Writing without microsoft word

[NightmareHybrid]

I've wanted to write fanfiction, I've got plenty of stories, but I don't have Microsoft Word. I have a Google Chrome Book, and I can't find anywhere I can write my stories. Is there any other way to write without Word?

Sorry if this has already been asked, or if this isn't the right place to put it, I've never started a thread before.

[Kutie Pie]

I know there's a few writing programs out there, but the only one I can think of is OpenOffice, which is free to use. (I use the program on my MacBook, and it's pretty much like Microsoft, so it's easy to use.) I don't know how Google ChromeBook works, though from what I've seen, it's like any other computer out there. So I'm sure there are programs out there for it.

[IJuggler]

Google docs is quite popular I hear. There are other online 'note' forms you could take advantage of, but I am more happy to rely on my computer.

If you had to, you could use Notepad. But it has that thing where it only does plain text, so you'd have to input italics/bold/etc afterwards.

A quick Google search tells me that LibreOffice is a good free processor, akin to Word with only a few things missing. I've never used it myself, but I don't doubt that it would be sufficient for fanfics.

[Meeker]

As the guy above me stated, Google Docs. It's been renamed to Google Drive, but that's what I use, as it allows my beta-reader to have much easier access to my story, and he can look at it whenever he wants, it's very convenient.

[NightmareHybrid]

I downloaded OpenOffice, but I had to delete it since it doesn't work on my computer. I'm now trying Google Drive, this will probably work. Thanks for the help!

[Phoenixsong]

Yeah, if you're using a Chromebook then you'll need to find something online/cloud-based to use rather than something installable like Open/LibreOffice (which I would otherwise recommend).

Google Drive is all right; I used it pretty extensively a long time ago, although I've since been kind of annoyed by some of the interface changes they've made (in particular with regard to the formatting; I don't like what it does when you try and paste it into a forum's WYSIWYG mode reply box, and I end up having to clean out a bunch of unnecessary formatting BBCode tags) and don't use it much for writing fiction anymore. Issues aside it probably is the best free online word processor available, though, and it may offer some integration with your Chromebook at that since it is Google, so it's probably your best bet. Zoho Docs is similar and still fairly popular iirc, so you might want to look at that as well. Personally I don't think it's as good, but some people like it, so...

If you don't mind manually writing out the BBCode tags/using something simple like a Notepad clone as opposed to something more akin to Word, you can also look at things like Writebox. (Writebox in particular also has a Chrome app that basically does the same thing, if you'd rather use that than visit the url.) Writebox requires a Dropbox (or Google Drive) account if you want to save documents more permanently, and as stated above it doesn't have most of the features of a full-blown word processor the way Drive does, but it's a good distraction-free writing environment for when you need to concentrate, and hey, if there're no formatting options then that also means there won't be any formatting cruft to clean up later when you're ready to post it someplace like Serebii.

Really, a search for "online word processor" or "cloud-based word processor" or similar should turn up alternatives in case you want to try something other than/in addition to Google Drive.

[Sid87]

I was using AbiWord until I realized my new laptop had a free version of Word on it. It's a fine, free product.

[Doryuzu]

Google Documents is amazing, much better than Word. That's what I've been using and it makes writing less of a hassle.

[Celebi-Rose]

I have OfficeSuite