A Slice of Orange

by Kitty Bucholtz

Ask me what my current favorite piece of software is and I’ll practically yell, Scrivener! (Okay, if I could find a way to compose a story in Excel, I just might do it. Jump in here, Marianne – wouldn’t that be fun??)

I returned to the Mac universe a couple years ago and a screenwriting friend told me about Scrivener. Though not screenwriting software per se, Scrivener was designed specifically to work on large and/or research-heavy writing projects like novels, screen plays, research papers, etc. by a software developer with “lofty writerly ambitions.”

I’d been getting lost in my piles and files and was more than willing to take a chance with a 30-day free trial. Boy, it did not take me 30 days to fall in love! First, the tutorial is one of the best tutorials I’ve ever used! It explains every single thing the program will do and encourages you to go do it right now. I’ve referred back to it several times because it is so comprehensive and easy to use (unlike most “big name” software companies’ tutorials I’ve used in the last ten years).

The number one best thing about this program is that you can keep everything in one file. I’m talking about the word processing you typed into Scrivener, Word documents you also had, pdf files, audio and QuickTime files, pictures, web sites – everything! Just drag and drop the file from your desktop. Instead of multiple files in multiple formats open in multiple programs, you now have every single piece of research, every character chart, every version of every scene and chapter, your notes on your outline or synopsis – anything you want, you can keep there in your file. To the left is a list of everything you’re storing there. Create folders to organize your work according to research, chapters, notes, whatever.

Want to see a picture while you type up a scene description? Or review a piece of research while writing about it? Split the screen and type in one half while you see the picture or other document in the other half. One of those people who is always forgetting to save just before the power goes out? Scrivener saves automatically every time there is no keyboard activity for two seconds. Afraid you’ll make a change and wish you had the old version? The snapshot feature saves a copy of what you’re working on in case you want to refer to it later – or revert to it.

Tired of trying to move scenes around and getting all confused? Make each scene a separate document within the file, go to the corkboard view, and move the “3×5 cards” around to your heart’s content. Wherever you move the cards in card view, that’s where you just moved the scene. Didn’t make each scene a separate document? Use the split feature to split them up.

Wish you could tell at a glance what scenes are finished and which still need work? Use “Status” to track your work using built-in labels like “First Draft” or custom labels like “Add Research.” Want to know if your hero managed to drop out of the entire middle of the book? Mark each scene with color labels with the name of the POV character. Check out the outline view to see how many scenes in a row you have with Joe, or realize Mary went missing for eight scenes. Track anything you want to track this way!

Can you see now why I fell totally and completely in love? But how many children, you ask, will I have to sell to be able to purchase this dream software? It’s only $39.95! And because the designer built the software to use himself, you can be assured there are no bugs or glitches. I’m telling you, run – don’t walk – to the web site to check it out for yourself!

Don’t have a Mac? Visit the Links page for suggestions for Windows-compatible similar software. There are also links there for similar software for Mac, too!

Kitty Bucholtz is a co-founder of Routines For Writers, a new web site to help writers write more. She writes fun romance and light urban fantasy novels. Even though she loves talking about, writing about, and teaching about writing, she’s pretty sure she knows at least three people who aren’t writers.

By Stephanie Shackelford

According to its creator, Hal Spacejock, yWriter 4 is “. . . a word processor which breaks your novel into chapters and scenes. It will not write your novel for you, suggest plot ideas or perform creative tasks of any kind. It does help you keep track of your work, leaving your mind free to create.”
(http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter4.html)

I’m here to say he’s right! It really does help me organize, structure and keep track of all those pesky details as I create my interesting, compelling, everyone-is-screaming-for-them stories.

Currently, I am wrestling with a behemoth of a project so I can start marketing it. I’m what is often called a pantser. I write “by the seat of my pants”. That’s actually how I do almost everything (my husband hates that I can never reproduce a recipe exactly; I think it makes dinnertime an adventure). The problem with being a pantser writer, though, is that I so often end up with a huge pile of scenes, some meandering plot and, if I’m lucky, the beginnings of a grand finale showdown. There comes a time when I have to structure those scenes into a coherent, compelling plot that brings everything to a satisfying conclusion. (At least that is the theory.)

