The Writer's software thread (Discipline? Moi???)

[Stella_Omega]

So my ambitions are climbing just a little, and I want to write more plot in my porn

And damned if it isn't hard for me to create a story arc and plot and all of that stuff- up till now I either write short stories, or I start off- like in "Sarabande" write as long group of related incidents and then don't know where to go from there.

What with Word being so clunky and stupidly bug-ridden, especailly on a mac, a simpler word processing software would be better, so I started using textedit to compose in, and it's really not bad! And I discovered that I could open two windows, and use one to write notes and keep bits of revision in.

And then it occurred to me that there must BE word processors already out there, with linked notes and stuff, and there are- and as I was looking around, I discovered storyweaver which promises to guide a writer through the whole understructure of the thing.

So I downloaded it, and I think it will work for me! It's NOT a word processor though. It does everything but that in the story process, and you have to write the thing in something else.

My problem is that the effort of creating the structure is so foreign to me, and makes me feel ADD, and I wonder if anyone has tips, or other software they like, or, umm... kisses to help me feel better or such...

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I am currently using yWriter2, it let's you not only keep notes and descriptions of the different parts of the story it allows you to write as well. It breaks everything down to chapters then scenes within a chapter. You compose the story at the scene level.

You can then export it from yWriter to text, html, etc. for publication.

Plus it's free!

 

[oggbashan]

I have two or three commercially produced software packages for writers but I find it much easier to plot in my head and write the outline at the end of the draft. I can scroll down to read what I intend to do to the characters next.

Sometimes they won't co-operate.

Og

 

[drksideofthemoon]

Jeeze, I feel woefully inadequate...I just use Word and write whatever comes to mind...

 

[rachlou]

Jeeze, I feel woefully inadequate...I just use Word and write whatever comes to mind...

You and me both, because that's how i write. I just sit and type and the page fills up. The story appears as if by magic - hey presto!

 

[neonlyte]

You and me both, because that's how i write. I just sit and type and the page fills up. The story appears as if by magic - hey presto!

Yep - works that way for me.

But I did read all of Stella's post, so here are the 's

If you are using Word on a Mac, hit 'alt' F11 on an open document. You'll find a side bar organiser menu opens up. You can build your scene/chapter notes etc and store them in the organiser menu for instant recall as you're working. I don't do this, but it looks useful for someone who has/requires a disciplined approach to structuring a longer work.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Yep - works that way for me.

But I did read all of Stella's post, so here are the 's

If you are using Word on a Mac, hit 'alt' F11 on an open document. You'll find a side bar organiser menu opens up. You can build your scene/chapter notes etc and store them in the organiser menu for instant recall as you're working. I don't do this, but it looks useful for someone who has/requires a disciplined approach to structuring a longer work.

WHAAAT?? And I just plunked down good money...

fukin' Word crashes all the time on me. Zeb, I went to that site, but I couldn't find anything that says what OS it runs on. What do you use?

 

[SophiaY]

One very useful utility that I have found is WordWeb Pro. It's a thesaurus and dictionary add on that is heads and shoulders better than what you get from standard word processors.

http://wordweb.info/

I also use OpenOffice word processor. I like it much more than Word because of its layout -- it just seems to be more natural, at least for me.

 

[neonlyte]

WHAAAT?? And I just plunked down good money...

fukin' Word crashes all the time on me. Zeb, I went to that site, but I couldn't find anything that says what OS it runs on. What do you use?

Set Word on autosave every 2 mins (from preference menu)

If you have too many documents open, or keep word open for extended periods, (24 hrs +) it will crash - even on a mac.

The usual crash is a refusal to save. if this happens, it still allows you to copy and paste to something like Textedit. Save the Textedit file and repaste in Word one you re-open it.

Don't know why Word crashes, but I think it's something to do with resource forks. If you shut down you mac every night, it doesn't do 'housekeeping'. (auto programmed to run between 3.00 and 5.00am) There is a nifty little program called macJanitor, free from the Apple site, which will do housekeeping for you, when you want to do it. here is a link http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html

 

[Stella_Omega]

Neonlyte, you're amazing!

I do shut down every night- should I just leave it running? How about if I let it "sleep"?

 

[neonlyte]

Neonlyte, you're amazing!

I do shut down every night- should I just leave it running? How about if I let it "sleep"?

Yep - leave it on sleep.

The built in housekeeping programme does daily, weekly, and monthly tasks, as does MacJanitor. It might still be worth downloading MacJanitor and giving the works a dusting. You can select 'All Tasks' from the menu, which will bring you fully up to date. It takes about 15 mins to do a full sweep, first time, and your machine will run appreciably quicker, though performance drops off astonishingly quickly, particularly if you are using the Internet.

