And Just When I Thought It Was Safe

Rachel Vincent goes and posts about yet another shiny new writer software toy, Post-it Digital Notes.

You can color code your post-its, add links and photos, resize them, and much more.

Word

Like many of you, I use Microsoft Word for writing my novel. Recently I’ve posted a lot about my search for a good outlining tool. The ones I’m most attracted to right now are SuperNotecard and PowerStructure. However, neither does everything I want.

Take a look at the outline tree structure I’m currently favoring:

Act 1
Chapter 1
Scene 1
Plot Point 1

I’m not asking for too much.

With SuperNotecard, I can use decks for acts, cards for scenes, and write plot points on the card. But no chapters.

With PowerStructure, I can use their Novel template and I have acts, chapters and plot points. But no scenes. I could rename chapters to scenes, but then I won’t have chapters.

But look what I can do with Word:

This is easily accomplished with outline view and heading styles. It’s simple. “Act 1″ has the “Heading 1″ style, each “Chapter” has the “Heading 2″ style, each “Scene” has the “Heading 3 style, and I just used plain text for my plot points.

You can:

• Expand and collapse each tree node where you see the “+” symbol.
• View any level of your outline. For example, I could view just acts and chapters (hiding scenes and plot points), or acts, chapters and scenes (hiding plot points), or view everything, as in the above picture.
• Drag tree branches around to reorder them.
• Customize the various heading styles to your heart’s content. Want the chapters to be in a different color, font or size? Piece of cake.

Pretty cool, don’t you think?

It’s not the final answer in outlining, and there are times when SuperNotecard and PowerStructure seem like a better tool. But if you’re already using Word, you might want to play around with this feature.

Power Structure

Power Structure is the latest shiny new toy I’ve been playing with. Essentially, it’s an outlining tool with some very nice features. It lets me organize my outlining thoughts the way I want to. It’s not trying to write my story for me, or even help me come up with ideas. It allows me to structure my ideas in a better way.

One of my favorite features is that it allows me to rename all the key terms in an outline. If I don’t like “plot points”, I can rename that to “story event” or “scene”. If I don’t like “protagonist” I can rename that to “hero”.

Their novel template uses acts, chapters, and plot points (but remember, you can rename those terms if you want!). You can move plot points to other chapters, and chapters to other acts, but this becomes a little cumbersome if you have a lot to move. You can put in as much detail to an act, chapter and plot point as you wish. You can view the plot points as index cards, and shuffle them around. You can track plot points by character(s) and your own custom categories. You can assign tension level to plot points, and view graphs of the tension over time (kinda neat, but I’m not sure I’ll use this feature).

You can define “to do” items for an act or chapter, and check them off (very conveniently) as you create the plot point that will include that item.

You can define all your characters, provide as much detail as you want, categorize them, and associate them with your plot points (chapters and acts). You can define their “character arc” and track it throughout the story.

Gestalt View

You have a “gestalt” view, which is simply a view that displays acts, chapters and plot points all in one screen, with acts in the leftmost column, chapters in the next column, then plot points, and finally plot point details. Very handy for a more graphical layout of the entire structure. I have a large widescreen monitor, and I think this view may seem more cluttered on smaller conventional monitors.

Realistically, you won’t be using all the features. But the unused features don’t seem to get in the way.

At $129.95, it may be a little pricey for some. There’s a free demo (limited by # of plot points and no thesaurus) you can try out. I’m having fun with it so far. Whether it will become a regular tool in my writing, I can’t yet say.

Be forewarned, this program comes with copy protection, where you can register up to three machines for it to work on. You can unregister a machine. If your hard drive crashes or you forget to unregister a machine (and then lose access to that machine), call them up and they’ll work something out with you. My concern is what happens when they go out of business. You can still use the software, but you’ll have to enter your “key” every time you run the program. I realize software piracy is a problem, but I’m not a big fan of companies incoveniencing paying customers to try and circumvent it.

Here’s some reviews by Thomas Kane, Top Ten Reviews, and Sandra Durham.

The company is hard at work on version 2 of this program.

