with everything from economical history to creatures to the smells of the place), your own characters (with lots of helpful hints to get you started and many different screens to develop your characters in), the storyline and much more.

I'm very glad I bought this product and I think that any future author needs this useful piece of software. It's turned about two hundred documents of scrappy, disorganised notes into one neat file and my writing is storming ahead. I fully recommend this product.

Review 3

This program is really good for organizing your thoughts. If that was all I wanted to use it for I would have given it 5 stars. However, there are some vast deficiencies. The biggest problem in my opinion is with the text editor. There is no spell check, you cant tab to begin new paragraphs, you can't change your font or write anything in bold, italics, or underline, cant set margins, cant indent, etc. Basically the text editor is non existant. Its a shell and thats all.

Aside from that I feel like it doesnt really fit for all kinds of writing. The descriptions in the story creation part are vague. They say that they are like that to give you room for imagination. But the problem is that they are so vague its almost as if it told you nothing at all. They kind of dont make any sense.

It seems to only offer one view point to a story. Their process is stuck on Hero vs. Antagonist. There is no story line for two heroes or two antognists. Plus the antagonist is assumed to be bad when not all books have a bad character in that sense. For example, this doesnt really work for romances.

I found that as I wrote and then moved on to the next stage, that stage turned out to be what I thought I was already writing, or that I wasnt sure what stage what I wrote belonged in. I ended up abandoning that part of the program all together and went back to using MS Word. Now I just use it as a place to store ideas and organize my characters.

Their website says you can get a full refund if you arent satisfied but they offer no phone number or email address to do that and the support people dont write back. I started trying to get my money back over a week before the time ran out and no one contacted me. Now its past the date and I'm stuck with a program that doesnt quite do all it boasts.