Tag: writing

scrivener

Wise Wrimo’s Survival Kit: Writing Software

Posted on by Claire

Welcome to this side of November, everyone!

If you’re like me, you’ll be eager for anything that can help make your life that little bit easier (read ‘less insane’) this month. And you’ll jump on any occasion to try out new gadgetry.

I haven’t found the software that’ll write my novel for me yet, but I have found many nifty programs, ranging from the simplest to the most elaborate word processors.

They’ll either encourage you or guilt you to the finish line, and better yet – most of them are very cheap, or very free.

I’ve put together a list of them for you, because that’s much easier than writing my novel. So pick and choose what sounds good to you and put together your own customised Software Survival Kit.

The Basics

The first piece of writing kit that springs to most people’s mind is probably MS Word. It comes pre-packaged on some computers, but if you don’t have it, there are plenty of other options. The popular shareware Open Office, available here, is ad-free and easy to use, but isn’t the best in terms of file extension compatibility. While it’s useful to have a basic word processor on hand, it’s often impractical to keep large word-counts in one single document, as you have to wade through dozens of pages to find any given scene.

The Swiss-Army Knives

You might want to consider a software designed for fiction-writing, especially if you’re writing in a non-linear way. My personal favourite is long-time Nano sponsor Scrivener, available for Mac and PC, it offers a conveniently-timed 30-day free trial and will give you a discount on the full product if you win your Nano. It might seem daunting to get your head around, but it’s actually very intuitive and you can read @LorelaiSquared‘s excellent tutorial here.

I have also heard good things about Storyist, but as it is Mac/iPad only, I do not have personal experience of this program. The Nano site calls it ‘a powerful novel writing environment’ with ‘some great self-publishing tools too!’. As it’s a Nano sponsor, it’s offering a special Nanowrimo free trial for November and a 25% discount with the code ‘NANOWRIMO12’.

The Catch-Uppers!

Despite our best intentions, most of us will end up missing a day or two of writing, or fall behind a little bit. There’s nothing wrong with that – I do it every year – but it helps to have strategies to get back ahead.

Mine is timed writing sprints, and particularly Dr Wicked’s infamous Write Or Die, which is tag-lined “Putting the ‘Prod’ in Productivity” with good reason. Instead of rewarding you for good behaviour, Write Or Die ‘punishes’ you for pausing in your writing by flashing red, giving you a reminder that you should be writing, playing an annoying song or slowly deleting your words. You can choose your pace, sprint-duration, grace period and even punishment. You can also go full screen or disable the backspace key to prevent on-the-fly editing. You should try it, it’s fun and it really works – I’m not sure I would have won any of my Nanos without Write Or Die. The web-based version is available for free, and the desktop version (for PC, Mac and Linux) is $10.

I also have a soft spot for Q10: a free full-screen text editor, small enough to fit on a USB drive (on which you back up your novel OFTEN), with customisable formatting, target counts, timer alarms and typewriter sound effects. Which you can swap for Supermario sound effects. Enough said.

A Wealth of Web-Based Apps

If you have an office job, don’t miss an opportunity for some sneaky wordcount-padding at your desk! You could simply write an email to yourself, or use Google Drive to write up and save word files for free. I use Google Drive constantly when it comes to writing articles and sharing to-do lists and resources with friends, but I know concerns have been raised over Google’s privacy and copyright policies. I haven’t read Google Drive’s Terms & Conditions, so I don’t have an informed opinion to offer on the subject, but I do have a nifty alternative app.

750 words is a website designed to host writing privately and for free. Once you’ve created your account, you can type in near full-screen mode, and your writing will be saved – but only for your own eyes. I particularly like getting stats on my writing when I’m done, and collecting cute badges for various achievements.

Finally, every time you need cheering up, go and write a hundred words at Written? Kitten! It is exactly what it sounds like.
Already-behind-Claire,
1202 words

Originally posted at www.nanolondon.org.

notecards

Outlining Nerdiness

Posted on by Claire

I must confess, I’m a complete outlining nerd.

I scheme, plot, sketch and play around with my ideas pre-November, stopping just short of the ‘No prose before November’ rule.

When I tried discovery writing (Nano ’09 and ’10), I found myself wandering aimlessly from November 5th onwards. Though I enjoyed writing these novels, I know that’s really not what works best for me.

That’s not to say discovery writing isn’t a good way to go (in fact it might be the best way to go for you), but simply that there are about as many ways to get ready for Nano as there are Wrimos.

