Software to help you write your novel!

I've been using this little thing called Write It Now for a while, just because it allows for simple access to different chapters, whereas in Word I would either have to scroll or use the search feature. It doesn't have a word count, but it has everything else I'd need, plus a bunch of little extras. Personality graphs for characters and such.

 

Lord of Hats,

And maybe your novels are conceptually simplistic and poorly integrated. What is that
LOL all about? You seem to be flying on egotism.

 

What was that for . I wasn't making fun of anyone but myself. Besides I fail to see how the program I write in automatically makes my writing simplistic and poorly integrated. I could write in Note Pad if I wanted to and it would still be the same story (oh boy that is a lot of scrolling though XD).

 

I agree with mammamaia. Putting the plot together, no matter how complex it may be, is something you should be doing - not a programme. It's part of the craft.

I honestly believe that there's nothing a piece of software can offer you that a standard wordprocessor like Word or Office cannot. (OpenOffice is also quite good because it exports straight to PDF if you want, very handy for digital copies)

But perhaps I believe in a more romantic notion of writing - that it's something you produce out of nothing and a solitary endeavour. (well, the first draft anyway! )

As lordofhats said, there's no reason you can't write in wordpad and that has nothing to do with egotism. Your comment was uncalled for, psywriter.

 

Wreybies - where did you get the software you are raving about? Did you do the free trial thing, or did you go through trialpay? I wouldn't mind checking it out - I love gimmicks and am not ashamed to admit it.

You go with your nonintegration, lordofhats. If you can write the way you do without any assistance, you don't need it. Some people are just jealous.

 

I downloaded the program direct from the website.

Liquid Story Binder

The free trial is a complete and fully functional version of the software, no missing bits. Read through the tutorial at the website before you download. There are MANY different features to the program which may seem extraneous and redundant, and the tutorial will even tell you as much. The whole reason for this is that you pick the parts that work best for you. Not everyone writes in the same way or through the same paths of process to get to the end goal. So, you kinda' customize the program for yourself and how you work. I think the program is brilliant because I am ridiculously unorganized. I am also a lover of all gimicky things!! (Yeay, I'm not alone!) I don't really find anything at all wrong or second rate about using a program like this. Everything I do in the program, I would do anyway, on paper, in the old-school way. I don't see what the issue is about having the process put together and made convenient for the writer.

I remember when hand held calculators first started to become available and teachers thought this little convenient device would make troglodytes of us all. Seems to me like kids today are smarter than ever.

 

Hmmmm. You're nudging one of my pet causes here. Students enter college these days less well prepared than ever for college-level mathematics. That is the main reason I am so determined to teach undergraduate mathematics when I retire from software engineering.

I'm not prepared to blame it all on handheld calculators, but your comment hit a wee bit close to home!

 

I'm with Cog on the calculator, which I don't think becomes evident until you have children going through school (or the electricity goes out at your favorite store and the teenage clerk has to give you change while doing the math in his head). It's scary how my kids think they can just use a calculator for everything.

As for the Liquid Story Binder - that thing is pretty awesome. I checked out a software that had a similar concept several years ago, but it was very glitchy. This one seems pretty cool. You can get it for free if you go through trialpay, or just download the trial.

Thanks for the suggestion, Wreybies!

 

However, we do not in any way condone software piracy. If you use it beyond the trial period, please pay your fair share. Otherwise, no one will bother creating the tools you find so useful.

 

As far as I can tell, through trial pay, it is completely legit. You have to take advantage of one of their offers. And the software creator, Black Obelisk Software, actually steers you toward the trialpay site when you try to buy or download the software.

I am against any type of piracy, as well.

 

But you can! My friend learned how to program a number guessing game onto her graphing calculator in her geometry class. And since graphing calculators let you type letters, there is an improved way of writing notes using the excuse of letting your friend borrow your calculator!

But that's beside the point.

I tried that Liquid Story Binder thing and it was confusing for me. But I didn't play with it for too long.

I like MS Word better. I have the 2007 version. I love the thesaurus on it to death. It has word count and checks spelling and grammar (though proofing it yourself afterward is a good idea because it doesn't catch everything).

I love that you can make little side notes with it too. I can decide that I need more detail in one section and make a side note right next to it, "add more detail."

Also, I found out that you can make it track your changes. Everything you add to the doc. is typed in red, anything you take out is crossed out in red, but it's still there so you can see what you had before you made the change.

You can password protect stuff too.

Then there is MS OneNote, which is pretty much the equivalent to a huge folder with never ending tabs and pages in each tab. It is soooo good for organizing everything! I don't know where all of my stuff would be without OneNote.

 

Software tools for writers?

