Wavemaker is a piece of novel writing and card making software with novel planning features. It is an add-on for Chrome and Chromium. Because it adds onto the browser as an external application, it works with all platforms. It's also available in the Google Play Store. All versions of this software are free as of this writing.
First Things First
Wavemaker is not set up like normal novel planning and writing software. There's no menu for Chapter or Scene. Instead, there are Siblings and Childs. How you use those, I think, is up to you. For myself, I think I'd use the Add Child for Chapters as it indents under the manuscript title, which is populated with "my story". You can click on My Story and easily change the title. It's very similiar to how Google docs does their titles. In fact, all the titles are like that. You can name childs and siblings in that manner. To get the software to sync properly, you must connect it to Google Drive. By doing that, you are allowing it to update automatically and be availalbe for you no matter which device you are using. (This is the primary benefit of this product. It works everywhere.)
What WaveMaker Includes
-
A writing and editing window (Writer)
-
Search Function
-
Database Cards (Not sure what this could be used for. Up to your imagination I think.)
-
Snowflake Tool (Bad name for this, but you can add characters and locations and extra novel information and have it exported to the Writer Tool)
-
Planning Board (Shows sections that are in the Writing Tool)
-
Grid Planner (I guess if you were going to do some detailed novel planning, this is where you'd do it.)
-
Mind Map (Again, probably for an author who really wants to plan the crap out of their novel)
-
Timeline Tool (What happens when. Another novel planning tool)
-
Challenger Mode (Timed Writing. Productivity Tool)
-
Export Documents
-
Google Drive Sync Up
Pros of WaveMaker
-
Available on all Platforms that have Chrome of Chromium Installed
-
Available for Android Phones
-
Definitely usable for writers using a combination of Linux and Android Portable Devices
-
It Syncs with Google
-
Can be exported as HTML, Markdown, RTF and as an Ebook (Ok, ebook someday. It's not available as of this writing)
-
You can download the project file
-
Has the ability to turn on paragraph indents (although, they are very shallow)
Cons of WaveMaker
-
It's not intuitive
-
It is not laid out like other novel software writing programs
-
There is a learning curve.
- May not be able to work on more than 1 book at the same time. Second books seems to overwrite the first book.
Wavemaker is probably very powerful and useful once you get the hang of it. A lot of the features are not precisely defined, so the author has a lot of leeway in how they use the functions of this program. Is it good? Is it bad? The jury is still out. I really haven't used it enough to make a determination, but I think authors should give it a try. For a free peice of novel writing software, it looks pretty robust.