So if you’d like to do some plotting now, here are some resources and techniques I find useful:

Basic structure

In order to keep up with the pace of month-long noveling, I like to have a structure in place before I start. Not necessarily something extremely detailed, but a road map I can turn to when I don’t know what my characters should do next.

I swear by the first few steps of writer Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method. The idea is to start with the most basic summary of your novel possible, then expand in stages (five sentences, then five paragraphs):

[box]A reconnaissance squad travels across the galaxy to investigate an unresponsive colony.

Setup – A Federation of Planets reconnaissance squad sets off on a mission to the other side of the galaxy.

Initial Problem – A freak storm badly damages the ship, forcing the Captain to take the mission off-course in search of affordable repairs.

Bigger problem – As soon as it resumes its course, the freshly-fixed ship is targeted from the inside by a saboteur, and from the outside by a massive, top-of-the-range rebel warship with a grudge.

Biggest problem – When the truth and horror of the Federation’s methods come out into the open, the crew turn onto one another, treason and murder afoot.

Resolution – Having gotten rid of the spy-turned-assassin, the crew land safely at the colony they were sent to investigate and part ways, escaping the Federation’s dictatorship.[/box]

A word of warning though, I never go past step four as the later steps are way too detailed even for me (it makes for an interesting read, but I would certainly not recommend it for Nano).

Arcs, arcs, arcs

I use the Seven-Point Structure, popularised by YA-author and podcaster Dan Wells to situate character arcs and subplots in relation to the main plot. My favourite way to do this is in a table where I can check things at a glance:

[box]

Structure Main storyline Comms Officer
Hook
Initial situation		 Crew leaves home planet Works for Federation, has memory loss
Plot turn 1
Call to adventure		 Mission is taken off-course Hears foreign language she can understand
Pinch 1
Added pressure		 Discovery of broken component Realises she is being watched by Federation
Mid-Point
From reaction to action		 Attacked by rebel warship Hears reports of Federation modifying memories
Pinch 2
Take stand alone		 Betrayed by one of their own Gets evidence of what the Federation did
Plot turn 2
Power is in you		 Get rid of the saboteur Decides to trust rebel captain
Resolution
End situation		 Crew arrives at destination planet Breaks conditioning, recovers true identity

[/box]

Have a listen to Episode 7.41 of Writing Excuses for a five-minutes explanation of the system, or if (like me) you’re a dork for in-depth structural analysis, check out Wells’ 5-part YouTube series on the subject.

Filling in the gaps

Once I’ve got a continuous thread to cling to, I start making some emergency bucket lists. Brainstorming for these is pretty simple: I set a timer for 10 minutes and jot down as many ideas as possible without pausing. A lot of what comes out never gets used, but the coolest ideas make it in my notebook.

Around week two, when I have absolutely no idea what should happen next, I’ll use these as custom prompts. For instance, here are some of the dangers I can incorporate if I need a space variant of the ‘Just have something blow up’ strategy:

[box]
Dangers:

  • Space pirates, smuggles, slavers
  • Ship boarded by rebels
  • Solar storm, meteor showers
  • Lose lights, power, access to controls
  • Break vital piece of equipment

[/box]

If you’re of the insane Plot-A-Lot kind, share your Nano outlining tips and tricks below!

Originally posted at www.nanolondon.org.

recycle

Recycling an old story

Posted on by Claire

This November, I’ll be bending the Nanowrimo rules a teensy bit to recycle an old story.

I wrote the initial draft of Stars Shine Brighter for Nanowrimo in 2008, a mess of rushed ideas, mixed up English and French, entire epic scenes condensed to the words ‘[insert space battle here]‘ and truly horrendous writing.

I can say without false modesty that there isn’t ANY salvageable prose in that draft.

Some of the ideas and characters however, have stayed with me and developed over the past four years. I wrote a few extra scenes in that universe for a piece of Creative Writing coursework, kept about five different story notebooks going, restarted from the beginning several, even discussed some of the concepts and ideas with my Dad (who, it turns out, enjoys hard sci-fi!).

I started dissecting that first draft with Holly Lisle’s excellent and gruelling online editing course, How To Revise Your Novel. But around Lesson Eight, when it was time to decide what to keep and what to cut, to create a solid basis upon which to re-write, I realised that there was nothing in the text I felt like keeping.

So I put Stars Shine Brighter firmly on the back burner and let it stew until I felt ready to have another go at it. For a while, I wasn’t sure I would and I was surprisingly okay with that.

