1. Chris Brown

    Chris Brown New Member

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    Application assisted writing

    Discussion in 'Writing Software and Hardware' started by Chris Brown, Mar 3, 2019.

    Hello,

    I am not a writer by trade or do any as a hobby, but I do enjoy stories.
    Something I always wondered when people are writing excessively complex stories is, how do they keep everything consistent. Things such as many main characters, multiple intersecting story lines, different lore, time travel, other dynamic events or changes etc.
    I am asking this as I am a programmer and thought this would be something different to program, would it help to have an application that assists this kind of information?
    For example you have main character separated by time and distance but at various times/places they meet, they also do things unkown to that of the other characters. Stories are read linearly but they occur non-linearly. Would it be helpful to have an application that could detail specific information at specific times/places for character and environments, what has happened to the character, what the characters would know, environment changes, what should be possible, different or changed

    Any thoughts?
     
  2. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Yes. I don't think you need an application to do this, though.

    This would apply whether you're writing a story set in the real world or in an imaginary one.

    Establish a timeline (probably by year, or month, although if the story spans a huge amount of time you can take that into consideration as well.)

    First of all, write into the timeline everything you know about that particular time period UNRELATED to the characters in your story. That gives you a strong foundation for what could or could not have happened. YOu can put in political developments, wars, inventions, weather details, financial situations, famous people, etc. You can add in events as your research or imagination creates them, but watch out for clashes with what you've already had your characters doing. You may discover plot holes that need to be filled.

    Then, as you write your story, add in details about your characters, regarding things they see and do. Although you can start with a few details before actually writing your story (like birthdays), this timeline functions more like a diary than an outline. One of the things I use my timeline for is keeping track of how old my characters are, each year. As things happen in your story, write them into your timeline.

    Here is an example from my timeline, the year my story begins. I have a timeline established from the early 1860s that affect my characters. After this 1885 year, when my main story begins, I shift from month to month, adding in new events as I write them, to keep things straight. The fictional events, including my characters' birthdays, are all in bold.


     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2019
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  3. exweedfarmer

    exweedfarmer Banned Contributor

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    There is already a coder or two on this board. If the plot gets too intricate, the reader won't be able t.o follow. A short story usually has only one theme and a novel of that sort has to be carefully plotted out in advance. Software of the sort you are describing would be pretty useless. But don't let me stop you....
     
  4. Chris Brown

    Chris Brown New Member

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    So could it be made useful?
    It is not intended for short or simple stories, more so for long stories, people who write different stories at once, or take breaks, or create randomly, or re-write earlier work, extending an existing story, before during after the original.
    You do mention "carefully plotted out in advance", what happens if after you carefully plotted everything out you realize or decide to change something.
    What if Rob, Caroline, Joe and Jessie they go there own way, have different characters arcs over different times, how would you keep the consistency and development of said arcs when they have interactions between each other and also Jeno, Janos and Kati.
     
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  5. The Piper

    The Piper Contributor Contributor

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    In truth, this is the sort of thing writers struggle with. I know I do. It's more than difficult keeping a storyline solid when you, as a writer, travel in more than one direction at one time, while also going forward.

    However, it's the kind of thing I personally deal with by either sticking multiple colour-coded post-its to my wall and plotting them into some sort of map, or ignoring until edits, when any mistakes will be glaringly obvious and I can fix them.

    And I hate to say this, but for anyone who would prefer to do things digitally, the kind of programme you're describing already exists, pretty much, in various forms. Either as programmes or websites.

    This isn't to say it's not worth investing your time into making The Best One Out There, but if your goal is (for example) to make a profit out of it, think about how many writers would use it.
     
  6. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    This is a record of what the characters have done. If I make changes, then I need to check the timeline to make sure they can do what I now want them to do. And yes, I had to do this a couple of times during the crafting of my novel (which is now done.) However, if I had just made changes willy-nilly, without a timeline to keep me straight, I could have painted myself into quite a corner.

    I did have a great deal of the story already planned out when I started making this timeline. All I did was slot in the fictional events, ensuring they could have happened during the time I wanted them to. For example, I couldn't have either of the sets of parents taking out homesteads before the Homestead Act was passed. So that impacted on the timing of the backstory AND the ages of the characters. So did the Civil War, and how it affected the parents and the timing of the children's birth. (All backstory.)

    This method allowed me to do ongoing research and add it into the timeline. Of course I had to check on how the new information impacted my story. Thankfully, none of the new information derailed the train ...but yes, it could have derailed it. I still pick up pieces of information from that time period with trepidition. Yikes. What if I've made a big goof? So far, any 'goofs' I made were minor, and easily corrected. It does help to know your period beforehand. The timeline won't compensate for major gaps in your knowledge.

