Writer's DreamKit 4 Win/Mac

Challenging to use (2 of 2 Found this Helpful)   December 4, 2008
This software does provide a framework to organize and expand your story ideas but the framework feels a little too rigid as it forces stories down a canned path after a few preliminary questions.

The guided mode took me through the increasingly complex process. At first it was great, helping me flesh out my characters and challenging me with questions about their motivation. Once I got to the part were you outline scenes to mesh your idea with the prefabricated story arc it started to irritate rather than help me.

All the character and story information you enter is stored in several disjoint views making it hard to print out a report that showed the flow of what you had input. I like using a word processor for writing my stories and typing my work into text boxes without so much as a spell checker bothered me as well.

Finally it saves everything you enter in a proprietary binary file format which makes it difficult to pick up the outline and start working with it in a standard word processor.

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Terrible Software Misleading Description   April 18, 2008
This was given to me as a gift in order to help me write short stories. There was really nothing to this software except some hack's cliched views on what story development should be. This is not only a waste of money (in my case it was a gift) -this is a waste of time for anyone trying to figure it out.

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A WASTE OF MONEY AND TIME (2 of 2 Found this Helpful)   April 10, 2008
I purchased the product two years ago when I was drafting my novel. I went through the menus and tried to use them to outline my story and characters... my head still hurts. I got some index cards and outlined each scene, character, narration and a year later self-published my novel. To this day I look at the cover box of this product and shake my head...then I suddenly stop, because I remember it makes my head hurt even more.

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For theorist only (9 of 10 Found this Helpful)   January 12, 2008
This will hurt your brain. A detailed book needs to come with the software. It's too complicated and confusing. Don't bother with this if you use your basic instinct to write stories. Otherwise, you'll have to learn a whole new way of thinking just to enter a character description. I gave up working with this software in less than a week. Save your money for something more productive.

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A complete waste of my time and money (8 of 8 Found this Helpful)   January 9, 2008
I bought this hoping to use it as an editing tool for my writing. It is not at all what the description purports it to be. It has an extremely long learning curve and the user is expected to plug into the software writer's idea of novel creation, rather than provide tools of support to enhance or streamline the writing experience. The clipart employed for distinguishing the characters is completely hideous. I don't know who this product is intended for, but in my opinion, the description of the software's intended purpose is completely misleading. At the risk of sounding cliche, I would still say that this is a nightmare rather than a dream.

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