Novel Software or the Books About Writing

Scalzi on the Writing Life

"You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop"  .....

Scalzi on Writing

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If you are a novelist, or someone aspiring to write your first novel, it is more than likely that you have read a few books on writing. John Scalzi's take on the writing life that prefaces this article has been described as "Worthwhile for aspiring writers and nosy folks". Now, as a writer I imagine you have to be nosy and incidentally, if you haven't read this funny and engaging book, it does not claim to teach you how to write a novel, only how to manage "The business of writing. The day-to-day existence of a professional writer - the writing life" I chose to begin with mention of this funny book because whether you choose to take your laptop to the coffee shop or to write at home, the fact is that most writers today have to do their writing on a computer, and being nosy folks means we will always want to find shortcuts to writing a novel, hence novel writing software.

Writing is hard work, as John Scalzi and others have observed. I have made the case In this other article for using novel writing software for ironing shortfalls in your knowledge base, especially concerning how to structure a novel, how to create engaging and memorable characters, how to polish your story idea or how to generate story writing ideas from scratch, etc. But since writing that article I met up with a friend of mine from way back who made the argument that he has all the fiction writing resources he needs to learn how to write (and none of that writing software stuff, thank you!). The resources in question in his case were half a dozen or so hard copies of the best books on writing lying on a shelf in a bookcase, and some DRM digital editions on his PC that I couldn’t borrow (they couldn’t be read on another computer except his, unfortunately).

This naturally got me thinking. The last such book I remember reading, avidly, I might add, was the autobiographical take on the subject of writing novels, On Writing-A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. It probably isn’t your typical book in this category (writing how to books) but for purposes of this article it will do. Stephen King is a no-nonsense writer and in the second foreword to this 278-page book (I refer from the edition of 2000) he writes that he decided to write a short book because most books on writing are filled with ‘bullshit’, and that fiction writers, himself included, do not understand very much about the craft of writing fiction and thus never know, when it works, why it is good; and why it’s bad when it doesn’t. “I figure the shorter the book, the less the bullshit,” he added.

Kind of contrary, don’t you think? But don’t get me wrong. In fact, if you haven’t read this book I highly recommend you read it. 

Simply knowing that even a hugely successful contemporary novelist of Stephen King’s caliber also went through the grind and suffered the same headaches and heartaches as you at some point in his writing career can only boost your self-confidence those times you find yourself asking yourself why you thought you could write! We all get them, apparently. (As a side note, though, Stephen King in this book recommends as one of the best books about writing, and a must read for aspiring novelists, The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B White).

Where does this leave us, you may ask?

Well, you heard it from the supremo himself: some of the best books about writing can teach you a lot about the craft, except he doesn’t seem to think there are many of those! Plus, the book he recommended is even shorter than his own (only 85 pages!).

If you have read my previous posts you will know by now my views about the use of writing tools for teaching you the basics about the craft of fiction, and also for speeding up this learning process; so I will not repeat the arguments here. But since my title suggests a contest of sorts let me sum up with this bullet-point checklist. This isn’t an either/ or sort of choice – there is a place for both novel writing software and a book or books on writing for anybody seeking to hone their fiction writing skills and improve efficiency. I will leave it to you to decide for yourself where to put the emphasis.

The best books on writing can help you in these areas:

•         Sentence structure and style how-to tips and examples.

•         Do’s and Don’ts for plotting, character development, storytelling, etc, as well as detailed commentary/advice on work habits, attitude, networking, getting published and so on.

•        Self-discipline and stamina prep-ups and pep-ups (or pep talk). Anybody can use a bit of that, you know.

Writing Bestelling Fiction - Dean Koontz

"How to write bestselling Fiction"

Dean Koontz on Writing:

"This is the Bible for anyone who wants to write good commercial fiction..

