writing software - does anyone use it? recommendations ...

I read a review of Scrivener not too long ago. The reviewer said one of its biggest drawbacks is the difficulty importing from MS Word. So, if you work with an editor and use track changes and MS Word comments to go back and forth like I do, you'll end up doing a lot of cutting and pasting to get it back in, which also means you can forget about track changes and comments. If it wasn't for that critical limitation I might have bought it.

Instead, I write using MS Word, where I've configured the grammar checker to my taste, and the document map that works with my chapter headings. The document map (available on the View tab/ribbon) is great because it lists all of my chapters; with a single click, I can jump to any chapter I want.

Like penang, I use a spreadsheet to keep track of every named item I have in my story (stars, planets, ships, characters, military ranks, etc.). I also have a Word document for my story and chapter outlines, and another one for research information and a long list of to dos. I should probably split the last file in two.

I've gotten through almost two drafts that way with minimal overhead or fuss.

Dirk

There are two answers:
a) I have more named entities in my spreadsheet than I will probably ever use. For example, I have ten classes of warships, ten classes of weapons, etc., but I ony sprinkle some of those names in here and there to add a little realism. So far, I've only ever mentioned one ship class by name in the book. Similarly I have ship names (only three in book one), and ship types that are easy to understand (e.g., starfighter, troop carrier, civilian transport, etc.).
b) I remind the reader what the named entity is. For example, rather than saying Dawn, I refer to it as the planet Dawn or the rebel planet, etc. Similarly, rather than saying General Equitius, I say General Equitius, the Imperial physician. In my case, it's especially important because those planets and characters generally only appear once every two chapters (I alternate back and forth between two interwoven stories.

I tried Scrivener too. It was good but frankly it was too much.

I liked that I could do independent chapters and reorder them but without a strong grammer and spell check I'm out on it. Plus, the conversion to Word (something they called compile) was so confusing as to not be useful. Overall, I think it was a good tool but just not for me. My skills as a writer don't need a full toolbox at this stage....just the large hammer of sit-down-and-write-stupid.

I used Scrivener for novel #3, and am using it now for novel #4. I like it a lot, BUT I would qualify that by saying it works for me because it's set up in a way that easily accommodates my own organizational habits when it comes to writing. Also, exporting to Word, which has to happen sooner or later, is not exactly seamless. It's very important to go back through the compiled word document and make sure everything is formatted the way you want it to be.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback, it's helpful and I think Scrivener is not for me but this discussion has given me some things to think about ... d