I did search the forums for this before I posted; apologies in advance if I missed something.

I use Word 2003, which is great for composing and editing, but I'm looking for some other tools. I did some googling for writing software, but there were so many choices, I thought it might be easier to ask here first.

The main thing I'm looking for is some sort of...outline editor? I've been working on an outline, which is great for the main plotline, but there are myriad subplots that need to weave in and out. I started putting them in their own outlines and really started to confuse myself. (Note: this is not an unusual occurance.

It would also be nice to have somewhere to drop notes (I've been using the Word note function for that, but I think I'd like to have them separated sometimes, and tied to my plot outline); someplace to store the perfect word/phrase/metaphor that only occurs to you 500 words later while deep in another scene; a timeline to keep track of character development...I'm sure there are a zillion things that I'm forgetting here.

Does anyone have a favorite (hopefully reasonably priced) software package or suite that they use?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Cady

 

I work with two very helpful programs and one new one I'm testing out.

Freemind is a mindmapping software that is free for download online and absolutely fantastic to work with. It's easy, user friendly, and helps with creating outlines that flow.

I also use yWriter. This one is more for the actual writing of the story, but it can be used for outlining and really helping with pacing scenes and whatnot.

I'm currently trying out OneNote by microsoft. I'm addicted to organization on my computer and loves it's ability for that, however, it's not really made for manuscript writing. I don't like that it doesn't have a word count tool.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

 

i don't use or recommend using any software beyond ms word and one's brain... i can't see any of the fancy stuff as necessary and, in fact, suspect it's all more of a delay/deterrent than a help...

my best advice in all things writing-related is that best of all axioms, 'less is more'... along with its less delicately-put old army counterpart, 'K.I.S.S.!'

 

I'm used to working with software for just about everything I do. I've been working with computers for 23 (YIKES!) years, and I just think that way. My husband/art director is constantly reminding me that sometimes a crayon is the right tool for the job. Sometimes I actually listen to him.

My project, though, is too complex for me to keep it all in my head. There are two back stories, one spanning 40 years and another going back about three hundred. There's the main plot, plus several critical subplots weaving in and out of the main storyline. When things happen is crucial to the story.

rofl - I'm already losing track of the details. I was well into a section about 1/3 of the way through the story (I outline linearly, but I don't write linearly) and thought "Wait a minute! What happened to her dog?" At the very beginning of the story, her dog is the only person she feels she can have an intelligent conversation with. Poor thing just got left there, about 10,000 words in. Probably starving by now. So I guess I didn't need the dog after all, and I think I'll kill it.

I downloaded yWriter, and am taking a look at that. I also downloaded a program called (erm.) Liquid Story Binder that has some interesting tools, including a timeline feature that makes absolutely no sense to me, so it's probably not the right app!

I'll keep looking!

Cady

 

By the time you write, revise and proofread to the point that the novel is publish-ready, you will know the details backwards and forwards. If not, the chances are your readers won't be able to keep track either.

All the auxilliary tools will become out of date as you write, unless you stick rigidly to the plan and never make any changes to that plan. I don't believe that is particularly feasible.

I am also a software developer, and I'd rather carry over the first rule for databases - don't duplicate data if you can avoid it. Multiple copies of data ALWAYS get out of sync.

My single copy of the data is the evolving manuscript.

 

Of course I will, and so would my readers. But why slow myself down? There are things that need to be happening concurrently (even if the details about these things aren't written explicitly into the story)...I need to make sure that a character would definitely have had time to go from point A to B to C and accomplish these things that I'm not writing about specifically before he jumps back into the main plot. I hate the disconnect that I feel when I'm reading a story and suddenly go "Hey! He's in a CAR! How did he get from New York to California in less than a day?" or whatever.

Then there's the back story issue. For example, there are things that happened to my female protagonist's parents 30-40 years prior that are known to certain other characters; I need to make sure that those other characters could feasibly be in the time and place where those events took place. That's another thing I dislike in a novel...when you're cruisin' along and suddenly think "Wait...she couldn't know that. She would have been three when that happened..."

No, it really doesn't matter from a reader standpoint, except when I get caught out because I screwed up. Trying to keep track of stuff like that in my head distracts me from actually getting the words down on virtual paper.

I definitely would make changes to the outline that I'm envisioning. I don't use fixed outlines even when I'm developing. I think that outlines that don't change at all are pretty worthless.

Obviously, no, making updates isn't feasible all the way through, but when the story reaches a certain point, it doesn't matter if the outline is out of date, because, as you say, you'd know it frontway, backways and sideways. In the beginning, though, when even I don't know everything about my characters and what has happened and will happen to them, I find this sort of tool very useful.