 
Novel writing software on the other hand will help you in these areas:

• You learn by doing, therefore a fast-track skills acquisition process for beginners especially: how to structure a novel, checklists for developing well-rounded characters, timelines, brainstorming tools, sometimes even tools to manage your submissions for publishing a book – all at the click of a mouse.
• Built-in help systems for Story management and story development, best practice and technique, are especially handy, if, like most modern novelists, you do your writing on a PC.
• Outlining your story, which has traditionally been a headache for most novelists, becomes a snap, as you will be working in a template, the story engine giving you writing prompts all the way. 

The Bottom line is this: In most cases you may need only one writing program to see you through the process of learning how to write, how to craft good fiction, as opposed to a half dozen books on writing (to say nothing about the time to read them), but, depending on your frame of mind and your level of experience at the outset, a good fiction writing how-to book can usually spur you into action and point you in the right direction by helping to highlight your strengths and weaknesses, thus giving you your ‘point of attack’, whether you then chose to work with writing software or not.

 "Scrivener is the writer’s friend. Maybe the writer’s best friend."

 Scrivener is a great story management tool and has been described as:
"A Must-Have Tool for Serious Writers at a Ridiculously Low Price..." Read the full review here





These other articles may be of interest:

Novel writing Ideas: How Novel Writing Software Can Help You
Write A Novel With New Novelist Software

How To Write A Novel With Novel Writing Software

Software for Novelists

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Most writers of fiction learn to write through sense and intuition garnered after years and years of reading the best novels and subconsciously or consciously picking up the styles, tastes and techniques of their favorite authors, and then working it out for themselves how to write a novel. That is how I learned to write myself. But I notice these days that the reading habit has suffered seriously as most youngsters move over to television and film and multimedia for entertainment. Still, some of these will at some point want to write novels. Writing a novel still remains a popular pursuit for all that, as we can see from the fervor surrounding the Novel Writing Month in the USA. This being the information age and a time for “speed”, many will be looking for shortcuts. For writing a novel, one of these shortcuts is to use novel writing software to learn the mechanics of crafting good fiction, the other being to register for a creative writing course. This article is aimed at those beginning writers who may not have the sort of background that some of us have had but are ardent nonetheless about becoming novelists themselves with the help of novel writing software.

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This article isn’t itself a tutorial on how to write a novel. Rather I will be showing you how novel writing software might help out by forcing you into the mold and showing you how to develop your story idea logically and organically as has been done by the masters over the years, regardless of your chosen genre. For this purpose I will draw on examples from Power Structure novel writing software.

Let’s start by assuming you have a good idea or premise for a story. For a beginning writer coming up with a good story idea is hard enough, but it is only the start of a BIG journey. There is still a theme or themes to work out, settings and conflicts to develop, character backstories to think out, etc. In my experience as a writer you do not know your story until you are able to visualize all these elements together in your mind, and that takes a lot of work. Book writing software enables you to do it all in one place, right at the outset.

With Power Structure novel program, the moment you type in your premise the program leads you through this journey in a direct and linear fashion, asking you to answer questions that may not even have occurred to you yet but which must be answered before you can really take your story idea further. I will elaborate what I’m saying by breaking up the story development process into parts and show how the novel writing software helps you flesh out your characters, theme, conflict and plot so you know how your story should flow before you begin the storytelling itself.

• Character and theme: Power Structure novel writing software has a Character View where you develop your characters by answering questions like “What are my character’s faults and weaknesses?”, “How does having these weaknesses or faults affect the character and the story outcomes?”, “What will my character learn in the course of the story?”, “How will my character be changed by the end of the story?” The writing software will also give you an opportunity to define your theme or moral for the story in Story/Theme View.

When I was just starting to write fiction and knew very little myself about how to write a novel it is amazing, looking back now, the amount of detail I would skip in my haste to put words on paper. Now I know the importance of working out all these details in advance, the backstories, the character traits, the themes and conflicts. Novel writing software, by bringing up these elements of good fiction before you as you develop your story idea forces you to adopt a more efficient strategy that ultimately saves you time. This is novel writing help at the click of a mouse. You will know that your story idea is not fully formed in your mind if you find yourself groping for the answers at this design stage, and that too is a good thing! The result is you will find yourself developing solid, well-rounded characters. When you know your characters really well the storytelling stage becomes a lot easier.

