Scrivener-like outliner for Windows?

Posted by Sebastien Berthet
Sep 26, 2009 at 08:51 AM

Hello!

Edwin, I’m the author of CbC and I’m glad you appreciate it.
What your’re developing seems very different to me, although some overlaps may blur those differences.
CbC is Word with a project treeview (? la Visual Studio, habit that comes from the job…). John has perfectly summarized what it does and how it should be seen as a tool.

I just wish to add here that although CbC is a freeware, there is a *huge* development effort in it (the first release was in 2001). I use it everyday, and dozens of other writers have sent me regular emails to correct and improve it over the years. This is why I think too it’s now pretty stable.

On the other hand, CbC will never evolve to a data organization tool, with mind mapping, data mining, instant full text search, and all those great features you are developing. From my point of view, these features are mainly pre-writing stuffs: they are extremely useful to organize the author’s “universe” and pull coherent characters and a nicely packaged plot out of the chaos. When it comes to the actual writing of the novel draft, doing mindmaps again sounds to me like adding milk in a cooked pastry. Maybe that’s just my way to work… I know there are two big churches for writing methods: 1) write a plan and follow that plan (Elisabeth Georges) and 2) write as it comes and that plan will emerge (Stephen King).
From what I’ve understand of your software, I would say that CbC may be for writers of church 1, and your software for writers of church 2…

Anyway, I can’t wait trying your software! Good luck with your developments ! Once your software is released, I will add a link on the CbC homepage.
Kind regards,

S?bastien