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21
Am I allowed to beat the drum for Scrivener again? :)
Scrivener is a tremendously flexible writing program which allows you to rearrange your items easily, by dragging around icons, by putting up virtual cards on a corkboard, or setting things up in outline format (the Outline view is right in the top bar). Each item of your outline is a document, which ...
13
Some tool such as this could be useful, but I believe you are asking the wrong questions.
In my answer to the question you linked and another answer in that question by Fox Cutter, the questions we posed weren't life detail questions. They were motivation questions. There's a key difference.
I might create this shell man who gets up at 6:45 on the dot ...
13
My advice? Skip the world building.
Focus instead on your characters. Tell the story as it happens to them. Invent the world around them as you need to in order to tell their story. If you introduce inconsistencies, clean them up in a later draft.
Focusing on the axial tilt of the planet your characters live on rather than who your characters are and ...
12
I'm a visual person. I have a large whiteboard which I used to draw graphs, flowcharts, etc... If you're limited on room, like I am, take a picture of your drawing before you erase it and keep it as a digital file.
You could also try the technique displayed in a lot of police investigation shows: note cards and/or pictures taped to a wall with colored ...
11
The great piece of software that makes exactly this possible is called Scrivener. Unfortunately though, it is only available on Mac and now a beta-version for Windows PC. I still mention it in case anyone on any of those platforms interested in the question ends up here, as the title doesn't mention the Linux-specificity. I wrote more about Scrivener in my ...
11
For me, I like to interview them. I have a series of loose questions that I like to have them answer. It helps me not only round out there backstory but get an idea how they will react to situations.
Some of the questions I use:
Something that embarrassed them when they where growing up?
How did they get along with your parents?
Have they ever been so ...
11
I would recommend to just go with what you find most productive for yourself, but since you wanted a list:
Paper:
Pros:
Can be used almost anywhere
Cheap, simple, reliable
Easy to arrange how you want it
No sudden data loss (unless actually lost)
Lets you draw a little sketch on the side
Won't die on you if it gets a bit wet
Probably wont get stolen
...
11
Scrivener can compile to various formats including EPUB and Kindle formats, and gives you lots of control over formatting. Here is a video tutorial showing how it's done.
It is available for both the Mac and Windows, with a Beta version for Linux.
10
Well, even without studying some dubious horoscopic sciences as feng shui, everybody at least feels that having your own work place for each kind of work you're doing is a significant efficiency boost. I think undisturbable place to write is not an option — it is a precondition. Once you have it, you can begin to write and at least be sure that you'll finish ...
10
I have been using Calibre to format my e-books, and I have been very happy with it. However, as PseudoCubic noted, it will not accept a Word document as input. Ideally, you should convert your file to html first and then format it with Calibre. If you convert your Word document to html, make sure you choose the Web Page, Filtered option. Otherwise, Microsoft ...
10
You still need backups. Version control and backups are orthogonal concepts and should be used together, one is not a replacement for another.
Yes, version control will persist the change history in the repository, but the repository itself is not protected just as any computer file is not protected. If the drive where the repository is stored dies the ...
9
The aesthetics of writing in cursive are really a personal thing: some people appreciate the feel of a fine pen gliding over the paper, the line variation from an italic nib, and the shading of a nice ink, and some just don't.
On the practical side: cursive writing came about because it is faster and easier to write at length than printing. While that's ...
9
Before Lauren shows up, let me provide an answer from a non-evangelist ;)
... it looks to me like a cross between an outliner, a note organizer, and a word processor.
Yes, more or less. Scrivener is an all purpose writer tool. It tries to replace all other tools an author would need to write a book, or better: to finish the first draft.
All other ...
9
Scrivener does have a Comment or Sticky-Note function. You can also use a Highlight to mark big swathes of text, change the color of inserted copy, and Strike-Through to cross things out.
As John Smithers wisely points out, Scrivener isn't just for writing the draft. It also allows you to gather notes, keep audio and video with your story, create outlines, ...
8
For a non-spam answer:
I highly recommend Celtx. One of my friends and I decided to write short plays last summer and this was the program I used and I loved it. I found it very easy to use and figure out and I had never really written plays before then. http://www.celtx.com/index.html
8
The iPad is pretty good, but I would suggest getting a USB keyboard as well. You can find some nice cases that have the keyboard built in so you can open them up and type. I usually get 10-12 hours on my iPad, though I don't use the blue tooth.