• Conflict: You may have an idea what sort of conflicts to work into the story right from the time you get a spark for your story idea. But your ideas will usually be vague at the beginning. Working in Power Structure novel writing software the program asks you to give more detail about the conflicts you define at any stage of the story, by giving them an Introduction, elaborating the Heightening and finally working out the Resolution. You are also asked to specify between which characters the conflict you define will be .All these issues, if settled early on, should pave the way for a trouble-free storytelling experience. This is another stumbling block for the beginning writer, not working out these issues beforehand. The book writing software helps out by giving you these novel writing tips at the design stage so you know what information will be required to craft a good story – in effect showing you how to write a novel.

• Plot development: In the Chapters View the novel writing software presents you with a series of questions for defining what they call Plot Points, which are more like scenes. You will be asked to answer questions like “What is the chapter’s opening hook”, “What has to happen (events) in this chapter?”, “How does the chapter move the story forward?”, “What is the chapter’s ending hook?” etc. Each plot point will have its own conflict perhaps and these details have to be specified here. So that before you put pen to paper you know how your chapter should unfold, what needs to happen in it, and how it should end.

The novel writing software forces you to answer a lot more questions than I have mentioned. By the time you have settled all of them you should have a deeper understanding how your story will unfold, where to start it, how many characters you will need to populate it with, etc; in other words you have it structured. At this time you probably will not have your novel but you will have a carefully thought-out outline you can then use to begin the exciting journey of storytelling. Besides Power Structure book writing software there is other writer’s software you can use of course. Other writer’s software programs like NewNovelist novel writing software and StoryCraft Pro novel writing software take you through much the same story development experience, showing you how to write a novel as you go. Choose a program that suits your technique best – and good luck!

Read the article Novel Writing Ideas: How Writer's Software Can Help You that details how you can use another writer’s software tool to come up with compelling story ideas.

Read novel writing software reviews here:

Novel Writing Ideas: How Novel Writing Software Can Help You

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Writing a novel is a solitary activity, but with the advent of the internet the situation improved considerably. Now you can join an online forum or a writers’ group for instance, no matter where you live. But when it comes to finding ideas for your next novel – or your first – you are still pretty much on your own. I can remember the times when I scoured the internet for novel writing tips and novel writing ideas. The novel writing tips you can easily get on the internet; there is too much of that sort of information in fact, and you need to know when to pull away and trust your instincts and intuition – and begin writing! You learn to write by writing, after all. Novel writing ideas is another matter. Normally if I have a good idea for a novel I go ahead and write the book – or I keep it, the idea, somewhere safe! But now there is novel writing software you can use to brainstorm your story idea in case you already have the beginnings of one, or you can get inspiration from the novel writing software program itself.

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I will discuss how you can use novel writing software to develop your story idea, or find novel writing ideas later. The process works best when you already have an idea of sorts, but first, if you are new to writing, getting the idea in the first place may not be so easy and you may be asking “How do writers of fiction get their novel writing ideas?”

For me, reading good fiction still ranks very high as a source of inspiration for novel writing ideas. This is not to say that you use the ideas of other novelists wholesale!   But as has been said there is nothing new under the sun. As you read good fiction your mind subconsciously stores the things that tickle it: maybe it was a snappy character with an engaging character flaw, or a wonderfully woven plot twist – anyway, something worth remembering. Use these nuggets for coming up with your own novel writing ideas. Re-read, if you can, the books that still linger in your mind five, ten, even twenty years later and you will come away a changed writer!

There are of course other sources of novel writing ideas but in this article we will be looking at how you can use book writing software to find ideas for a novel, or develop it if you already have one. For this purpose I will use Storybase novel writing software.

Storybase Novel Software

Storybase software comes with a functional word processor where you can do your drafting but its premium application is the Storybase “engine” or dictionary of narrative situations, 2,363 of them. You begin by naming your characters: the protagonist, the antagonist, plus two more: friend/lover and family or object.