That’s where yWriter shines for me. My 2nd draft (and 3rd and 7th!) is often more of a “putting together a puzzle” event. As I play with the various scenes, I’ll realize one needs to be in the beginning of the story even though I have it written as part of the ending. Or what I thought was a great lead-in to the finale actually will make a better hook for the first chapter. This process becomes a nightmare with Word. I either have one behemoth manuscript or way too many little ones. And let’s not even mention how to name all those little files. Labeling chapters 1, 2, 3 at this point is the process in ludicrous. I’ve tried it. It totally confuses me and eventually turns the story into a pile of mush in my brain.

Enter yWriter! yWriter is perfect for this restructuring! I can create as many chapters as I want and as many scenes as I think I need in each chapter. Each chapter or scene has places to enter a multitude of information. There is a place to note description, point of view, tools, location and so much more. And when I decide I want scene 3 from chapter 6 to become scene 6 in chapter 1, all I have to do is drag and drop and all that info goes to its new home. Oh and when I write the scene, yWriter keeps track of the words.

I’m still finding new things to track, but mostly I use yWriter to organize my story. There are countless ways to do that (and I’m sure I’ll find another one before long), but for now I am using a hybrid of the Hero’s Journey and Michael Hague’s Six-Stage Plot Structure. I listened to a workshop he and Chris Vogler presented that merged the two systems in a way that made so much sense to me. Basically, they presented the Hero as having an inner and outer “journey”. Just the renaming of the steps helped me to see more clearly what should be happening at certain times of the story.

My beginning attempt to structure my project into a story starts with creating 12 chapters. Eventually, they will be transformed into something more conventional, but for this first organizational step, I start with chapters labeled according to the 12 Stages of The Inner and Outer Hero’s Journey. (I put these in the description section so they are easier to see at a glance.) Chapter 1 is “Ordinary World” and “Limited Awareness of Problem”; Chapter 2 is “Call to Adventure” and “Increased Awareness of Need for Change”; Chapter 3 is “Refusal of the Call” and Fear: Resistance to Change”; and so on to Chapter 12, “Return with Elixir” and “Mastery”.

I scrutinize each of the scenes in my behemoth puzzle and start the process of determining how important it is to the story and where it should be placed. As I rearrange the scenes, the story come into better focus. I can more easily see what needs to happen when. I recognize which scenes don’t belong anywhere in the story. I can easily determine the purpose of each scene. I can write any pertinent notes (“mentor needs to change and be a fool” or “hero is afraid of change here-make that clear!”). I can copy and paste the scene into its place (or type it directly into the program). And, if I change my mind, I can easily drag and drop an entire scene, with all its notes, to another section of the document.

When I have all the scenes arranged in the order I think they best tell the story, I start editing and rewriting. Sometimes I write directly into yWriter, sometimes I write in Word and copy/paste when the scene is finished. I progress through each scene, editing, layering in emotion or description or backstory. As each scene is “fixed”, I change its status, another of those choices available in yWriter (choices are: outline, draft, 1st edit, 2nd edit, done). It’s easy to see at a glance where I am in the story and to track my progress through the weeks. One of the last steps is to create and rename the chapters more conventionally. I often do this as a part of the editing process, renaming to numerical chapters, creating new chapters and dragging and dropping scenes as desired. The final step, after everything is edited, organized and labeled, is to export it into a Word document and do any last-minute touches before sending it to all those publishers vying for it. 🙂

However you chose to organize you book, yWriter can simplify the process. And the price in right! Free. We writers can be so generous at times. Thanks, Hal Spacejock, for a great piece of organization software!

(Update: Because life, for me, never stays the same (I’m a lifestyle pantser), I’m now playing around with yet another way to organize stories. And yWriter is making it easy to experiment with the 15 “beats” that Blake Snyder discusses in his book, “Save the Cat”. But that is the topic for another day. LOL)

Stephanie Shackelford has been creating characters and stories about them for as long as she can remember. In high school (a million and a half years ago), her brother’s English assignment opened her eyes to the idea that she could actually write them down for others to enjoy. She has hundreds of scenes and stories and tall tales in various stages of completion on her computer, stored in boxes, or lost forever. It’s time to share some of these stories with the rest of the world. Storytime, anyone?

http://www.RoutinesForWriters.com/
http://StephanieandHerThoughts.blogspot.com