What Could Happen?

[scarlettina]

I've heard any number of writers talk about keeping a notebook as they write their novels, something in which they record minutiae of all sorts. Because this thing I've been working on for so long has been taking so long, I decided to start a notebook for it, separate from the actual novel itself. My idea was that it be not just a place to keep

Comments

[skidspoppe]

awesome! I'm gonna share this with my writers

[inevitableguy]

This does not only apply to novel writing...I find that song ideas gel much more rapidly when I start writing ideas down than when I just try to keep them formulated in my head.

[aberwyn]

What counts is getting something -tangible-. Writing in a notebook, or jotting ideas into a werp file, or drawing little pictures -- they all work. Just thinking rarely does, because thought is fleeting and mutable. Thoughts change too fast to act as a foundation for more thoughts unless someone's a brilliantly and incredibly disciplined person. Which I'm not.

I like to say that writing's like training a puppy. Do it on the paper!

:-)

[willowgreen]

That's a great idea--thank you!

[herself_nyc]

Good suggestion.
Did you wind up using Scrivener, by the way? Do you like it? What's superior about it to just using Word?

[scarlettina]

I did wind up using Scrivener and I like it quite a bit. Scrivener isn't just a word processor. It has all sorts of features intended to make the structure of the novel more visible to the author as the book proceeds. It provides a view that lets you summarize each chapter in a way that's available no matter where you are in the book. It allows you to tag chapters for content so that you can track what happens when or how often a particular plot thread is touched. You can see an outline view of the book. It's quite all encompassing, and the structure tools--in the form of index cards on a bulletin board--make things visible that I would never have noticed otherwise. You can port the book out of the software and into a Word format. You can move chapters or scenes around individually or in bulk without selecting pages of text and fearing their loss in transit. Lots of stuff is so much easier in general

[herself_nyc]

Thanks for that! Very convincing. Is it relatively easy to import a novel in progress into it? I've already got some 600 pages of material in Word docs. Also, what did it cost?

[scarlettina]

Costs about $45ish, maybe $55--I bought it earlier this year and don't remember precisely. I found it easy to port the manuscript in. There is some set-up work involved, in that if the book is in chapters, you may have to rebreak them once they're in the software in order to make everything visible. I strongly recommend you take some time with the trial and run through at least part of the tutorial to get a sense of whether or not it will work for you before you do all that work. The trial is free for 30 days.