I needed that after today.I've written a four hundred page novel in MS Word and never had any trouble.
What software do you write your Trek novels in?
- Thread starter wizkid
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I needed that after today.I've written a four hundred page novel in MS Word and never had any trouble.
^ My last novel manuscript first draft was in excess of 500 pages. By the time I finished editing, it was 499, just enough to burn a whole ream of paper with a sheet left over to write "BOOYAH!!" in big bold red marker.
It's the little things.
It's the little things.
)
^ The one I recently completed. Counterstrike: The Last World War, Book II.
The title needs a little more title: maybe tack on The Adventure Continues or something.
^ I was actually going to change it to something else, but then I saw the cover art for the new book (which compliments that of the first book) and decided it worked 
It would have been better as:
Counterstrike: The Last World War: Book II: The Sequel of the Original.
Counterstrike: The Last World War: Book II: The Sequel of the Original.
I used to be a big WordPerfect fan, back when it was a Novell product. After Corel bought it they never updated the Mac version again, and I eventually had to give it up after moving to OSX. 
I still haven't found a text editor I'm completely happy with to replace it. OpenOffice tends to be slow, and MS Word is what it is; I've tried a few others like AbiWord but none has really clicked yet.
I still haven't found a text editor I'm completely happy with to replace it. OpenOffice tends to be slow, and MS Word is what it is; I've tried a few others like AbiWord but none has really clicked yet.
I have a document that is over 400,000 words, and the only difficulty is that it refuses to spell check after a certain number of "mistakes" (proper names that I cannot be bothered adding to the dictionary). I have split things into multiple documents to avoid that issue, though.
I used to be a big WordPerfect fan, back when it was a Novell product. After Corel bought it they never updated the Mac version again, and I eventually had to give it up after moving to OSX.
I still haven't found a text editor I'm completely happy with to replace it. OpenOffice tends to be slow, and MS Word is what it is; I've tried a few others like AbiWord but none has really clicked yet.
Nisus Writer Pro
Scrivener - Very customizable
Scrivener has a lot of advantages and Nisus is just plain nice. I use them both on OS X.
If you are really, really, really anal about your formatting, and I mean you have to be Thesis-Technical Writing formatting nuts, you should give Mellel a shot.
What, no love for Notepad? 
^ I use Notepad in a pinch for coding raw HTML. Does that count?
(Though as text editors go, I prefer TextPad.)
(Though as text editors go, I prefer TextPad.)
In what format are you submitting the novels? I figure something neutral like .txt or .xml, to make the reformatting process easier?
Like most folks, I use Word to write my fiction, magazine articles, etc., and that's the format it's in when I send the softcopy to the editor.
Yep, editors almost always use Word. I write in WordPerfect but save my files as RTF, which seems to be the best transitional format between WP and Word (saving them directly as .doc files from WP can introduce formatting glitches).
Saving in .txt wouldn't work because you'd lose all the italics and stuff.
Saving in .txt wouldn't work because you'd lose all the italics and stuff.
This one is me. Hell, most of the time I use a pencil. Seriously. I love the scratching sound it makes on the paper.
Word.
Hate the orphan control page jumpy thing but not as much as, say, watching Congress try to reform healthcare. I also hate how after a certain page length it tries to automatically eliminate page breaks onscreen. Lost a number of hours a few years ago trying to figure that one out.
Never had a problem with a file's length. I think the first draft of FC was almost 700 pages 12 point courrier new. Whenever I get pages back now they've been reformated into Times New Roman which cuts down on the page length for mailing but is kind of weird to read and edit from since I'm so used to seeing the pages I wrote. When I look at the new stuff I sometimes think it just looks wrong, even if it isn't.
But then, perhaps I'm just odd that way.
Hate the orphan control page jumpy thing but not as much as, say, watching Congress try to reform healthcare. I also hate how after a certain page length it tries to automatically eliminate page breaks onscreen. Lost a number of hours a few years ago trying to figure that one out.
Never had a problem with a file's length. I think the first draft of FC was almost 700 pages 12 point courrier new. Whenever I get pages back now they've been reformated into Times New Roman which cuts down on the page length for mailing but is kind of weird to read and edit from since I'm so used to seeing the pages I wrote. When I look at the new stuff I sometimes think it just looks wrong, even if it isn't.
But then, perhaps I'm just odd that way.
^ I know what you mean. I've started writing in Times New Roman 14-point; it seems to come back unchanged from production, which tells me that people were converting from Courier to TNR not to save space but because they didn't like Courier.
Personally, I've long preferred writing manuscripts in Courier because I was trained as a screenwriter to use no other font. Courier 12-point single space is the industry standard in Hollywood because, in conjunction with strict formatting (margins, etc.), it is part of how scripts are "timed" to get an average of "one page = one minute of screen time."
I also liked using Courier for novel mss. because, since it is a monospace font, it makes it very easy during copyediting to spot extra spaces, missing spaces, etc. The one drawback is that em-dashes, en-dashes, and hyphens all look very much alike in Courier.
Personally, I've long preferred writing manuscripts in Courier because I was trained as a screenwriter to use no other font. Courier 12-point single space is the industry standard in Hollywood because, in conjunction with strict formatting (margins, etc.), it is part of how scripts are "timed" to get an average of "one page = one minute of screen time."
I also liked using Courier for novel mss. because, since it is a monospace font, it makes it very easy during copyediting to spot extra spaces, missing spaces, etc. The one drawback is that em-dashes, en-dashes, and hyphens all look very much alike in Courier.
