Novel Factory vs Final Draft

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Novel Factory

Category: Writing Tools

Industries: Writers, Students, Educators

Pricing

Basic- $75/year

Standard- $198/year, Preimium- $600/year

Final Draft

Category: Writing Tools

Industries: Writers, Students, Educators

Pricing

$9.99

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Most popular feedback for Novel Factory

Outlining your novel will help you become a more productive writer–and might even help you write better books. Look into outlining software, and, depending on your needs as an author, The Novel Factory might be just what you’re looking for.

Dave Chesson

About Novel Factory

While finishing your first manuscript, The Novel Factory offers assistance to beginning novelists. To assist authors of all levels of experience save time and gain a better understanding of both the broad picture and the fine details, it also includes a ton of helpful templates, resources, and interactive features. The Book Factory founder Katja Kaine will take you through the program live and answer your questions so you can decide if it is the right novel planning tool for you. Today, we're going to take a look at The Novel Factory, one of our favorite apps for writing novels. This ground-breaking program provides you with the framework you need to develop your novel in a logical manner. (Great news for us planners.) The Novel Factory has a ton of helpful resources for authors, such story templates, character quizzes, and plot development tools, yet there isn't a steep learning curve thanks to its clear, straightforward layout. We'll discuss The Novel Factory's primary features in this post to help you choose whether it would be beneficial for you. Planners The Novel Factory is unquestionably the place for you if you like crafting intricate characters and investigating their inner and outward values as well as examining the senses and specifics of your settings. The Novel Factory, at its core, is a technique to conveniently keep track of all the intricate information related to a novel so you are not continually rummaging through drawers or leafing through notebooks, with its specific areas for plotting, characters, locations, and even items. new authors The Novel Writing Roadmap, however, is yet another significant element geared toward aspiring authors. In essence, this is a step-by-step manual on how to write a novel, showing you how to take your initial concept and convert it into a strong premise, then how to develop it into an engaging storyline, establish your cast of characters, and finally, how to put it all together into a polished manuscript. It is practice and theory combined since you use the processes as you write your novel.

Most popular feedback for Final Draft

Finally Draft is a good choice for aspiring, new and professional screenwriters. It’s industry-standard for a reason.

AE Inman

About Final Draft

The Final DraftTM Mobile app for iPad and iPhone is now available from the creators of Final Draft, the world's best-selling screenwriting program. You may compose, edit, and view Final Draft scripts on your iPad or iPhone with Final DraftTM Mobile. With simple features like Tab and Enter navigation, ScriptNotes, SmartType, and more, you may create new scripts or change ones that already exist. iCloud, Dropbox, or email are simple ways to transfer your Final Draft 12 scripts from your desktop to your iPad or iPhone and back again. Every time, your scripts will be precisely paginated and formatted in accordance with industry standards. • Eliminate paper from your life and always have your scripts with you. • Share or send your Final Draft FDX file around all of your PCs and devices. Stay in sync all the time using iCloud, Dropbox, or OneDrive • Easily switch between script elements using the standard Tab and Enter keyboard shortcuts, the Elements bar on an iPad, or the Menu (iPhone) • Character names, scene titles, and more are all remembered by SmartType • Support for several languages: Write in over 95 different languages • Support for Bluetooth keyboards • You can maintain track of your characters for table reads or character development by using character highlighting. • Include, label, color-code, and modify ScriptNotes or General Notes. • Perfectly paginates to normal European (A4) and US Letter page sizes • Utilize the app to instantly send feedback. • Templates for TV, movies, and stage plays that have been expertly structured to get you started. • Look for characters, settings, or other script components across the entire document. • Export scripts to PDF via email, Dropbox, or iCloud. • Allows you to quickly return to the previous page you were working on by saving it. • iPhone Page View displays pagination, formatting, and line breaking in full accuracy for the Final Draft. • Automatic Continues and Mores • TV production scripts can accommodate multi-page Title Pages. Scene Numbering, Omit Scenes, Colored Pages, and Locked Pages are among the production features that are included. • Displays Colored Pages for Active or Collated Revisions • Quickly transition between revision sets. • Monitor significant details via cast reports, scene reports, location reports, and more. • The iPhone Scene Navigator makes it simple to switch between scenes in your screenplay. • Utilize the iPhone Tools Menu to gain access to all the tools you require while preserving context for your script. • Change the header and footer.

