yWriter 5 - Review

I have now transferred all four existing WIPS, except for the one I am currently writing, to yWriter 5, and I have to say it's definitely useful. I can understand how it could become more bothersome and time eater, but I do not use all its functions. First thing I like is an extremely easy way to divide chapters and scene, and to transfer them around as well as rename as necessary. It's especially useful once the first draft is finished, and you have to find all the problems, and often change the sequence or even the story as a result of editing. Scene by scene makes it easy to check that you haven't missed out anything. Of course it could be done in just MS Word, but having just a small chunk at a time makes it easier to manage. Usually, I have a list of characters in an excel spreadsheet. But I found that by spending a little time initially putting characters' names in yWriter, each scene can be assigned view-point character, as well as list of all characters within each scene, which makes it easy to check if some character randomly shows up in one scene and then disappears, or in multi view-point story if one one person gets a lot more scenes than another. For existing WIP which are either in half-finished first draft state or at plotting stage, project notes section is handy for keeping notes. Usually I kept them in word documents, and it's bit of a job trolling through them when they go for several pages, and then I end up creating several documents. But being able to keep various project notes labelled, again it's just more efficient and easier. For all new projects, I intend to use it from very beginning and eliminate character spreadsheets and misc. notes documents alltogether.