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  1. DriedPen

    DriedPen Member

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    Anyone Else Love Excel for Writing?

    Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by DriedPen, Oct 21, 2020.

    I think the second greatest gift by the writing Gods is the Excel Program...right next to Microsoft Word.

    I use Excel to plot out my character emotions, actions and decision making. I just put in the chapters, then assign a number for the character in that chapter to help plot where they are in the story, then make a graph. For those that do not use this, this is how I use Excel and why.

    Let's say a character has in interest in a guy then later they fall head over heels in love, but then she finds out he is married. But in the end he choses her over his wife.

    I would assign the mistress a #5 for the first chapter (interest), a #10 for falling in love. #-10 for finding out her love interest is wed, then 10 for choosing her over his wife. In that basic story, you can easily see where a chart would plot those 4 points and rise and fall in time to the characters emotions.

    But I used a scale of 1-10...you could use 1-100 to get a more accurate depiction. But on a novel, there are also numerous ups and downs, and not just four points to plot, so valuable information can be gleaned.

    You can chart anything this way, and it quickly shows any fault in the story line. My latest WIP is like that, my antagonist had very little deviation as I charted him in my novel. He was not flat-lined, but did not have a lot of highs and lows in my book. Whoops...that is a BORING antagonist, so I know where I need to do some work now...making my antagonist more interesting. But using Excel I can see my characters via a very easy to see chart.

    You can also compare characters. By adding in all three characters, you could see where their emotions are, in terms of where in the book by chapter. In the example above, the mistress has her heart broken (-10) when her lover looks like he is patching things up with his (10) wife (10).

    You can also quickly see if things are wrong in the timeline. If you are charting decision making, you can see if the protagonist is doing that too early, or too late in the story and move chapters around so the story has better flow. Or if writing a romance novel, if the couple fall in love too early or late, you can see it easily in a graph, and adjust it. You can also plot out how much excitement is in your thriller novel by charting that.

    By assigning anything a number, Excel can quickly make a graph so you can see how your plot is...well...plotting out!
     
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  2. Lazaares

    Lazaares Contributor Contributor

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    I was about to question why someone would use excel for writing then realized I've a google sheet open in my chrome for my novel project to store worldbuilding data.

    Precisely; lists help us organize stuff far better and what's better than multi-dimensional lists? Pah.

    For now, I've got the following information in my sheets:
    - Table of titled holdings, which is pretty much equal to a list of locations.
    - Timeline for my world's present era, with different columns for wars, recessions, dynasties, etc.
    - Timeline for a specific war that happens during my project narrative and a list of the coalitions / treaties involved.
    - Military leadership, collecting the characters I've got involved in various roles.
    - Military organization with orders of battle.
    - Sheet of all characters with rudimentary character details & links to actual character sheet google docs.
    - Noble Parliament sheet where I can play around with factions, parties and votes for firm referencing in the narrative.
    - Noble family sheet with character-like descriptions and columns.
    - Culture sheet with all cultures I developed.
    - Fleet sheet which works like a combination of military leadership & organization. Here I also store ship names.
    - Gang sheet for my capital city lowlives/underworld.
    - Titles & Styles sheet for all levels of nobility. I need the reference; instead of the usual British peerage I'm using HRE nobility as a framework.
    - Outline sheet where rows are chapter prompts and columns are storylines / character arcs.
    - Quote & Note sheets for quick notes and quick ... quotes.

    It's far more pertinent to worldbuilding - though sheets are good formats to store a whole slew of data as well as create some "dynamic" data. Here, I have my initial table of holdings feed information into the parliament sheet, for example. If I change the title holder, it will shift votes from one noble family to another.
     
  3. Kyle Phoenix

    Kyle Phoenix Active Member

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    I honestly had never thought about using Excel in this way before, but I may have to keep it in mind for when I want to write in future. Thanks for sharing. This is a very practical and useful idea. :)
     
  4. J.T. Woody

    J.T. Woody Book Witch Contributor

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    I wouldn't say I love it (bullet points on a word doc is far less complicated), but I do find it useful at times and have used it on multiple occasions.

