Writer's DreamKit 4 Win/Mac

The best way to use this software is to plan out the characters, situation and ending beforehand and have an idea for the outline in mind. The first step is answering a serious of multiple-choice questions and describing your characters and their situation. This section can reveal aspects of your story you may not even be aware of and I found that very interesting. (For example, you may not realize that two characters always contrast in their approach to solving problems but by answering the questions, some subtleties like that become obvious.) You can use the observations to better define your characters and expand on elements of your story.

The DreamKit allows you to leave gaps and move chapters around easily but some changes, like adjusting character personality traits, require recreating from scratch. You can transfer your outline to a word processing document or fill in the chapters in DreamKit, though there are no tools to assist with editing-- it won't advise you if you're writing clichés or losing the reader's interest in exposition.

The examples taken from well-known films like Star Wars and Casablanca are very useful since the writing terms used are somewhat distracting (activity, impact character, etc.). The pictures feature is less useful. (You can select graphics to represent all your characters, but why would you?)

There is a slim users manual that is mandatory reading before you can even begin the program. If you enjoy writing fiction more than reading instruction manuals you may find this frustrating. A poster-sized chart warns "Read This First", but I personally found the chart tedious.

A complex story, with multiple points of view or an atypical plot structure, will be more difficult to utilize with this program with than straightforward, single dimensional one. A short story writer may not have much to gain from this program either. I didn't use the screenplay feature, so I won't comment on that. Overall, this program is much more useful than I expected and can really help a writer get his characters and situation into a cohesive and complete first draft.

Being the kind of person who does like software and computers to assist my writing, I was drawn to this product. Would such an affordably-priced piece of software offer me any help for fiction writing? Well, the answer is ultimately pending as I have NOT completed any work of fiction, but I now have a useful tool for organizing a foray into that genre.

What's here:
A storyline "wizard" that takes you by the hand to create a story throughline, main character throughline, impact character (I presume they mean antagonist), the interaction of pro and antagonist (as they put it, main vs. impact.) The wizard asks you to create scenes based on the throughline.

A character matrix-- you get 16 attributes to assign to your character and they are:
1.consider
2. logic
3. pursuit
4. control
5. reconsider
7.uncontrolled
8. avoidance
9. faith
10. conscience
11.support
12. help
13. temptation
14. disbelief
15. hinder
16. oppose

Too many, not enough? Well, the pro version of the software reportedly has 256 of these matrix cells. Frankly, I think 16 is plenty, because I believe that the unconscious controls a lot of the character creation process; for example, I wrote a small piece with one theme and one main character. He was, when I finished, a pastiche of several people including myself, where I had simply taken the necessary attributes from life and combined them logically in a whole. I did not need to agonize over a matrix of cells. But...were I to motivate this main character through a plot-theme, I would need to track these characteristics that I imbued him with. Hence, the need for a database tracking software such as Writer's Dreamkit.

Unless you are writing a highly complex work, such as a screenplay or novel of mammoth proportions and need to track the consistency of many character attributes, my opinion is that this is sufficient to at least get started and organize good character development. And this is a small investment to make to see if your writing style is amenable to adding a software tool because, for some people, such a logical device could possibly hinder the creative process, not enhance it.

Conclusion: The Writer's Dreamkit (tm) V. 4.0 is a good basic tool. It is not comprehensive, but has enough features and is inexpensive enough to test whether or not you would use such a technical tool to assist your writing.

After a hard day's work, I wound up with 32 Scenes, many with full descriptions which you can shuffle however you like. This program is very flexible and intuitive once you get the hang of it. I'm still learning many things about it, but my main interest was getting help with the outline, and it delivered. The HELP Section is great and the Dramatica Terms Dictionary is very helpful as well.

The bottom line: this program takes a little time to warm-up to but once you do, it's very useful and even fun to use. Beginners will find the almost scientific approach to writing somewhat intimidating, but it's all designed to make the artistic side of writing much more effortless. I suggest that all the disgruntled users take a deep breath and give it another shot. You'll be glad you did.- A. Rios Jr.