If you’re looking for a solid writing tool, one that has the added benefit of not being built on a subscription model, give iA Writer a spin on your platform(s) of choice. Keep in mind that your finished piece can still retain all the goodness of a well-typeset piece. If you’re accustomed to writing and seeing indented text, having to edit text with spaces between paragraphs can be a rough visual transition, but it’s well-worth the re-adjustment for the benefits of writing in a lean text editor. ![]() 1) Add a space between paragraphs, 2) add asterisks around * text you want italicized*, and 3) don't use the tab key. For a fiction writer, there are basically only three changes you’ll need to make to your writing habit to write in Markdown. If the typefaces are to your liking, then be sure you’re also comfortable writing in the Markdown format. (The screenshots at the beginning of this post use Quattro.) You can also download iA Writer’s typefaces from GitHub and use them in other text editors, as I’ve done in BBEdit, also visible in that earlier screenshot. The developers of iA Writer are opinionated on the font choices, so be sure you like their Mono, Duo, or Quattro typefaces. You can also export to Word, HTML, or PDF formats. Previewing and Exportingīecause iA Writer uses Markdown formatting, iA Writer includes a preview mode to show you how finished HTML or PDF output will appear, based on the iA Writer template you’ve chosen. (BBEdit also has file browsing and library features, but I find iA Writer’s implementation more intuitive and easier to navigate.) Unused Extrasįrom a focus mode that dims all but the sentence or paragraph you’re working on, to a style check that highlights clichés and syntax, to table creation, content blocks, tabbed views, smart folders, hashtags, and dark mode, iA Writer has plenty of added features, all of which are (for me) inessential to writing fiction but there if you need them. IA Writer also has its own file library, useful for organizing your writing projects without having to rely on the Finder or File Explorer to access your files. Write in BBedit on your Mac one day, Sublime Text in a Linux environment the next.īecause iA Writer is available on macOS, iOS, iPadOS, Windows, and Android, you gain the added benefit of remaining in the same writing tool aesthetic, no matter what platform you find yourself using on any particular day. If you use a cloud storage service like Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud, etc., you can store your work online and have it available on all your devices. By writing in Markdown, you lose the overhead of a word processing document and gain the ability to open your files in any text editor. Like BBEdit, iA Writer works with plain text files. ![]() If you don’t mind your work being flush left (either ending after a set number of characters or wrapping to fill the whole screen) then BBEdit can serve as the only writing tool a minimalist macOS-based fiction writer might need. In both of these examples, the text is cleanly presented, with essentials like word count visible, though that information can be hidden in both applications. Like BBEdit, iA Writer can be tailored to provide a full-screen writing canvas, but with the added benefit of centering the main column of text.Ī comparison of iA Writer’s full-screen view, above, to BBEdits’s presentation, below. But for a number of years now, iA Writer from Information Architects has been my main writing tool, combining the best of BBEdit’s simplicity with features that give it a slight edge. Fast and robust, BBEdit is still an essential part of my writing workflow for all the reasons I gave earlier. ![]() In an earlier guide, I wrote up my experiences using the text editor BBEdit from Bare Bones to write and edit stories and novels.
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