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What is the best Mac writing software for novelists?

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Ulysses III vs Scrivener vs iA Writer

 vs Scapple vs FocusWriter vs typora vs Dabble vs Fountain vs First Draft vs Final Draft vs Marked 2 vs OmmWriter Dāna II vs Fade In Professional Screen Writing Software vs WriteRoom vs Storyist vs Hemingway vs Storyline Creator

Specs

Platforms

MacOS, iOS

License

Proprietary

Export

Plain text, Rich text, Markdown, HTML, ePub, PDF

Sync

iCloud

Preview

Live Preview

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

Windows, Mac, Linux (beta)

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

Yes

Revision tracking

Yes

Reports

Yes

Hollywood formatting

Yes

Color coding

No

Outline view

Yes

Auto-complete

No

Breakdown

No

Index card view

Yes

Page lock

No

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

MacOS, iOS, Android, Windows

License

Proprietary

Export

HTML, PDF

Sync

iCloud, Dropbox

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

$59,99

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

Mac OSX; Windows; Linux

License

Proprietary

Export

HTML; HTML (pure); PDF; Word; OpenOffice; RTF; Epub; LaTeX; Media Wiki; ReStructuredText; Textile; OPML

Sync

iCloud

Preview

WYSIWYG

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

$14.99

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

Windows, MacOS

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

Windows OSX

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

Yes

Revision tracking

Yes

Reports

Yes

Hollywood formatting

Yes

Color coding

Yes

Outline view

Yes

Auto-complete

Yes

Breakdown

Yes

Index card view

Yes

Page lock

Yes

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

Yes

Platform

-

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

Yes

Revision tracking

Yes

Reports

No

Hollywood formatting

Yes

Color coding

No

Outline view

Yes

Auto-complete

Yes

Breakdown

No

Index card view

Yes

Page lock

No

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

OSX iOS

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Platforms

-

License

-

Export

-

Sync

-

Preview

-

Notes

-

Revision tracking

-

Reports

-

Hollywood formatting

-

Color coding

-

Outline view

-

Auto-complete

-

Breakdown

-

Index card view

-

Page lock

-

Price

-

Real-time online collaboration

-

Platform

-

Pros + Cons

Pro
 Multiple preview and export options

The editor can export to Plain Text, RTF, Word, HTML, ePub and PDF with customizable styles for each option. It can also preview HTML directly in the browser.
Comment

Pro
 Polished UI

Ulysses has a clean, unobtrusive, easy to overview interface that allows focusing on writing. By default it's split up in 3 panes with sidebar, sheet pane and content pane from left to right. Unnecessary panes can be hidden.
Comment

Pro
 Great tools for organizing and finding files

Ulysses saves everything in the app so there's no file management outside of the editor involved. It organizes content in groups (folders) and sheets (files), has a powerful, easy to use search and allows adding keywords to attachments to help them be organized and found quickly. Groups can have an unlimited amount of subgroups and the title of subgroup shows up in the pane view. Sheets can be split up, merged, glued together and easily moved around in the sheet pane by dragging and dropping. Great for splitting up larger documents into manageable chunks while still keeping an overview of the whole project and having the ability to move sections around quickly. Contents of a group can be filtered by text, keywords or change date within headings, code blocks, images or any other marked up text. Filters can contain a combination of conditions and be saved to make a new group. Saved filters can be moved around to different groups and will return filtered results for that group. Selecting multiple groups will show the combined sheets of those groups.
Comment

Pro
 Comprehensive documentation

Ulysses comes with an excellently written documentation that covers everything there is to know about the software, including an extensive list of keyboard shortcuts as well as short and sweet introduction to Markdown and its benefits.
Comment

Pro
 Syncs via iCloud

Content can be synchronised across devices via Apple's iCloud.
Comment

Pro
 Attachments can be added

Attachments such as images, text notes, keywords and writing goals can be added to content. And to organize them keywords can be added.
Comment

Pro
 Does not distract the user

Ulysses has a clean, unobtrusive, easy to overview interface that allows focusing on writing. By default it's split up in 3 panes with sidebar, sheet pane and content pane from left to right. Unnecessary panes can be hidden.
Comment

Pro
 Highly customizable

A few themes are baked in and a big selection of user-contributed styles to choose from are available on the Ulysses Style Exchange.
Comment

Con
 Proprietary file format

Text is saved in a database in proprietary format. Meaning, your notes can't be accessed other than through the app, and cannot be moved other than by exporting them.
Comment

Pro
 Has a trial

The trial is a 10 hour demo, which allows users to check out the software in order to see if they like it or not.
Comment

Con
 Mediocre UI

UI should be better.
Comment

Pro
 Almost every parameter, from window layout to text-revision colo(u)r can be tweaked to your style

Comment

Pro
 Keeps everything together: notes, drafts, references, links

Comment

Con
 Can be overwhelming, with some features not being useful for casual user

Comment

Pro
 Offers free trial

The trial is good for 30 days of actual use, not the typical 30 days from install date.
Comment

Pro
 Has a mode that helps you focus only on the sentence that you're working

Enabling Focus Mode will dim the whole text except the sentence you are currently writing on.
Comment

Pro
 Has a great distraction-free writing mode

iA Writer offers a noise-free writing experience that removes even the program bar.
Comment

Pro
 Supports Markdown

Comment

Pro
 Calculates how long it would take to read through what you've written

Comment

Pro
 Has trial

30 days of actual use, not the typical 30 days from install date.
Comment

Pro
 Open Source and free

Comment

Pro
 Can save as ODT, RTF, DOCX and TXT

In addition to Text Open Document (ODT), FocusWriter allow to save as Office Open XML (docx), Righ Text Format (RTF) and text file (TXT).
Comment

Pro
 Dabble is easy to use from the start, with little to no learning curve, unlike Scrivener

Comment

Pro
 Dabble has a clean, uncluttered, and modern looking GUI interface

Comment

Con
 Dabble is less mature than Scrivener, so there are still a few small bugs

Comment

Con
 Subscription plan rather than outright purchase

Comment

Pro
 Plain text format

Since .fountain files are just a plain-text format, they are completely future proof and very exportable.
Comment

Pro
 Tracks not just word count, but also time spent writing

Many writers don't aim for a word count, but instead aim for amount of time spent writing. First Draft allows you sets targets for word counts or writing times, with a calendar showing the full history of your writing done per day.
Comment

Pro
 30 day trial available

Documents created during trial are intact even when trial ends.
Comment

Pro
 Educational discount for students and educators

Price is $129.99 for students and educators, that's almost half off the regular price. http://store.finaldraft.com/final-draft-9-edu.html/
Comment

Pro
 Recognized as industry standard

The same way Microsoft .doc docx formats are ubiquitous in everyday document publishing, the Final Draft .fdx format is expected in the film industry.
Comment

Con
 iOS apps should be free

With the price tag on this package I would expect the pro version of the mobile apps to be free. (They do have a limited free iOS app). As of this writing May 9th 2016 the pro app has been marked down from $29.99 to $9.99.
Comment

Pro
 Set your own price

Minimum price is $5.11 through the developer's website, customers are welcome to pay more. On the Apple Store it's a set $5.99.
Comment

Con
 No trial or demo available

Comment

Pro
 Open format

Documents produced are in Open Screen Format (XML) so you don't get locked in, and documents can play nice with other software.
Comment

Pro
 Cross platform

Available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and has separate Fade in Mobile app available for iOS (IPhone, iPads) and Android.
Comment

Con
 Only available on Mac

Comment

Pro
 Offers free trial

A 15 day trial is available for those that would like to see how the software works.
Comment
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