Novel Factory reviews

The only cons to The Novel Factory are, that it’s primarily built for fiction authors. If you write nonfiction, you will likely get very little out of most of the downloadable templates. Overall using this software could help you become a more efficient writer, while gaining great clarity on your book. There is certainly enough content and downloadables to justify the price ten times over.

- Scott Allan

As someone who’s just begun experimenting with fiction writing myself, I found all the guidance and resources extremely helpful, as they broke down what could be an intimidating and overwhelming process into manageable steps. It’s also nice to have all your notes and drafts in one place.

- Kaelyn Barron

If you are new to writing a novel, this is a great software. The road map is extremely helpful, as well as the templates and videos. All you need to do is focus on writing your novel!

- www.textbroker.com

Final Draft reviews

This is a wonderful app. And mind you, how much the desktop version costs. First off, The Final Draft people were the FIRST to make screen writing software...back when the Mac was just beginning with a 9 inch screen. That means they worked out all the bugs. Also, Final Draft Mobile uses a custom scrolling feature that specifically shows you where you are in the the screenplay...so you can quickly find what you’re looking for. And to all those people who say “It doesn’t hav Dark Mode” or “It doesn’t have Night Shift” or “It doesn’t have dictation,” as the Final Draft technicians have said, that’s a part of your system if it supports it. All three are supported in iPadOS 14. In iPadOS 14, just choose the “Display and Brightness” heading in the Settings app to enable Dark Mode or Night Shift systemwide. And if you want to dictate in Final Draft Mobile, it’s in the keyboard. As I only have iPadOS 14, I cannot speak for any other IOS systems. It exports to .FDX and .PDF. Prints with Apple’s Air Print feature. Emails from within the program.

- Lachlan S

Cursor behavior on iPad On my iPad Pro (2020), I'm getting weird cursor behavior with Final Draft Mobile. When I click after the last sentence in a dialogue section, the blinking line appears to the left of the period. If I start typing it acts as if the cursor was actually to the right of the period, so it's kind of okay. A much worse behavior is in trying to highlight a section of text. The way I usually do it is to click at one end of the selection, then shift-click at the other end. It works on every editing app I've ever used. Not this one. The cursor just moves to the other end, with no highlighting. The workaround would be to shift-click-drag, but that doesn't work either. It just moves the cursor without any highlight. I've contacted Final Draft support about this. Apparently their iPad acts fine. For me, it makes the mobile version almost unusable. I have to say, the desktop version, much pricier, has none of these problems. Since I do my work half-and-half on my Mac and my iPad, it will probably keep me from using Final Draft as my main editor. Too bad, because it has several nice features. Same behavior exactly on my 2015 iPad. Further research indicates that Final Draft expects you to double click a word, and then drag the little wings out to select a section of text. Then they provide a (Copy/Cut) balloon above. This is not good. One needs to be able to use the built-in editing capabilities on Apple products, IMHO.

- CalifJack

Update April 17th, 2022: in addition to the app crashing when working directly out of Dropbox (it is better with this issue when files are stored directly on the iPad Pro - which contradicts the ‘mobile’ point), the mobile app also turns ‘characters’ into ‘actions’ on occasion. I work on iPad Pro and have the Windows 10. I have been a Final Draft customer for almost 25 years. The short script is this; it crashes periodically when working with files in Dropbox, even with documents made available offline. It freezes… I quickly have to screenshot what I have done to ensure I don’t lose my latest work… then it crashes. I’m working on a current iPad Pro. I have Final Draft 12 on my computer, but use this mobile version when traveling or working away from home. Update: To FD - your ‘templated’ response is disappointing. Many people are currently having issues with FD Mobile. The Dropbox problem is very real. It makes this particular process frustrating and the app impractical to use. Instead of writing ‘99% of users are crash-free’, why not look into the actual problem?

- British Paul

Pros & cons

Novel Factory

Pros
The software has made it pretty easy to fill in the forms provided thanks to the roadmap
Contains fantastic series of guiding videos
Has an entire ‘Characters’ section set aside
Cons
Adding the scenes and subplots–while very cool– but too complicated
There’s a disconnect between the desktop app and the online version
The online version of the software is, well, online, and that means if you have no internet connection, you can’t work
But if you do, you can work anywhere.

Final Draft

Pros
Well-tailored for screenwriters
Powerful tools for both writing scenes and crafting the larger story
Plenty of view options
Cons
Best autosave option is once every three minutes
Expensive
Crashing occurs

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