As for laptops, I have a netbook myself, and I can get six hours out of that without much trouble if I set the ...
8
SimEarth might work well for you. As I remember, in addition to the Earth simulation, there was Martian terraforming as well. It is an old DOS game; I wish Maxis had updated it for modern computers.
Something that might also be interesting is EdGCM, the only global climate model I know of that will run on a PC. Changing the forcings in model can provide ...
8
I don't have anything scientific on this, but... I doubt it. People have been managing to get books written for centuries, all without the benefit of a large monitor. Barring health issues that require special ergonomics, I think the details of your set-up are more of an excuse than a genuine problem.
I write on a laptop, a netbook, or a desktop computer. ...
8
Markdown is almost certainly the way to go for simple formatting.
To then go from Markdown to a proper ebook format, you can use some automated tools to do the conversion for you.
Web Book Boilerplate
If you want to run locally with your edits, and view them in various formats, the Web Book Boilerplate GitHub project offers an easy way to do this:
With ...
8
There are a large number of version control systems out there, but I think that Git might be the best choice for you for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that everything is in a single folder, you don't have to check things out to work on them or rebuild anything. You can just keep a full live copy on a pendrive and it just works. You also don't ...
7
A set piece is a big moment in a story, usually quiet a bit of the story builds up to it and it has a large effect on the plot. You'll see it a lot in video games and movies. For example, the lobby sequence in The Matrix is a well know set piece.
Set pieces are usually large and memorable and often the plot pivots around them. You can write a story by ...
7
I usually don't answer my own questions, but... wow.
I just discovered Emacs org-mode, and I am stunned. The tools for catching bits as I think of them, then organizing them on the fly are both powerful and customizable. Like all of emacs, it is keyboard-driven (no extensive dragging and dropping to irritate my RSI when using the laptop), and looks great ...
7
I don't use my iPad for my manuscript, but I know several authors who do. They tend to belong to the large camp of writers who prefer using plain text editors for their writing in order to avoid distraction.
However, I do use it for note-taking. I use a combination of two apps for this: Springpad and Elements. Springpad is nice because it doubles as a web ...
7
Notecards or post-its with chapter or scene summaries are a big help. You can lay them out on the floor or pin them up on the wall to get a visual of your various sub-plots. I know others who create more of a flowchart for their plots, and there is plenty of free flowchart software online that can help you with that.
I personally prefer to write parallel ...
7
Sensual observations are all well and good, but there is also the landscape of the mind to consider. What associations do you make when you see/hear/feel/taste a scene? What makes that scene come alive in your mind? And above all, what does the scene mean and to whom? Remember that landscapes are like stages: they are inert until an actor strides out upon ...
7
You might want to try Calibre, which is a pretty powerful ebook conversion tool. To my knowledge it won't accept a Word document directly as input, but you can convert your manuscript to another format from word first, like HTML, plain text, or even PDF, and import it into Calibre for conversion.
6
The size of the monitor doesn't matter as much as the size of the text on the screen.
I write with a MacBook Air, which has about the same size monitor you're using. I use 12 point Times New Roman, and tell my word processor to magnify the text to about 150%. That's plenty big even for my aging eyes, even at a distance. And my writing window takes up about ...
5
I did a blog post on this last year:
Can You Get Real Writing Work Done on an iPad?
My answer was yes, by the way.
An edited excerpt (considerably more at the link):
For casual writing (emails, mainly),
the iPad’s on-screen keyboard is
sufficient. When I had to work on a
chapter of the latest book, I turned
to one app and an Apple Wireless
...
5
I used to exert a lot of time and effort to creating extensive character biographies and doing things like personality tests. I think all of this is very useful, but in the end, the way one gets to know their character best (I think, anyway) is simply by writing the story. The truth is, you'll never know or understand your character as well as when you see ...
5
I sometimes like to write a short autobiography of my characters. I'll start with a sketch describing them physically, then write bits of their life story. I like to focus on struggles the characters are having or have had in their past because to me, that's what makes a character interesting. One of the great things about writing these background pieces is ...
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