    My timeline might look complicated to an outsider, but if you write one yourself, you will know what all the references are about. The stuff in bold (the fictional stuff) will be a RECORD of what you've written. (It's not an outline of what you plan to write.) It's a diary.

    Think of it as a diary. You can go ahead and live your life without a diary, just as you can make up a story without keeping one for your characters. However, if you try to recall something you did several years ago (or what your characters were doing several years ago, or how old they were on a given day) you can only hope your memory is accurate. If you have the information written in your diary, however, it's there to be checked. That's all, really.

    As to what I would have done if I had decided to make huge changes to the 'direction' of my characters? Simple. I would have had to go back, erase most of the entries regarding all of my fictional characters (including backstory, if I intended to change that as well) and start again. However, the 'real' facts of the setting would not have changed, so any rejigging of my story would take them into account.

    Trust me here. This works. It worked for me, and is still working for me as I start on my second novel.

    .................

    Of course I was writing a novel set in a real historical period, and I wanted as complete a picture as I could get of what was happening at that time—not just to my characters but to the world at large. World events do affect people's lives, no matter where they live. Climactic factors certainly matter (especially if you are a rancher or a farmer), financial events (like economic depressions) wars, politics, technology, social and cultural events and customs, etc. These all will affect characters in various ways. My setting is real—the western frontier of the USA from the 1860s through to 1886. It's only the characters (and some of the local settings) that are fictional.

    This will be a slightly different process if you are creating a fantasy world. Then you can also change your setting details as well. It probably gets more complicated if you make constant changes to your setting, as well as what the characters do. I would still advocate a timeline, though. I would bet that most epic fantasy writers do keep some sort of timeline. Tolkien did. A lot of his appears in the Appendix to Lord of the Rings.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2019
  7. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I don't use Scrivener, but I feel like this may be a function Scrivener will perform?
     
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  8. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Yes, I've heard this is one of the things Scrivener is really good for.
     
  9. Martin Beerbom

    Martin Beerbom Senior Member

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    Yes, that is exactly why I use Scrivener. I write extremely non-linearly, so I need something to keep track what I wrote where, which details describe a character, or how a location looks/feels like. With a traditional word processor (*cough*Word*cough*), there would be a lot of scrolling, searching, not-finding, frustration. Or I would need to employ separate tools – either a separate document to keep notes, or something off the computer (index cards, cork- or white-board etc.)

    Scrivener allows me to have these notes directly attached to the main document, in one convenient file, which I can easily send off to my iPad or somewhere else in its completeness. It also makes it easy to edit – shift scenes around, or move them off the current story when you notice they don't belong, but still keep them around for inspiration or use in a different project.

    There are multiple views associated with those notes. For instance, in Scrivener 3, you can arrange the notes by time and storyline (if you have the time and storyline noted somehow) to see if it all works out. In addition, there are tools to work with planning/outlining software (like Scapple, like Scriv from Literature&Latte) or dedicated timeline software (like Aeon 2).

    There are also other applications that do automate making the notes (which Scrivener does not do). Say, it notices you use a character name, and automatically makes a note that this character appears in that scene. I forgot what apps those were – there was always something that rubs me the wrong way – pricing, subscription, having too much info in the cloud etc. – that made we feel its not something that's worth the price.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2019
  10. Hammer

    Hammer Moderator Staff Supporter Contributor

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    I use a mind-mapping tool for keeping track of plot/character arcs etc. -- like three dimensional post-its

    I worked with software commercially for over twenty years and never once have I thought I need anything more than this plus MS Word to write with (although I have written a couple of useful macros for Word -- the best of which I posted on the forum)
     
  11. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    Most techies keep a low profile on this website. You probably realise we are creative people. Sometimes I even paint when not hired as a freelance firewall for the capturing of old consumer articles - see spam post above. Sometimes he cuts/pastes his old Readers Digest collection, sometimes Computer Weekly or the Best of Which.
     
  12. Chris Brown

    Chris Brown New Member

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    My goal isnt to make money, just make something that would be useful to someone. What I get out of this is learning a significantly different type of application to what I normally do.
    I see no point doing something nobody will use, no point in creating incorrect or pointless tools, I can only guess what tools would be useful to a writer. I dont know how you plan out stories or what would help if at all anything will.
    My idea is not note taking, but an entities with attributes, events, knowledge, problems, attitude, conditions, thoughts, properties etc all separate details about the entity that each occur at different times. You repeat this for multiple characters, environments and objects , then you select a time and it provides interpolated data or guided information derived from each entities past and/or future for anything in the story.
     
  13. XRD_author

    XRD_author Banned

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    Sounds something like Aeon Timeline. Which integrates into Scrivener, BTW.
     
  14. exweedfarmer

    exweedfarmer Banned Contributor

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    I think the whole concept you have here is to bring order to chaos. Some of us need the chaos. One of my favorite quotes is from Andrew Jackson 7th president of the United States. ' it is a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.'
     
