A couple of months back, we had guest blogger Beth Revis talk about the Scrivener software, but I was sad when I learned it was only for Mac users. She mentioned an alternative. The Page Four Software.

Now, I consider myself to be a bit of a technology freak, so when I read about the special writing software just for me, I had to try it out!

I contacted the software company, and they graciously offered me a copy of their software so I could write a review.

I have to say that while some of it took me quite a while to get used to, there are parts of this software that I find invaluable to my writing.

The coolest feature by far is the tabbed writing feature. Basically, each chapter of your book gets its own tab and you can move them around as you see fit.

I love the flexibility of being able to move my stuff around, reference notes and outlines easily, and to open a chapter without having to scroll around to find it. The tab feature alone makes me like this software, but another cool feature is the ability to quickly scan for over used words and phrases.

Not only can you scan for the phrases, but you can set all your own attributes, so if you don’t want it to search for something in particular, then it will just skip right over that.

I love this feature, and discovered things about my book that well… let’s just say I have a tendency to overuse certain words… okay?

It also has a really cool roll back feature that lets you look at older versions of your work, so if you decide you spent an entire day over editing the crap out of something and now you want it back–then all you have to do is roll back to a previous version.

I did find a couple of things I wasn’t so crazy about with the software though. Most of my friends write in word, which means they edit in word as well. We use the little comment bubbles out to the side and the track changes feature in order to peer edit each other’s stuff. You can’t use word bubbles in page four, and you can’t see the tracked changes, so if your friends are using that, then there’s really no way for you to check their comments other than to open up your MS Word stuff. You can upload .doc files into the software though, so that does make up for this flaw a little.

I really like the ability to comment out to the side of someone’s work, and I love the track changes feature for when I am line editing something, so this is a major thing to me. I wish that the software somehow offered the same amazing editing and change tracking that word offers while still having all the great features like the tabs and the overused phrase counter.

I am still mostly using word to write my documents, and haven’t completely fell in love with pagefour yet, but I have been using it more lately, and I promise to update you as I continue to get more familiar with it.

I would love to hear about the software you use to write your manuscripts with. Please let me know in the comments below.

I’d also like to extend a special thank you to pagefour for providing me with a free copy of their software for review. If your company makes a software designed specifically for writers, you can contact me at jamie (@) totally the bomb (.) com (remove the spaces and parentheses) or just leave a comment below, and I will be happy to review it.

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