As a fiction or novel writer, are you searching for a writing tool to help you harness your creativity and get down to efficiently developing your plot? You might have a cast of characters and need to incorporate several different sub-plots. Maybe you think in a non-linear fashion and need to get your million dollar manuscript done sometime this next... oh, I don't know... decade.

Perhaps you are a Linux user, too.

UK-based Anthemion Software, Ltd. has combined a story line editor, notebook, journal, a vector-based graphical tool, and several writing enhancement programs into a neatly bundled suite called Writer's Cafe. The program's focus is to capture characters, plot twists, and dialog quickly, in a way that is easily edited later and aid in managing the content production process (see Figure 1).

The program is available via CD or online and will load under Linux distributions running glibc 2.2.9 or later. The company also sells a version that runs on Windows 98 through XP. Pricing is $50 for the CD and $45 for the downloaded version. Similar products include Final Draft and Y-Writer.

Let's take a look inside the package.

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