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  15. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Not automatically or as a distinct feature, but it certainly is an innate part of the way Scrivener allows you to both have your story in many different parts (documents) and also all together in an accessible location with the added benefit of not having to stitch all this together by hand once you're ready to compile and spit out a Shunn style MS, which is a key feature that makes the software distinct from doing the same thing (doable) with your own computer's file structure and just using different MS Word docs.

    I give this caveat because - though everyone knows I am a devout fan of Scrivener since its very early days - I have occasionally looked for some flavor of timeline software to work in concert with Scrivener.
     
  16. exweedfarmer

    exweedfarmer Banned Contributor

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    I've been with the o p is at, and I think what he'd really like to know is what would you like your software to do that it currently doesn't?
     
  17. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    In that vein, my answer would be that the timeline/storyline outlining feature would need to be integrated into the software platform I use to write. If I have to open a second application, chances are I'm not going to use it because if I have to manually go back and forth to sync the timeline/storyline with the actual written product, that's a faff and I'm not doing it. It needs to be part and parcel, else work so seamlessly with the writing application that the difference is academic. I'm assuming the end goal is to market and sell the piece of software. If I have to do the legwork between the two platforms, then I can accomplish all of this with a piece of paper and a pen. But if the convenience factor is there, nickel-slick and polished, then yes, I would be willing to pay a reasonable fee for the convenience.

    With that said...

    I just discovered that I'm wrong with respect to the "distinct feature" aspect of the feature in question within Scrivener. He gets to it at about 00:01:00. The information prior to that is how to use the labels feature of Scrivener (useful for just about anything you like), but in the V3 of Scrivener has now been flexed to also serve as the port of entry for creating storyline tracking for each character. I have V3, but have never made use of this particular feature and only just now realized what that little button is!

     
  18. Chris Brown

    Chris Brown New Member

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    I have little concept of writing or the processes involved in creating a story.
    I think part of the problem explaining is I think like a programmer with absolutes, rules, quanta-sizing everything to values and involving programmatic concepts like (multiplayer)collaboration, object orientation, "classes", inheritance etc which makes things like referencing and multiple entities very simple but if used in fleshing out characters/places could easily be deemed way over the top information wise. I'm basically thinking a programmers solution to what I would find difficult in a field I don't fully understand and that possible does not even exist.

    OK so the application would have to be an all inclusive product that would need to do all that is needed not just a tool to provide information, sure, why not, link all the data together. Each defined scene has an internal location and time, then when a character/place/item is mentioned you can see information from past, present and future, or go directly to where it is referenced in other parts of the story for more detail. Think of it like, similar to a wiki page with hyperlinks but aware of time and changes.... eg Three brothers meet up, John, Jack, Joe for xmas. So who's Joe again? what happened to him, what is going to happen, why, where, when? This basic character progression data is already filled out in like point form, date & event. Then when fleshing out the story its easy to reference past, current, impending events of whatever things you deem necessary at any point needed for the story.
    Do writers write story sections in a non linear fashion? Do the ending first, then work each character one at a time towards this end?
    Do writers change things then have to find and edit later encounters, or earlier parts to lead up to this change?
    The video above might help explain what my angle is a bit better, similar to that but for individual elements in the story and with relation to time and place
     
  19. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Some of us do; some of us don't. Personally, I'm quite non-linear in my writing.

    Some of the most heated (pronounced: ridiculous) conversations you will find in any writing forum (aside from non-writing-related idiocy) concerns the dynamic of the writing process. No two people are the same; no two people engage it in the same way. This is why apps like Scrivener - and its spiritual predecessor Liquid Story Binder - offer their suite of tools in a way where:

    a) You use the tools that make sense to you and the rest you are at liberty to completely ignore.

    b) Many of the tools are individually flexible in many different directions, so, for example, the labels feature menti0ned in the video I posted prior can be used to label documents using any system of classification that makes sense to you, the writer. The labels can equate to locations, happenstances, scenes, characters, specific types of material contained within a scene, literally anything. In one story I can use the labels to track where the scenes are taking place. In another story, I can use them to denote a particular character POV in play (this is my usual use).

    So, though I do not speak I.T. at all, one challenge I can see for you (given the description in your last post of how you engage the paradigm) is the fact that for someone like me, if your app forces me to play in a particular way, under particular constraints, you're going to lose me. I'm only speaking for myself, of course. There's another app that I test-drove a while back called Dramatica Story Expert. In many ways, it also attempts to tackle much of what you are proposing, but its fatal flaw (other than being whoppingly overcomplex) is how rigid the application is with respect to what tools you use, how you use them, when you use them, etc. It was a "my way or the highway" kind of deal and that equated to $100.00 USD down the toilette. Someone else may well have a shrine in their home dedicated to that software, but not me.

