[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BookCat

These tools excel in different areas of the writing process. The Novel Factory helps with plotting and structuring the entire novel, or even just part of it, making the process painless.

I recently bought both that and Dramatica Pro. My understanding is that either/both help wth plotting throughout, and that is simply my biggest weakness. I know that a crapload of writers start with a thing--an idea, a character, a theme--I tend to think of "this person was murdered, this is the villain, that's the reveal." My problem is, creating all the cruft that goes from a-b-c. Allegedly, according to various courses, writing/critique groups, and all that, I can do the rest--create characters that folks like, write dialogue, scenes..but figuring out how the hell Jane Doe goes from being X to being the detective? God no. OR, worse, the "business," as in, filling in all the cruft between the high points. (Of course, to be fair, I haven't really sat down and tried to write in 5 years. The existing business--my real job--takes a little over 60 hours a week to run, and I'm also taking a 6-mo. long course right now, 4x weekly, in something else...so, I tend to run out of time, fairly often, lol. There are days when literally, I don't eat.)

Scrivener is a great place for keeping all the information and chapters of the novel, and for working on character and location details. It's the central hub of the work.

Gad, I wish I loved it as you guys do! ;-)

FocusWriter is where I actually write. I love its customisable distraction-free space, where the background picture can be changed to suit the scene I'm writing and there are nice typewriter sounds. Yes, Scrivener has a similar full screen area, but it lacks the typewriter sounds and ability to alter the opaqueness of the text area (you can show a faded version of the outside area, but not alter the text area to allow a glimpse of the background picture). I'm refering to the Windows version of Scrivener.

Meh, for short stuff, for me, this is Word. Longer stuff, YWriter, all-in. It's simply freaking fabulous--even if it ain't purty!

<snippage from Bookcat>

Hitch: Thanks, that's a great tutorial of YWriter. I'll copy and paste it into notepad and perhaps try the software again after nano. I'm sure many others will find it helpful.

I confess to being a visual person: the looks of the software do affect me. Perhaps if YWriter were prettier I would feel more inclined to learn it properly.

People ARE visual. God, if I've learned ONE BLOODY THING in my several decades on the GUI web now, it's that. Who'da thunk that book cover design would become nearly the end-all and be-all of book marketing, even a decade ago? Important, yes--but nearly ALL-important? I mean...I can name a million other things, but humans are sighthounds on two legs. (If you don't believe me, folks, stand in the frozen food aisle and watch people that are NOT buying from a pre-set list. YOu know what people buy? Inevitably, the box of X that has the best picture on the box. PERIOD. Screw calories, protein, carbs...it's the PICTURE, BAYBEEEEE!)

So, in part--and forgive me for this--that DEFNITELY accounts for the popularity of Scrivener. It's pretty, and it started in the Appleverse, where pretty stuff is always, ALWAYS, more popular than that which is functional. It's moved over to Windows, where it's also attractive. It has stuff that's attractive (like the corkboard thing, which...I don't get.) I'm not immune to the attractions of pretty, but...apparently, when push comes to shove, I'm all-in for functionality over pretty. I'm definitely a left-brainer, no two ways about that. (Probably why I struggle with the creativity part of plotting--while the logical part seems easy to me.)

Nothing wrong with being visual---welcome to the human race. But in some ways, that's really YWriter's downfall, or its handicap; that Simon just can't be bothered to make it pretty. (Another left-brainer!). I think that if he foofed it up a bit--and hell, probably if he made it COST money--it would sell a lot more. It's just bloody cool, when you really SEE it.

Ya know?

Oh, and it wasn't a tutorial, at all, I'm sad to say...more like a guided tour. ;-)

Hitch