These typically don’t translate well on export, so they have limited value unless their proprietary file formats are in fact your ultimate creative destination. Word processors are very powerful applications that have a lot of unnecessary formatting and layout tools (for our purposes, anyway).
This is great news for you as a writer, as it means you have a lot of affordable tools to choose from.īefore we dive into this review, an important distinction: a pro writing app is not a word processor. Price - There have never been more quality options to choose from, and the competition surrounding great writing apps is fierce.Nothing is more frustrating than being fully invested in a platform that is no longer supported because you then have to figure out a way to get everything out and start over in a completely new system (ask anyone who used WordPerfect or QuarkExpress back in the day).
If the app is not easy to use or it’s too difficult to figure out how a certain critical feature works, it can actually make it harder for you to get words on a page. Ease of Use - The purpose of any tool is to make the work easier.
Design is vitally important as it should strive to eliminate visual barriers so you can enter into a state of flow easily and do your best creative work.
It should provide the essential tools necessary to make your job of writing easier, but it shouldn’t provide anything extra that could clutter the interface with options or features you don’t want or need. Since the words themselves are the end goal, it’s important that the pro writing app you choose provides you with a distraction-free user interface that inspires creativity. A good pro writing app should provide an environment that is aesthetically pleasing and makes it easy for you to focus and create, then allows you to export your work to its final destination as quickly (and painlessly) as possible. It’s not something that gives you a ton of formatting options, but rather helps you focus on your words. The mission of any pro writing app should be to help you produce words that will eventually end up being posted, printed, or published. You could also define a pro writing app as a “focused writing app,” one that assists you in getting your words out of our head and onto the page.