Using Writing Software

A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away), I purchased Scrivener. If you're not sure what this amazing piece of software is, you really need to check it out! This is a God-send to disorganized, write by the seat of your pants/skirt kind of writers, like myself. With this software, you can organize all your notes using Post Cards on the Corkboard, rearrange them as needed, and the software will automatically generate the Outline for you! But there's so much more this software can do. It's packed with features. Like in the Outline mode, you can create Custom Metadata -- which I did to include location, time, and the weather for a scene. These can be anything! And then you can choose to view these metadata tags in the Outline view so that now I can visually see when an event happens. Each Postcard is actually a Scene. And you can write any scene in any order. So like I've had this fan fiction idea for a while, but I'd always get bogged down with the planning. Now I can throw up a Scene and just write the scene, right in Scrivener! When you're ready, you can go to Document mode, where Scrivener will compile your story piece by piece so that you can read it just like a book -- in fact, it has all the industry standards for formatting already included, and you can override them if you choose to (like I do for writing fan fiction).

You can keep all your research right there in the software, to include pictures, notes, even full web pages. It'll even keep track of individual word counts (or character counts) for each scene, and it'll automatically total each subsection for you, so if you like to write with counter goals, this makes it easy. You can also configure Scrivener to use multiple window panels (I like to have my outline up top and my document/corkboard down at the bottom (bifocals, don't get old), but you could also go left/right too, but I have my web browser on the right side of my computer.

Another piece of software created by the same people who made Scrivener is Scrapple. This is a Mind Mapping software, where you can create text snippets, insert images, all kinds of goodies and then arrange them anywhere on the document pane, then connect them with line-links. You can color code objects-- I have yet to really begin using it, but for $20, I couldn't resist.

Scrivener only costs $59, and you can use it for a full 30 days of usage (not calendar time). So like if I run it on January 5th, and then again on April 7th, that's only two days of usage! That right there is why I just purchased the software. I really like those terms.

Anyway, I'll be updating this topic with hints as I discover them while writing my latest fanfiction, "Fatal Exception: Heartstring Purge?"