SuperNotecard and yWriter

SuperNotecard
(Click on image for larger version)

I’ve been having a blast with SuperNotecard. I could do the same thing with real index cards, but the software makes it easier, in addition to providing extra features. I can drag cards around in any order to play with ideas. I can view all scenes with a specific character in them, or all scenes told from a specific character’s POV. I can organize cards (scenes) within decks (which can contain other decks). I can create my own categories, assign them to cards, and filter by category.

So far, I’ve created a deck for each act in my novel. I’ve started creating cards for Act I, where each card is a scene expressed by a single sentence (based on Holly Lisle’s technique). Just this much has already been revealing.

Identifying a scene in a single sentence is not always easy. And that may be because that scene needs work. For example, I have a scene named “Jill meets Jack.” (I’ve changed the names. I don’t really have a novel with two main characters named Jack and Jill.) Yes, this meeting is significant in the plot, but the title of my scene leaves a lot to be desired. It sound borrrring. Do scene names like “Jill eats lunch” and “Jack watches TV” sound exciting to you? So with SuperNotecard I “flagged” that card. A tiny red flag actually appears on the card indicating the scene requires further attention. Notes on the flag remind me what needs fixing (the title of the scene). I think it’s important to nail down the title of a scene. It ensures the scenes is worthy of being a scene. I may have to “fix” the scene by sharpening its focus.

For me, a good scene moves the story forward, and shows a change in value of something that’s important to a character, usually achieved through conflict. My definition is a mix of ideas from Holly Lisle and Robert McKee (author of the Excellent book Story).

So Jill and Jack meet. What does that mean for Jill? How has her life changed as a result of this meeting? If I can’t answer these questions, then I need to ask myself, “Why is this scene in my novel?”

yWriter
(Click on image for larger version)

I’ve also played around with the free Windows app, yWriter. This is a really neat little program. Unfortunately, there’s one feature that’s killing it for me. It forces you to first create chapters, and then create scenes within chapters. The whole point of plot cards is that you’re not tying scenes to chapters. I suppose I could treat a chapter as a deck (act), or some other large-scale grouping. I’ll play with it some more and see if it suits my needs. The Storyboard feature is a good idea, allowing you to reorganize scenes across chapters, but at the moment it’s rather flimsy in its interface for my tastes. SuperNotecard is a lot more aesthetically pleasing for that type of work.

Plot Cards

I could be working on the outline of my second draft of IA today, but like WeiRDgrrl, I’ve discovered a shiny new toy to play with. Plot Cards. The ever-generous Pride member Driftsmoke was kind enough to tell me about Holly Lisle’s plot card technique (and some of the software that follows). Holly offers a free overview of plot cards, along with her Create a Plot Clinic eBook (which includes plot cards and much more).

I’ve been struggling with restructuring my outline, and plot cards feel like a tool that will help me juggle the complex threads and scenes more easily.

These people have something to say about plot cards: Marilynn Byerly writes about Using Index Cards to Plot a Novel, and Lolaness at Associated Content writes about How to Plot a Novel Visually: The Index Card System.

Being a programmer, the first thing I thought of after reading about plot cards was a way to write software to use virtual plot cards. Turns out I’m not the only one. Supernotecard looks promising. I’ve downloaded the free limited version and will give it a try.

I’m going to explore some other software as well.

Liquid Story Binder is a Windows app (apparently the one to get for Mac users is Scrivener) that is one of these all-in-one environments for writers: word processor, document organizer, plotting tools, and much more. I’m not sure I want such a tool. I’ve heard it can take a great deal of time to learn how to use all the features, and many of the features sound like overkill to me. But hey, it’s shiny! Best of all, the free trial is fully functional (but time-limited).

yWriter is a free Windows app that uses scenes as its basic organizational unit. It’s much simpler than the above programs, and has a very good review from PC Magazine.

And there’s Chapter by Chapter, a free MS Word tool that lets you maintain your novel chapters as separate documents (MS Word is notorious for corrupting your files when you try to use the built-in document merge feature). Not sure this idea appeals to me, as there are many advantages to having your novel in one document (search and replace, word count, etc.).

Anyway, I think I’ll start with Supernotecard and follow Holly Lisle’s suggestions. Wish me luck!