I can kick out a series of connected outlines in a couple of days OR I can spend weeks constantly going back to through the story counting days to find out how old character D should be on page 235, if you see what I mean.

Continuity issues are a pet peeve of mine when I'm reading.

And if I could find a program that will do what I want, if I found out a blew the timeline in a substory, I could adjust by just dragging that substory outline along the timeline, so that I'm keeping my details straight when that story is mentioned in the another substory or the main story.

I guess it's just the way my brain works. I'm pretty strange.

Cady

Edit: And HEY! After justifying my thinking like that, it just occurred to me that I may be achieve to do the type of connected outline I need in Excel or Microsoft Project. Thanks

 

I checked out Freemind...

It just confused me. I still have it, but I'd rather focus on my story then try to figure out new software. Wouldn't a detailed outline accomplish the same thing. I'm already looking at upgrading from Works 9.0 to MS Word/Office and don't have time to try to learn any other programs.

As for the dog, if you forgot about it, it probably wasn't an important part of the story anyway. I'm not saying get rid of it, maybe just explain why it's not there.

And I agree with Cogito. The more time you spend with your story, the more you will have it mapped out in every detail in your mind. You won't forget pour Aunt Rosy you left waiting in the car. If you did, most readers will too. For those who don't, maybe they'll buy your next novel to find out what happened to her.

 

Welllll, I have a detailed outline started, and it's not accomplishing the same thing. I got partway through and realized I needed to move a substory back about 20 years. So I had to manually pick out those parts in the outline, as they weren't in a contiguous block, and paste them into other parts of the outline, being careful that the time still synched up. This wasn't...optimal. It was a great example of when a tool becomes a hindrance.

So I tried making separate outlines for the substories and the backstories. That worked OK for inserting the beginning of a substory/backstory, but the different events within the substory weren't tied to the events in the main story, if you see what I mean.

Storyview almost does what I want, though I don't like the interface, and it ain't cheap, and it's overkill. A lot of my outline is actually being written as I write the story; it's mainly for me to keep it straight.

Yep, I'm killin' the poor beasty, he no longer exists. When I started this thing, it had a kind of slow start, and the pup was really important in the first couple of chapters. I ended up ripping up the first chapter and a half, and starting in the middle of second chapter, which worked a lot better but made the dog sort of...not make a lot of sense. A while later, this woman apparently left the poor thing without food or water in her apartment, because he disappeared completely from my story.

This outline/timeline isn't seething with details. It's more lists of interrelated scenes/events/history/characters in broad terms, for each story or substory.

e.g. "Dev confronts Kai". Not a great example because timewise, it's a short scene, and I actually *know* where everyone else is and what they're doing, and it's part of the main storyline. But using that example, I know who is in that scene, basically what happens, and how it ends...that stuff doesn't need to be in the outline. This is true of most longer scenes as well. I have one entire chapter that is one line in my outline. "Sparks". That's all I need to remember it.

But I need to remember the time context of that chapter relevant to other stuff that's going on, because people are moving around a lot and characters are referring to stuff that occurred behind the scenes as the story progresses.

More intricate than detailed, I guess, very intertwined, and I'm trying to keep myself from wandering off into continuity issues due to parallel story lines.

Anyway, I think I can track with Excel. We'll see.

Thanks for your comments!

 

Hi Guys!

I was searching around Google this morning trying to find helpful tips on writing a novel and I came across a website with articles by a man called Simon Haynes.

I hunted around a bit, reading his articles (some of which were very interesting and helpful) and stumbled across this program he's designed called 'yWriter'

Basically it's a program that helps you organise every specific detail of your novel, no matter what it is you're writing about. The best part though, is it's FREE! Completely, 100% FREE!! I just downloaded it and it's fantastic...so I hope I've posted this in the right place and that I'm in fact allowed to post this link, but I just think that it's too good a program not to share....

Enjoy!

Tiff

 

I downloaded it. It's pretty awesome and makes it much easier to write something. Like putting notes on characters and such, sometimes I often forget something I came up for a character when I'm really into writing, and it really helps in the long run. Thanks for sharing

 

No worries!

I'm the same. At the moment I have this little notebook full of notes about my characters. But it's all over the place, so I'm so glad I can now add and change things about locations and characters in this software...it makes it so much easier!! =D

 

I wouldn't use it to actually write my novel, but it looks like a great program for taking notes on each chapter. I will use it for that and see how it goes, but I will write the chapters in Word 2007.

 

Architectus - that's what I'm doing =D
I don't think I'd be able to get my head around actually writing the novel in it. It's a bit cramped lol. I like to be able to see my work without tabs and buttons everywhere!

 

sounds a bit like dramatica pro but free which is a good thing. well done on the post
obessedI