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Metal Mick · 08-08-2012, 07:05 AM

HI all,

about a week ago I bought a licence for LSB, and have no regrets. I had a good play with the demo for around 3 weeks and got stuck right into my writing.

Around 10k words in I decided 3rd person past tense was not hat I wanted and shifted to 1st person present tense. I'm now a bit over 30k words in. I discovered a relatively easy way to import my work into a new "binder"... after I did it "manually." Tarnation!

The way to use LSB is quite different, and the application can be confusing and intimidating, but also, there is a wealth of power there. One thing I discovered when I used the thesaurus was that it gave you alternative words in you sentence (something I had never seen before), and double-clicking on the sentence will replace the highlighted word.

I miss the text zoom feature of other applications and not being able to store URLs as active links to research pages (like in Write Way). I also miss the readability statistics. Unusually, I found the rtf files that LSB creates don't open that well in LibreOffice, looking rather jumbled, but do fine in WordPad. A select all and clear formatting command fixes this. No spell-as-you-go, either.

I really like the automatic curly quotes and the ease with which I can assign keystrokes to insert special characters. I discovered "line notes" - if you want to leave a memo to yourself in a section of prose this is an easy thing and they can be quickly stripped from the manuscript afterwards. The character generator is something I've been contemptuous of in other programs, but like it in LSB, and the dossier (character description form/area) is terrific.

There is a Yahoo! mailing list for support with some terrific people, but some of my messages just disappear and I am still on probation after a month so all my messages are moderated. My messages - around half - seem to disappear into the ether, so it can be several days before I know if my question or words of thanks gets through. According to Yahoo! there are a little less than 1,500 members on the list, although when I post a reply, the memebership message changes to show only 1100 and something. (Hmnnn.) That said, there were only around 50 messages for June and also July.

Overall, I recommend LSB but with reservations - you need to work at understanding how to get the best out of it. Do that, and you will find it has a lot to offer. There is an online course by a third party that I found, but I can tell you nothing of the syllabus, because it is made available after payment, as far as I can tell. Still, perseverance with the Yahoo! group and following the tutorials on the LSB website will certainly kick-start your familiarity with the program.

I've given some broad strokes about the application, but if you have any specific questions, ask away.

Cheers,

08-08-2012, 07:05 AM	#183
Metal Mick Addict Posts: 253 Karma: 2383254 Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Melbourne, Australia Device: The Book, PB 302, IQ	Liquid Story Binder HI all, about a week ago I bought a licence for LSB, and have no regrets. I had a good play with the demo for around 3 weeks and got stuck right into my writing. Around 10k words in I decided 3rd person past tense was not hat I wanted and shifted to 1st person present tense. I'm now a bit over 30k words in. I discovered a relatively easy way to import my work into a new "binder"... after I did it "manually." Tarnation! The way to use LSB is quite different, and the application can be confusing and intimidating, but also, there is a wealth of power there. One thing I discovered when I used the thesaurus was that it gave you alternative words in you sentence (something I had never seen before), and double-clicking on the sentence will replace the highlighted word. I miss the text zoom feature of other applications and not being able to store URLs as active links to research pages (like in Write Way). I also miss the readability statistics. Unusually, I found the rtf files that LSB creates don't open that well in LibreOffice, looking rather jumbled, but do fine in WordPad. A select all and clear formatting command fixes this. No spell-as-you-go, either. I really like the automatic curly quotes and the ease with which I can assign keystrokes to insert special characters. I discovered "line notes" - if you want to leave a memo to yourself in a section of prose this is an easy thing and they can be quickly stripped from the manuscript afterwards. The character generator is something I've been contemptuous of in other programs, but like it in LSB, and the dossier (character description form/area) is terrific. There is a Yahoo! mailing list for support with some terrific people, but some of my messages just disappear and I am still on probation after a month so all my messages are moderated. My messages - around half - seem to disappear into the ether, so it can be several days before I know if my question or words of thanks gets through. According to Yahoo! there are a little less than 1,500 members on the list, although when I post a reply, the memebership message changes to show only 1100 and something. (Hmnnn.) That said, there were only around 50 messages for June and also July. Overall, I recommend LSB but with reservations - you need to work at understanding how to get the best out of it. Do that, and you will find it has a lot to offer. There is an online course by a third party that I found, but I can tell you nothing of the syllabus, because it is made available after payment, as far as I can tell. Still, perseverance with the Yahoo! group and following the tutorials on the LSB website will certainly kick-start your familiarity with the program. I've given some broad strokes about the application, but if you have any specific questions, ask away. Cheers,