    I've used one of Google Sheets templates to create a timeline (that was really useful!). I attempted to do an in depth plot and character outline on it. I think I got the idea from here back when I joined WF. Someone posted a link to how to do outlines and one of them was the "Snowball" method.
    Yeah, I fizzled out on that one.

    I am using it for one WIP to keep track of characters and places.

    anything more in depth, I go to a word/google doc.
     
  5. DriedPen

    DriedPen Member

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    Word has its place, but one great thing about Excel is, you can "sort" data, AND it also calculates dates for you.

    I did not mention the latter in my first post because my current WIP is only 4 days in duration, but if longer, like a story that spans 5 years, a person can really plot out longer points of time with Excel.

    Setting it up with a little math, you can get Excel to prioritize different aspects of your story for you too. It is very easy to do because you just change the "weight" of the data. Say a character gets tired, happy, sad, angry and hungry all through the novel, and you want to see where the character gets mad the most during the novel. You still scale the emotion on a scale of 1-10, but you make "Angry" hold more weight. So you just reduce the other emotions to 50% or something, and then do a sort from highest to lowest. Excel will give you a running list (or chart) of where your character gets maddest to less mad.

    That matters because you do not want you character getting the maddest 1/3 of the way through the book, you want him INCENSED just when the reader thinks the antagonist is going to snuff out his life!
     
  6. DriedPen

    DriedPen Member

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    This is helpful in editing because as writers we fall in love with our own wordsmithing, and let things go because we are seduced by our own words.

    Using Excel, a writer reduces emotion...which drives our stories...down to a mere number that a computer can manipulate, and from that we get better characters and plotting because we see our deficiencies via numerical significance, NOT emotion.
     
  7. LazyBear

    LazyBear Banned

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    I only trust plain text documents and explicit formatting syntax because anything stored in Microsoft Office formats can become unreadable from a crash. One can use Markdown (used for Github documentation) or LaTex (used for scientific papers) if formatting is needed when putting the chapters together. A text document for listing things is also more flexible for sparse encoding of properties that don't follow the first normal form.
     
  8. deadrats

    deadrats Contributor Contributor

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    Using excel this way seems time consuming and complicated. I can't imagine how something like this would help me at all. Writing is an art, not a science.
     
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  9. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    As an editing thing, I can see it, but I am also reminded of the fact that... this is exactly how we teach little kids in Primary school to write :D I kid you not. Write now we are literally using a chart that goes through 4 plot points with the Y axis as a scale of 10 through to -10 and we ask the kids to assign an emotion to the character and place it on the scale so they can better see how the characters might be feeling, and to make sure their words then match up to how the characters should be feeling.

    So... there may be something to what you're saying. I just never thought adult writers might want to use it too :D
     
  10. DriedPen

    DriedPen Member

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    I use it more to make sure everything is aligned, kind of like how in photography there is the rules of thirds. Sure you can break the rule, but it also is considered the most pleasing to the eye, even if people cannot explain why. Hitting the right points, at the right time makes sense to readers, even they do not really know it.

    I put dynamite to my novel today though. The problem was, I had my main character going to a scene, fleeing from it, going back, then fleeing from it, etc. I just rearranged some chapters and made the flow for my main character much better. Its just more organized. It initially cut 20,000 words out of the novel, but now that I am inserting them back in places later in the book, I will probably end up with the same amount as I had.

    As I said, dynamited. Not really lost, just rearranged for a better flow.
     
  11. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    ^ That. Exactly that. ^
     
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  12. DriedPen

    DriedPen Member

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    So how can you be creative and imaginative, if you never try anything new?
     
  13. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    We, as writers, are already creative. It's why we write. And the rest is down to imagination, not some computer program.

    If it works for you, great. I just don't see the point. @deadrats summed it up perfectly; writing is an art, not a science. All you need to write is a pencil and paper and/or word processor.
     
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  14. J.T. Woody

    J.T. Woody Book Witch Contributor

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    Adding to @deadrats and @OurJud.... Some peoples brains work in numbers. Others do not.


    My brain just doesnt work that way, and thats why i see the method you outlined as tedious. In the method, i see too much time spent on algorithms and numbers than time spent on language and imagery.
    There is nothing wrong with numbers and there is nothing wrong with emotions. Its all on how your brain works.
     