    Yep, this certainly happens. Sometimes you simply realize that a particular plot course just isn't working out and you have to backtrack and redirect. Sometimes it's just about you becoming better acquainted with the characters, settings, and happenstances and as the "dough" gets richer and more complex, you look back at those early chapters and they feel thin, or just don't jive anymore.

    --------------------------------

    The most important takeaway from my post is flexibility, and my apologies for the constant Scrivener-worship, but in my experience, as regards offering these kinds of conveniences to the writer, it's going to be the benchmark against which your creation is measured. It has a very strong foothold with writers like myself who want a feature-rich organizational platform in which to write that is at the writer's beck and call, not the other way 'round.

    Many members here will note that most of what Scrivener does can be made to happen using the basic features intrinsic to any Windows or Mac machine plus a word processor of choice, and they aren't wrong. Novels were successfully written and writers had their carefully manicured, individual writing processes centuries before computers were ever even a thing. You're never going to change the nature of the writer; all you can do is offer a more convenient, more user-friendly way to do what has been done since humans first set words to clay tablets or sheets of papyrus.

    For example, here's an image of J.K. Rowling's somewhat famous "plot spreadsheet".

    College rule, hole-punched paper, blue pen, messy as fuck, Rowling wipes her butt with hundred dollar bills.

    [​IMG]

    See what I mean? All of this is doable for next to nothing, so if a person is going to pay, it's really gotta' offer not just fins, but a goodly assortment of fins because we writers are as varied as the fishies in the sea. ;)
     
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  20. Chris Brown

    Chris Brown New Member

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    Firstly, I dont expect payment. If I did change Id prefer a subscription service, something trivial.
    I just keep thinking IT and online application, import export pre-defined elements from the public domain, or use things from your own existing stories, to use in other side strories or pre-sequels. Not sure how useful that would be.

    OK so dont force any features or tools, have no predefined structure , have it as basic as possible with the option of using, adding any number of features tools you like with as little fixed structure as possible.
    The tools range from simple to complex, you can use all the extra features or just written notes and ignore the rest

    Does Scrivener have the ability to tag and label, specific parts of a story, individual words, place, characters, items, search for and index them?
     
  21. exweedfarmer

    exweedfarmer Banned Contributor

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    Good intentions aside, i think you're barking up the wrong tree. Writers do things differently from one another, so writing one coherent application isn't going to do anyone much good. I still work mostly in text, plain old ASCII text. It's easy to manipulate.
     
  22. Chris Brown

    Chris Brown New Member

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    And there wont be anything stopping you from doing just that, im not doing this to sell a product
    Being a programmer that's my challenge, write something in such a way that it can be used by people in different and unintended ways, use it all or use it as simply as possible.
    This is why I'm asking, "what would make it useful", in your case, have the ability to be a simple text editor.
    The programmer in me sees a story, the things in the story, break them down, re-use, index, tag, link, reference, interpolate and process them
    I should create a mock up of what I'm thinking
     
  23. exweedfarmer

    exweedfarmer Banned Contributor

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    I'm not trying to stop you. Waste your time anyway you like. But what you're trying to do in my opinion, is impossible. There is no commonality no Central mathematical puzzle to solve. Writers write in a gazillion different ways. Why don't you try reading the short story contest this month. Try to see if you can find any commonality among the stories. Yes, I know exactly how a programmer thinks, I was puzzling out reed-solomon when you were playing with Legos.
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2019
  24. Chris Brown

    Chris Brown New Member

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    For the record I would like you to try and stop me, convince me its a worthless pointless idea nobody would ever use.

    I realize it wont be for everyone, not really short stories or every story type. I imagine it would be mainly useful to assist details of stories with lots of elements, change, or over a long period of time.
    How would a writer check all the details of all the characters in a series?
    Commonality among the stories, I'm guessing most stories will have pro/regression of some sort, elements exist in some manor, somewhere or some sort and are different by the end either internally or externally, the stories are about some thing, somewhere, something changes or is revealed in some way.

    He Wants to Dance on My Grave (3,021 words)
    It was a nice bar, in midtown Manhattan.

    ON WRITING NICELY, 1208 words
    ‘Aghh, aghh, aghh!’
    Certainly he screamed like a blackbird,

    Fishbowls and Writer's Block (2269 words)
    To Jason, writer’s block was like a

    U-Turn (1045 words)
    The look in her eyes was

    Commonality found in short stories, all are about something. Without reading Im guessing something happens at/with/to/about/for these things mentioned. BTW short stories would not really be a good use
    What Id like to know, is it difficult to track/check/refer to when/where things happen/change, or link them together when writing non-linearly and write linearly for events non-linearly told, or find and revise all references to something modified earlier?
     
  25. exweedfarmer

    exweedfarmer Banned Contributor

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    Proceed! Carry on!
     

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