Power Writer is efficient creative writing software with easy-to-use features and a great tutorial to teach you how to use them. It has all the necessary story development tools and interconnected functions to improve your writing and keep track of story elements.

Sometimes simpler is better and that's the case with Power Writer. It doesn't have a lot of extra features, but it has those necessary to get the job done. Its integrated functions make it worthwhile for any writer of any experience level to use.

Power Writer offers three main features: Outline View, Composition Frame and Story Tools. The Outline View lets you easily navigate within your story or book, clicking from one chapter to the next, or to a specific point within any given chapter. In turn, the part of your story that you select in Outline View will appear in Composition Frame, which is your word processor, in which you write the body of your story.

Story Tools is the heart of the application. It lets you create characters and assign their traits, access information about your story's plot, structure, research notes and more. It's a repository for all your story information. Within Story Tools is a Notes/Reference category to keep your notes organized and accessible.

You create characters in Story Tools by filling out a list of traits and answering questions about their physical and personality traits, desires and goals, strengths and virtues, and faults and weaknesses, as well as what they learn and how they change.

One drawback to Story Tools is the button to open and hide the feature is too small. It's only about 1/16 of an inch thick between Story Tools and the Composition Frame and is hard to find and access. Other drawbacks with this software include no brainstorming feature and it lacks genre outlines. There is no dictionary or writing examples within this application.

You can quickly move between the three main components of Power Writer, or have them all open. The word processor has a familiar design and takes little time to learn.

One feature called Must Accomplish Items is true to its title. You must fill in story details to move forward in the narration.

Power Writer offers great built-in tutorials to walk you through it functions. There's also a search box in which you can seek answers. A useful feature in the dropdown menu is called What's This? You click on it in the menu and your cursor turns into a pointer with a question mark. Point and click on anything within the application and a pop-up window explains its function and purpose. Customer service also is available by phone or email.