Norton 360 v5.0--only £24.97 when you spend £30 or more
Save ££s on Norton 360 v5.0 - 1 User 3 PC--only £24.97 when you spend £30 or more on items sold by Amazon.co.uk. Here's how (terms and conditions apply). *Offer ends 23:59 GMT on 29 February (originally due to end at 23:59 GMT on 31st December 2011 and then extended to end at 23:59 GMT on 31st January 2012)
System Requirements
- Platform: Windows NT / 98 / 2000 / Me / XP / 95
- Media: CD-ROM
- Item Quantity: 1
Product Features
- Gets new writers started immediately
- Provides alternative means for experienced writers
- No blank screens - prompts and help at every turn
- Drop down menus help create and develop ideas for characters and scenes
- Work on as many different books as you want
Product details
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The idea that creative writing cannot be taught seems to be challenged by recent history. The creative writing course at Norwich, for instance, has produced authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan and Andrew Miller; the latest attempt to impart the "rules of fiction" is Newnovelist--Start Writing Your Novel, a CD-ROM designed to assist the aspiring writer's learning curve.
Newnovelist aims to help writers hone their ideas, guiding them first to select the concept of their book, and then its category--be it an epic narrative, plot-driven or character-driven. After further honing the idea into a type of story (whether the tale is driven by a chase motif or revenge, for instance) the package gives tutorials on essential elements in creating the atmosphere of the novel and helping to picture the world that the characters inhabit. The final stage is to move from this to the creation of the story itself, with advice on the passages that will be necessary to realise the world and the characters successfully.
There is much that is valuable here in terms of plot and character, but some elements of the package are less helpful, particularly the section that asks the writer to give a one-line summary of their proposed book--nothing is more infuriating or awkward for an author than being asked to describe their book in half a dozen words. There is also no concentration on the importance of writing from inspiration and experience, and scant reference to the significance of prose style; in the end, without these elements, NewNovelist--Start Writing Your Novel can only be a piecemeal addition to the growing "industry" of teaching creative writing, although its tips on character and plot may well be helpful to some. --Toby Green
Product Description
CREATIVITY SOFTW NEWNOVELIST . UK
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very poor,
By
This review is from: New Novelist--Start Writing Your Novel (CD-ROM)
NewNovelist is a good idea, but the software is so riddled with bugs that it becomes unusable. For a start it will often lose the information you've stored in one of its files, so you lose every bit of work you've done. Aside from the bugs, the idea of actually writing in this is laughable. There are no word-processing capabilities whatsoever. You can't change the font, font-size, use bullet-points, or anything. If you do write something you can't export it. You can only save it and open it in NN. You can't format your work, so you'd never want to submit it to a publisher! You can't even right-click in the text window should you want to copy and paste something! Given that I paid £30 for it, I feel very ripped off. Don't buy this, just make your notes on paper and write your novel in Word.
32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
New Novelist review,
By maz (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: New Novelist--Start Writing Your Novel (CD-ROM)
I bought this a few years back now and i noticed that this program is buggy and after a while you can't be bothered to put up with its errors anymore. your probably better off just using word or something similiar. Seriously don't waste your money on junk like this. you'll regret it. i mean there is no spellcheck. sometimes there is only so much you can write - (nn stops you from writing!?) help feature sucks coz it doesn't help you. and if you try to call up customer services to get the pin to unlock you wont get through EVER! just use word - seriously! new novelist is CRAP!
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good idea, poorly executed,
By A Customer
This review is from: New Novelist--Start Writing Your Novel (CD-ROM)
On the plus side, this software helps me with what I wanted it to help me with. A big plus. It forces you to consider character in detail, story type and structure, the importance of location and several other facets of good story telling.The big negative is that you can't access any of this in a printed, or even a comprehensive onscreen, report. That's right - you can spend hours detailing all aspects of your major and minor characters, only to find that the information is trapped in fairly unhelpful units in the software. The really annoying thing is that the software itself claims that such reports can be generated. After an hour of head-scratching I called the company helpline and asked how I did this. The polite man on the other end of the phone admitted I'd stumbled on a 'hot potato', and that such reports couldn't be produced at the moment. An upgrade/patch is expected by the end of the year. Until such a patch arrives, I'm loathe to invest time in the creation of data which I can't access in any useful form. This is very disappointing, as the software itself is really rather good, and exceedingly useful, but until it's been improved I'm off to look at other options.
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