After FTL came out though, I couldn’t get the feel of proper, old time Sci-Fi out of my mind. I also found the game thought-provoking in some ways. Though quite comfortable and traditional is some ways (though not easy!), FTL also has weird stuff going on.

My boyfriend, who loves to immerse himself in a game’s narrative, pointed out that it was a bit weird  that your ship, mandated by the Federation, should be so small and crappy and that the enemy fleet, the Rebels, should be so numerous and powerful. Shouldn’t the rebels be a tiny force? And if so many decide to join the Rebellion, is it because the Federation are actually the baddies?

I realised how much more interesting of a story I’d have if my characters, instead of being ragtag space pirates on the run from an army trying to arrest them, were actually part of an army that turned out to be ‘the baddies’. A lot of the themes and ideas I want to play around with fit a lot better with this scenario and I’m incredibly excited to start exploring it.

Onto plotting and outlining then, and bring on November!

NanoParticipant

NaNoWriMo is nigh!

Posted on by Claire

October to me is the time of wearing several layers of sweaters, celebrating my Dad’s birthday and getting ready for NaNoWriMo.

National Novel Writing Month is a seat-of-the-pants literary challenge taking place every November. Participants aim to write a brand new 50,000 words story in 30 days.

It’s now an international event, with many local chapters, including here in London!

I was introduced to Nano just after I moved to the UK and joined all four of the lovely people I’d met by then were doing it too. As it turned out, peer pressure is a corner stone of Nano (in a good way, I promise). Since then, I’ve been month-noveling furiously every November.

Keeping up the pace all month is difficult (in fact I always fall behind) and can be frustrating, but there are also exhilarating moments when your story behaves itself, everything is coming together nicely and you have enough points on your Costa card to get your sixth coffee of the day for free. Plus they have all the yummy Christmas drinks already in November. And on the less-inspiring days, there’s nothing better to spur you on than the sound of everyone else in the room typing like the wind. Guilt monkeys are also a corner stone of Nanowrimo.

Nanoing

Now of course neither you nor I will produce a masterpiece worth millions this November, but I know that I’ll be writing. I’ll be writing a lot more than I usually do. I’ll be taking risks, exploring silly ideas, taking dares and coming up with the kind of insane things one can only dream up when on a coffee drip. There will be some dreadful crashes, but I can guarantee there will also be some good stuff.

I know this because four years ago the most writing I had ever done were the first pages of one fantasy epic (complete with red-headed elves with apostrophes in every other character’s name) and about three Harry Potter fanfictions. I’ve now written four novels. They’re all very short, mostly unfinished and not that good, but each of them is a bit better than the last and crucially, the writing that I do outside of November is also massively improved.

So whether you’re new to writing or an old hand I think you should give Nanowrimo a shot. The worse thing that can happen is you ending up with a story you won’t reuse, but you’ll still be 50,000 words of practice better off than before.

radio-free-fandom-150x150-1

Too close to my own work

Posted on by Claire

This week, I was really hesitant about whether or what to read out at Writer’s Group. I felt I should read something because I’d already skipped one week, but since I worked on the plot last week a lot has changed. A large chunk of chapter one and the whole of chapter two will have to be re-written, only NOT right now.

I had already read the prologue and I was still working on chapter three, so I settled on the opening of chapter one, a pretty slow-paced tidbit about our main character’s living arrangements. I almost didn’t write it in the first place because I can’t help but feel I will have to cut it in the future. I’m self-conscious about the writing style, of course, but I also worry that the scene is too quiet for the opening of the book.

I wanted supportive advice about this, so I took the plunge and got better feedback than I’d expected. We got rid of some less-than-Victorian words, swapping ‘cagey’ for ‘disreputable’ – definitely a plus! And someone said my description were atmospheric, which was just really, really nice! I often worry than I come across as a bit flowery and long-winded (because I love making flowery, long-winded English!), so it was great to have my description vindicated.

I guess this proves that I’m really not that good at appraising my own work. I don’t know if it’s because I’m too close to it or because I still put ridiculous expectations on my poor first draft, in any case I thought I would get more criticism regarding where the story is going. Then again, not everyone has been working on this for a whole year.

I’m now working on chapter three, where the gore and creepiness really start. I’m thoroughly enjoying writing it and I think I’m decent at the gore and creepiness, so I can’t wait to finish it up and read some of it in a couple of weeks’ time.