 

[drksideofthemoon]

You and me both, because that's how i write. I just sit and type and the page fills up. The story appears as if by magic - hey presto!

Good! I'm glad I'm not the only one!

 

[Frank Noir]

I have two or three commercially produced software packages for writers but I find it much easier to plot in my head and write the outline at the end of the draft. I can scroll down to read what I intend to do to the characters next.

Would you believe it? I just started adding outlines to my drafts - placing them at the beginning!
So the more I wrote, the further I had to scroll up to see what was going to happen next!

Thank you, Ogg - I won't be doing that again...

 

[Zeb_Carter]

WHAAAT?? And I just plunked down good money...

fukin' Word crashes all the time on me. Zeb, I went to that site, but I couldn't find anything that says what OS it runs on. What do you use?

Oops, it only runs on Windows. I'm using it on Windows XP Professional.

I have left Word open for days on end (multiple documents) and never had it crash on me, both on my machines at home and my work computer. They are all running Window XP Professional SP2 and Office 2003.

ETA: It will also run on Linux/Unix with some (free) special files, if anyone is interested.

 

[SimonBrooke]

Text editor vs word processor

For twenty five years - up until, in fact, a couple of months ago - I used one variant or another of Emacs to write my stories, most lately XEmacs. In the last couple of months I've gone over to using Open Office, but if I can't get Open Office to write me a plain XML file I'll probably switch back to XEmacs.

The pros and cons of the two approaches are as follows, in my opinion:

Text editor (e.g. XEmacs)
Pro
(1) You get the text and just the text.
(2) You don't get distracted with formatting.
(3) It's fast, and the software doesn't get in the way.
(4) Integration with version control software is built in.
(5) Because you get the text and just the text, you can use utilities like diff and grep and sed to examine it and make systematic changes to it.
(6) Because its designed for software people, the search and replace system understands regular expressions.
(7) File size is very small.
(8) File can be opened with more or less any software.
Con
(1) Not WYSIWYG.

Word Processor (e.g. OpenOffice)
Pro
(1) WYSIWYG: you get to play with formatting.
Con
(1) You waste an inordinate amount of time playing with formatting.
(2) It's slow.
(3) Integration with other tools is very poor, and in particular it doesn't interact at all well with version control.
(4) In particular you can't meaningfully use external text manipulation utilities on it with any ease.
(5) Files are bloated, and at least in the format in which they're stored, opaque.

In summary, editing text as text has a huge number of wins. However, if you're in the last stages of trying to get a text ready for publication as a book - and I really am trying to do that - being able to see as you're working on it what it will look like as a book is a small win.

Oh - in principle the OpenOffice search and replace tool does understand regular expressions. But I was trying to use the search and replace tool to fix plain quotes into left and right 'smart' quotes, and that doesn't seem to be possible. In XEmacs (or with sed on a plain text file) it would be trivial.

OpenOffice stores word-processor documents in a format which is actually a zip file of XML files, and the XML files themselves are tractable. So if I can write an output filter which outputs just the XML and doesn't then create the zip file, I can probably live with that; otherwise I'll go back to XEmacs.

 

[Guest]

RoughDraft is a free wordprocessor. I like it and use it with my RTF documents.

 

[lipsofanangel]

Good! I'm glad I'm not the only one!

Add me to the category of writing it in Word and just letting it flow!

 

[Stella_Omega]

Add me to the category of writing it in Word and just letting it flow!

See, I can do that if it's PornWithoutPlot- no problem!

But now I want to write more than that, I want pro- and an- tagonists, and conflict and a Message (Fucking Is Good) and setbacks and a quest and all of that.

So what I'm writing is Age Of Sail, big surprise, right? I'm researching the Puritans (what incredible hypocrites they were, and dangerous to be around!) and I've never tried to keep anything so complex going.

I paid for StoryWeaver, and it doesn't seem to be working right- I can't go back to earlier steps. I've written a note to customer support about that, otherwise I shall want my money back

yesterday I downloaded supernotecards to try out- it seems like a good idea, once you have progressed beyond the beginner's stage, such as what I am...

And I would call all of this procrastination except that I find it all very irritating and it takes away from my writing time...

And niether of these are the word processor I wanted!

Neonlyte, I looked at roughdraft, and it seems it's only for PC...

 

[Guest]

Neonlyte, I looked at roughdraft, and it seems it's only for PC...

Actually it was me that mentioned RoughDraft. Hmmm. What requirements are you looking for in software. I'm a software downloading whore for writing so I might've came across something for you Stella.

By the way, I fell for the Storyweaver too and bought it. I attempted to use it once--it's utter crap.

 

[The_Fool]

I wrote a poem in Excel once. But I don't think that will help you much....

