Screenwriting Product Review: MasterWriter 2.0 Software Review

By Forris Day Jr.

Watch MasterWriter 2.0 Overview from Writers Store on Vimeo.

Writing is an art form. It truly is. Sure, anyone can write, but not everyone can write compelling sentences and form interesting stories. Most people can get by with minimal writing skills, and many more have a mastery of the language, while others just tear up the English language into itty bitty tiny pieces of indistinguishable letters and words. Read just about any Facebook post and you'll see an abundance of misspellings and weirdly formed sentences.

I respect people who can, in essence, paint with words. MasterWriter 2.0 is a program primarily designed for songwriters and poets. It is just as useful for writers, such as myself, who can get by but want to bring our writing up a notch, or several notches for that matter. It is a small word processor crammed with a big collection of tools for words. A dictionary, thesaurus, rhyming dictionary, parts of speech and several others.

Let me show you an example of how MasterWriter 2.0 can help you take boring writing and turn it into interesting prose. Let's say you are writing a novel, and you have this pretty simple sentence in it:

The black cat crossed the road quickly so that it couldn't get hit by a car.

Wow... boring right? Now lets use MasterWriter 2.0 to make this sentence more powerful. I'll take the sentence piece-by-piece and change things in it, using the software. I won't get into every step of the process, but by using the dictionary, thesaurus, word families and parts of speech feature I came up with this:

The ebony tabby jetted and wove its way across the boulevard at a lightning quick pace to avoid being crushed by the oncoming parade of steel machines.

I know, brilliant, right?

OK, maybe not so brilliant, but you get the idea of what I did there. I took a rather straightforward sentence and added a little spice to it to create something more fun and interesting to read. I did it by simply using a few of the tools included in MasterWriter 2.0.

There are those that can just write naturally with lots of color and flair. Then there are folks like me who have to look things up in a thesaurus to come up with a better word. Now we have a program that has an abundance of tools with just a click of a mouse.

Because MasterWriter 2.0 is primarily designed for songwriters, it has a rhyming dictionary. Perfect for poets too. You can look up exact rhymes for words or sound-alike words, creating words and sentences you might not ever come up with on your own. Words can be filtered into positives, negatives, moderate and intense so you cannot only find the right word, but also the correct intensity of word. Search words that start with certain letters, if you want. Choices abound.

Maybe you are writing about a river, and you want to describe it in a bit more detail. Type the word “road” and search for descriptive words for it, whether it be verbs, adjectives or other nouns. It is fun to use and interesting to discover little ideas to add to your writing, using this program.

If you are a musician, you can write song lyrics using the built in word processor then record some music using the build in audio recorder. It’s a simple recorder, but it’s a wonderful tool to have at hand as a musician. Since I’m not a musician, I’m speculating here, but it seems like a great way to work out melodies and all the other things you might need to do to write a song.

Overall, MasterWriter 2.0 is a neat program that can help you add richness to your writing. I can’t wait to keep using it to see where it brings me when I am stumped for just the right word. Try it out and see for yourself what direction it will lead you in your writing journeys.

PROS: A nice collection of tools put into one software package to make any writer better.

CONS: I found the interface a bit clunky to use. It wasn’t as intuitive to use as I would like to see, but the online tutorials guided me and were very helpful.

BOTTOM-LINE: Yet another software that I feel can help all writers. With all the built-in tools, you can’t go wrong with MasterWriter 2.0.

Watch Forris Day Jr. use MasterWriter 2.0! Click on the image below.

-BONUS: Get Word Menu FREE with your order -- a $30 value!