Liquid Story Binder XE
Detailed Review:The problem with this novel writing software product is that I just could not figure out how to use it! I put a lot of time into this, including going through the tutorials, but just couldn't get the hang of it. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm not the most technical person in the world. But I think that you shouldn't have to be the most technical person in the world to use writing software. We're writers, not techno-geeks. But, in trying to be fair and give it the best chance, I called in the person who is the most technical person in the world, my husband The Nerd. And I asked him to figure it out for me - and even he could not make head nor tail of it. On Liquid Story Binder XE's website they have a very comprehensive tutorial, so I started going through that. I only got as far as the sixth screen before I ran into trouble. I had successfully started a new project, and had added some chapter titles to it. The instructions said that since I had added chapter titles the software would automatically create a new Planner for me (without telling me what a 'Planner' even was!) Okay, so I went to the 'Planner' section next. Sure enough (once I clicked on 'Table of Contents' in the 'Planner' drop down menu) there was the list of my chapter titles. (The tutorial did tell you what to do if you hadn't added chapter titles). The tutorial then said:
I have no idea what 'a simple list of ideas' is. Is it the chapter titles they were talking about until now? And then it says to click any 'item'. Is an item a chapter title? And/or one of the ideas in the list of ideas? I think it must be, because there is nothing else going on yet, but if they keep changing their terminology it's very confusing. They then give the following screenshot. You'll see the list of chapter titles (or ideas, or items) on the left, and if you click on one of them it gives you the option to create a new chapter based on that title. Except - it doesn't! In real life, when I clicked on my chapter title, absolutely nothing happened.
At this point I was nearly crying with frustration. So I followed their suggestion to look at their pre-created example book. Maybe by seeing a finished project it would begin to make sense. Well, it didn't. I didn't know what I was looking at, and could make no headway that way. Liquid Story Binder XE has the option both to customise the colours of the screens, and to upload your own playlist. Both of these strike me as rather silly and gimmicky. And maybe a symptom of how this software is (as far as I can tell) overengineered. It looks very slick, certainly the slickest of any of the information management products - they've obviously put a lot of time into it. But slick doesn't help me write my novel, which is my only interest. I also didn't like the way it was so convoluted. You create chapter titles, and then have to go to the Planner to access a Table of Contents, and you use the Table of Contents to create a chapter. (Except that you can't do that, as I said above, but even if you could, it's such a long-way-around way to do it.) And I didn't like the way they were using terminology in different ways, so there was all this new jargon to learn. The File Menu was called The Library, for example. And what, in this context, is a Planner? And have a look at the drop down menu you get when you click on the 'Workspaces' tab:
The complexity inherent in this tab alone is just mind-boggling. This may well be an excellent novel writing software product if you get the hang of it. But my experience, and that of my husband whose job is computery stuff, is that it either doesn't work, or is too complex to make work. By all means check it out yourself and come to your own conclusions - you can download it for free for 30 days' use. If you get the hang of it, please do let me know! Return from Liquid Story Binder XE to Home
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