 

[Stella_Omega]

Actually it was me that mentioned RoughDraft. Hmmm. What requirements are you looking for in software. I'm a software downloading whore for writing so I might've came across something for you Stella.

By the way, I fell for the Storyweaver too and bought it. I attempted to use it once--it's utter crap.

it is??? Gawdammit! I thought it was ME!
teach me not to come here and ask first.

I want something similar Rough Draft- only that works on OS X 10.3+
There are a couple similar things, but they are native to Tiger and I can't afford that.
I don't care so much about the final draft capabilities, I just want a way to access notes and earlier versions and keep an eye on my outline- and something that walked me through creating an outline would be wonderful, which is why I went with storyweaver.

supernotecards seems to have some of that... but it's not a wordprocessor. maybe I'm being a fussy spoiled bitch, I dunno.

 

[Belegon]

it is??? Gawdammit! I thought it was ME!
teach me not to come here and ask first.

I want something similar Rough Draft- only that works on OS X 10.3+
There are a couple similar things, but they are native to Tiger and I can't afford that.
I don't care so much about the final draft capabilities, I just want a way to access notes and earlier versions and keep an eye on my outline- and something that walked me through creating an outline would be wonderful, which is why I went with storyweaver.

supernotecards seems to have some of that... but it's not a wordprocessor. maybe I'm being a fussy spoiled bitch, I dunno.

Actually, I've looked at it before and wondered...

This is a perfect example of how we can be a support group for each other in more than just emotions.

speaking of which... for Stella

 

[Tom Collins]

Jeeze, I feel woefully inadequate...I just use Word and write whatever comes to mind...

You and me both, because that's how i write. I just sit and type and the page fills up. The story appears as if by magic - hey presto!

Yes, that's me as well. I get a concept for a story, and do all the work in my head. I just think about it, imagining them and let it flow and develop organically. Once I have a solid idea of where it's starting, a general idea of the direction it'll go, and how it should basically end then I sit down with Work and start hammering it out. It usually doesn't go exactly as I thought it would, because my characters tend to be uncooperative , but it's more like a river cutting a new streambed next to the old one rather than a hurricane swooping in a totally disarranging everything.

I don't even know how to do an outline, much less how to use one. *snickers @ self*

Sorry I couldn't be helpful, Stella. *mucho es to ease the pain that comes with the practical concerns of being a writer*

 

[3113]

If you have too many documents open, or keep word open for extended periods, (24 hrs +) it will crash - even on a mac.

I've Word 2004 (11.0) and I keep it up and running almost constantly. This is on a Macbook. It almost never crashes. (Do you repair permissions now and then?).

HOWEVER, I have found that the most recent update to it caused all kinds of trouble, so I keep it at 11.0.

There is another word-esque program for free that folk use for Mac: NeoOffice

Comes highly recommended and it's free.

 

[3113]

Tips

See, I can do that if it's PornWithoutPlot- no problem!

But now I want to write more than that, I want pro- and an- tagonists, and conflict and a Message (Fucking Is Good) and setbacks and a quest and all of that.

Okay. Tips.

1) *Get yourself a central goal* An incident. I'll give you an example. When I wrote "Exchange Value" the first thing that popped into my head was the kidnap scene. I couldn't start there (I tired, it didn't work). But it became my goal was to get to that scene.

That's how you create the "first act" of a plot (sic)--that is, how you get from beginning to middle. "How do I get there?" Who has to meet whom? (The guy and the girl). What conflict has to happen to reach that point? (Well, if he's kidnapped, why? For money? So those kidnapping don't have money?).

2) *Create characters who will move the plot along for you* Another example, the one you helped me on, "Pretty as a Picture." The story moves along because the characters each have their own ajenda. If the characters are in tandem, you have less plot. If they're on opposing sides (whatever those sides may be) then it moves.

So the characters are suspicious of each other--they argue, they attribute wrong motives to each other's actions, they lie or hide their feelings, they misunderstand. This creates kenetic energy. The characters bounce off each other, like rubber balls. They hit, and that ricochets them in directions they wouldn't otherwise go--which makes them hit walls, and bounce in yet another direction, and another and another. Which keeps things moving along.

If they're good enough, they'll create the plot for you and you won't have to do any work

3) *keep secrets*: plot and story are all about secrets. What you know that the reader doesn't, and so you surprise them. Like you know these guys are going to kidnap the rich kid. Like you know that the woman visiting the photographer is a magazine editor. You keep secrets so that you can have a reveal--both to reader and characters. The revealing of these secrets moves the story into it's second act. Because the characters must react and re-adjust to the reveal and the change in the situation.

Um. Does that help? is it kinda what you're looking for or completely off base?