How the engine in Storybase novel writing software works is that you can choose to use only one character, two characters or all four of them and then select options from two other categories: Mindset and Thrust. Mindset specifies the protagonist character’s state of mind (aggressive, paranoid, stressed, etc up to 25 options; or you can choose any). Mindset in turn is influenced by “what is happening” or the Thrust of the conflict. Thrust is a list of 35 options like Pursuit, Betrayal, Failure, etc from which you can select up to three, or you can just go with Any. The writing software will then generate a long list of interesting “conflicts” or narrative scenarios in the conflicts tab, from which you can then select what works for your story idea. A  Leads tab gives you the Lead-ins – or those conflict situations likely to have preceded the current one – and the Lead-outs, or conflicts that are likely to follow it. Depending on the specifics of your original idea, in case you started with one, you can then go back and change your options in Mindset and Thrust for yet more conflict scenarios.

An example will make it clearer. Let’s say you are starting out with just an interesting character named Liz. For the time being let’s assume she’s all you have. Next we assign a mindset to her: she’s guilty in a big way. You then select only “Guilty: in the Mindset tab. Why does she feel guilty? In the Thrust tab we will select Failure as the cause of her feelings of guilt. When we have done this we check the conflicts tab and this is what we find, a long list of 208 possibilities that the novel writing software has generated. I will list only five so you can get the picture:

1. Liz is filled with self-loathing

2. Liz faces consequences for not paying attention

     3.  Liz pays a price for being sloppy

     4. Liz is unable to accomplish a supposedly easy task

     5. Liz makes an assertion that turns out to be completely false

Let’s select item 5: “Liz makes an assertion that turns out to be completely false”. To select you just have to click the item. It will then be highlighted in blue. The contents of the Leads tab will change to reflect your choice. Next we will check the Leads tab for possible causes of Liz’s predicament and this is what we find:

Lead-ins are eight in number but I will list only 2:

1. Trusting intuition, Liz takes a risk and loses big-time

2. Liz suddenly thinks Pat might be a pathological liar

Lead-outs are 6 in number. I will list 2:

1. Trying to get away from Pat, Liz discovers that all routes of escape are blocked

2. While on the run from Pat, Liz tries to track down the truth

You will probably be wondering how come we now have two characters, and who exactly is Pat?

Well, Pat is one of the default characters in Storybase novel writing software. You can of course define your own character sets and add your own names. What has happened is that the writing software’s story engine is never happy dealing with one character and has assigned an antagonist. If Liz is guilty it most likely has to do with someone or something else (Pat or maybe Object X)! But let’s look at what we have now – a premise for a story.

“Newly-wed, fleeing from her unfaithful husband, decides to track down his alleged ‘conquests’ to find the truth”.

How I got here is that I took liberties with what the novel software has given me. I want to write a love story; so out with Pat. I will assign a name for my heroine’s husband later, it does not matter now. We did not know about a pathological liar but now that he is here, why not? Or that Liz was married – but here we are. Liz apparently loves the s.o.b if she is bent on unmasking him. Is he telling the truth where his alleged “affairs” are concerned or is it just “hot air”. And supposing she finds his affair, or affairs, is fiction meant to impress her? How did she find out about his infidelity in the first place: from a friend, or did he confess? Is there any possibility of a reunion for the two?  Maybe, or maybe not, but this is the beginning and as a writer of fiction this is where you prove your powers of imagination.

Our story idea may not be all that original in its present form but I guess you can see how the novel writing software can help you come up with novel writing ideas for your next novel.

As a side note, I have had Storybase novelwriting software for quite a while now and I never used it for coming up with story ideas before. But today I decided to check it out because I found that many people are searching for information how to write a novel and also for novel writing ideas. And now I’m impressed myself and I think I will give it a try! For this example I have used version 2.0 which is quite old by now. The new versions of Storybase novel writing software probably have more features.

Read the article How to Write a Novel with Novel Writing Software that shows you how to develop your story idea using another novel software tool.