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2020
  15. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    All I would say to this is - writing is supposed to evoke emotion. If you are to evoke that in readers, then you must be able to evoke it in yourself.

    Many people write by forming a connection with their characters, be that because the character is a reflection of themselves or people close to them.

    <cheese on>

    Look at it like this - can you reduce the people around you in real life to a set of numbers? Life is not a set of stats, and writing is supposed to be life, expressed in fiction.

    </cheese off>

    But if it works for you, that's great. Don't stop doing something that helps you write.
     
  16. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    This is one of the most bizarre statements I've ever seen from someone who writes fiction. Why on Earth would you want to remove the emotion from your writing??
     
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  17. Mark Burton

    Mark Burton Fried Egghead Contributor

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    In fairness to the OP, what they're doing is quantifying emotion by giving it a weighting, rather than eliminating it. It was awkwardly stated, I'll grant you, but its effect is to turn something inherently subjective into something with an objective flavour that can be graphed and visualised. It can therefore be used to pick out which scenes need more or less emotive content.

    For me, I probably do some quantification of my work. I might even resort to these extreme measures if I feel that the work falls short of my expectations. It has a place. On the whole, though, this does strike me as mostly overkill.
     
  18. Hammer

    Hammer Moderator Staff Supporter Contributor

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    I love excel - not least because I have made tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds over the years converting crappy little excel spreadsheet worlds to bone fide banking systems (c: In fact I first got "excited" by computers as an engineering undergrad about three and a half centuries ago using an early contemporary called SuperCalc.

    I have never used it for my writing but hats off to the OP if he (she?) is finding it useful as an aide for outlining etc., why not? It is an extremely versatile product.
     
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  19. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    But isn't the number itself subjective? Since it relies on the user's perception as to how much emotional content a scene has (unless it's done on a more objectified basis, such as how many times certain words appear).
     
  20. Mark Burton

    Mark Burton Fried Egghead Contributor

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    Yes, very true, but statistics has long-since included subjective elements in it (e.g. fuzzy logic).

    Objectifying an inherently subjective concept isn't an absolute objective truth. Rather, it's an approximation of an elusive (and in many cases impossible-to-reach or useless) absolute objective reality. It attempts to reach an objective standard and it fails to do so, but in so doing, it can provide a useful framework for someone trying to map out a subjective topic. It is most useful when doing subjective comparisons, rather than trying to get to an absolute figure. Graphing can provide a pointer to where problems might be that require a further (subjective) analysis. The natural inclination for a human is to compare two scenes and figure if one rates higher than the other. The process is iterative (and often wasteful as a result).
     
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2020
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  21. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    Well if I misinterpreted the statement, then fair enough, but I still don't really get it. Each to their own, I suppose.
     
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  22. Kalisto

    Kalisto Senior Member

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    I use a program similar called yWriter.
     
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  23. Mark Burton

    Mark Burton Fried Egghead Contributor

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    Me too!
     
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  24. DriedPen

    DriedPen Member

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    Here is an example of my latest novel: 90,000 words with 29 chapters, using the main character to give weight to his emotion. It took about 10 minutes to come up with this chart on Excel. So what does it show me? A LOT!

    1. The character starts out down in the dumps, and ends with him in the utmost highest spirits. (-10 to +10). Clearly change has occurred in my character.
    2. There are 7 high and low spots in this novel. 5 to 7 is considered ideal, so this is good.
    3. Chapter #19 is the sex scene. With 29 chapters it is pretty close to the center of the novel, but not ideal. But where should I make some cuts to make this ideal? Again the chart shows me. There is little emotion in my character from chapter 4-9, so when I edit, I know I can cut heavy in this area. That will bring the sex scene more to the center of the book.

    Excel.jpg
     
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  25. DriedPen

    DriedPen Member

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    But you can do other stuff too with excel really quickly. For instance you can add other characters and see where their emotions fall and rise so the graph does not show just one characters emotions, but two, or many...Or you can add in the "pet the dog moments", or other improvements you see.

    But like anything, this is just a tool a writer can use.

    For years I never went on Writing Forums because I figured if I had time to post on writing forums, I minds well just write! But it was foolish thinking. Through collaboration i have gained a lot of tools that will enable me to write better, quicker. So like using this site as a writing tool, so to is Excel.
     
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