Even though the age of typewriters is pretty much gone, writing a book is not exactly a walk in the park. You still need inspiration, knowledge, motivation, and a solid way of keeping track of storyline, plots, characters, and so forth.
Thankfully, instead of doing everything the old-school way, you can try and use a professional writing app. A good modern writing app can do wonders when it comes to planning the content for your book, actually drafting it, as well as editing and proofreading it.
WonderPen is one such application. It’s a professional writing app that’s aimed at pretty much everyone willing to give writing a chance, from aspiring writers to more experienced writers who rely on a clean and structured writing environment.
Let’s start with the basics. The app features something called a tree-like multi-level directory. This is a neat way to organize documents, but it’s also very useful when it comes to managing and changing the relationship between the chapters of articles or books.
The app also boasts Markdown syntax support, and it provides a wide range of export options such as image, PDF, EPUB, Word, HTML (as well as other formats).
Other noteworthy features that make WonderPen great is the support for full-text search and replace, chapter splitting and merging, automatic document saving, document snapshot and full library backup, automatic backup, as well as individual memos for each document.
While the GUI is not particularly modern-looking (at least in my opinion), pretty much everything you need for a good writing experience is there. the app has a full-screen composition mode (useful for eliminating distractions), a whiteboard mode (you can add notes, images, checklists, tables, kanban, etc.).
A really cool feature is the support for the global note cards. These cards provide a convenient way of referencing between documents. There’s also a cool dark mode (with tons of built-in GUI themes), as well as support for custom CSS (which just adds a good layer of extra versatility to the app).
WonderPen is not an open-source app, however, it does offer a decent Free mode. I say decent because if you’re not dealing with multiple projects at the same time, the Free mode provides enough “firepower” for most basic writing needs.
You get basic document editing, access to features such as the whiteboard, dark mode, a few themes, library backup and restore, and the ability to import and export files.
Sadly, pretty much everything else is limited in the Free mode including the number of cards that can be added per whiteboard, the number of document templates and snapshots, the number of one-click typesetting schemes, the number of custom metadata, the number of automatic replacement rules, the number of card lists.
There’s no other way around the fact that if you’re aiming to write anything more than just a few articles or a simple novel, you’ll need and want the Pro mode. Whether the Pro mode is worth the asking price is really up to you as the user.
