Why Wavemaker novel planning & writing software is free.
I started out building wavemaker as I wanted software that suited me. Don’t get me wrong, there are some nice programs out there. Scrivener is really good, Atomic Scribbler is nice, Manuskript is decent and so on …..
But none of them are cross platform. Wavemaker works on virtually anything and syncs between devices easily so you can write at your desk, or while walking the dog (Yes, I actually do this, dictating into wavemaker on my phone while out and about)
But Why Free??
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take your money if you insist š
(You can become a patron at the Wavemaker Patreon)
But my aim is to create some great free novel writing software, for ME.
The fact you get to use it is a bonus. Also I really ENJOY creating stuff like this. If ever I get enough Patrons to support me I’ll go full time at this, but until then I have to squeeze it into my spare time.
I’m also Open sourcing the code for the older versions, and will do with the current version when I have all the bit’s I want done – I want to do this as others will be able to help by adding features, fixing bugs and making it better.
This is what makes Wavemaker truly unique. It’s goals are to be as inclusive as possible, as useful as possible and as easy to use as possible.
If you want to try out this amazing Free Novel Writing Software then give it a go. There’s nothing to lose š https://wavemaker.cards
How does this work? Is there a guide? Iām an aspiring author and always struggling with how to carry on my writing without always sitting inform on my Mac.
Check out the how to videos. They should help.
Your software seems great, kudos for making it free. I think if you were to include one thing it would outstrip all of the others – a timeline-tool that’s actually good, because there is none out there (and I have looked far and wide)…
By that, I mean a tool where you can zoom in on an timeline-axis and pin events (or other things like photos and notes) to it, and have them keep both it’s position and viewable size even if you zoom the timeline out (which could be solved by having them in different heights or shrinking them to small flags with on-mouse-over popup windows for the content).
I’m only saying this because I’m not very good at programming yet and it would be cool if someone did it, being able to combine it with a writing tool would be nothing short of fantastic. It doesn’t seem really difficult to make tbh, but all of the tools I’ve seen have a static model of the timeline (zoom out time-wise and all of the info pinned to it is also zoomed out, rather than vectorised). Feel free to ask me more if you find the idea interesting.
Nice Idea! – will see if I can get something like that in place in future
Ian, I love the idea of being able to break chapters into separate child units. It doesn’t appear that you can do this and then easily see all of the “children” come together in one chapter. It looks like you can export the entire project to Microsoft Word and see it together, but that would be every chapter. Can you give me a handle on your ideas about this?
Hey, could you elaborate on a practical use of this feature?
Which feature are you interested in?
I can’t copy, paste, or rescale photos. Will wavemaker app supports various media files as well? Such as png, jpeg, gif, even embed HTML5?
version 4 will do some of this – version 3 was not intended to handle layout
Thanks so much for building this. It looks great. What’s the best way to transfer my existing Scrivener manuscript to Wavemaker? Can I do it in a way that it will automatically structure itself in the same way i.e. chapters, scenes, character notes etc – or do I have to do that manually?
Afraid not – scrivener uses a different tech base ( they use RTF, i use HTML, maybe one day š
I’m really looking forward to when you open this up for people like myself to be able to help develop.
All the code is on github https://github.com/wavemakercards
Hey!
I’m giving it a try and so far I’ll say it looks and feels already better than Scrivener to me. Sleek and fast and efficient, AND cross-platform!
Deserves to become more famous imho, I’ll definitly visit your Patreon and help you the best I can!
CHeers and thanks a lot for doing this!
I love it but it doesn’t work without chrome. I would have love if it doesn’t depend on chrome to run. For that reason I can’t use it. But it’s a nice app
It should run in pretty much any browser? If you’re using the Google Play app thats not the best way to use it – visit the website and install the PWA on a mobile device
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I have been looking for an alternative to scrivener that is actually free and useful and here it is!
Idk if you’re still replying to these, but I’m curious if this will actually stay free or will it in the future suddenly become paid or subscription based? I just want to stick to using something rather than having it become paid and leading me to switch. Thanks.
Its been free for about five years now š plus there will always be free versions even if I have some form of additional features that i need to have a paid tier for. But Version 2,3 and 4 are all free and even open source so you can get the source code and run your own if you want