Novel organization software, and why it is all extremely annoying (warning: SWEARS)

[marydell]

[warning: cussing and petulance!]
I keep testing different writing software, and it all SUCKS, because none of it matches my process, which is, admittedly, weird, but it's not THAT weird.  See, I can perfectly well organize scenes and chapters using anydamnthing.  So can anybody who learned outlining in grade school. I have MS-Word, which has a lovely outline mode that's served me for years for short stories.   Why must every writing-organization-notebooky thing be just another model of the apparently amazing concept of the outline, for fuck's sake?  Yeah, some of them have nice add-on tools and helpful things, but they're all just variants of chapter/scene outliners.

Damnit, software people, I need to organize the fucking story*, not the fucking plot!**  I can't start plotting until I figure out WHAT HAPPENS to everybody.  And how things link characters together.  A character-notes page with an embedded picture is not helpful, because it never connects to the other characters or events, and I'm not writing a goddamn RPG. Surely someone else has complex chains of events to map out?  (Some of which are backstory that will never actually make it onto the page?) And has come up with a nice software proggy to do it in? THAT RUNS ON A FUCKING PC??? 

Argh.   I have a whole group of major characters, some of whom have lives that span generations of normal human lives, and some of whom live normal human lifespans.  And there's a war, and people move around from planet to planet, and the whole series of events spans about 150 years, with the primary focus of the plot following characters through a particularly hectic year or two.  Maybe a really big whiteboard would help? 

I guess I can take a crack at it in Excel.  If I give each character a column, and each year a row, and write what happens to each person in the appropriate cell, that might actually work.  Hmmm.  Will try it and report back.  FUCK

*Story=what happened, in chrono order
**Plot=the way you tell the story

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Virtual index cards?

[gryphynshadow.livejournal.com]

I found this program, and I've used it for proto brainstorming on a story. (which totally isn't how I write stories, so it didn't work too good for me) The program itself is pretty easy to use, it allows you to create those cool diagrams with arrows and bubbles and symbols, and you can type in text pretty much anywhere in it. You can make it big, make it small...

http://www.edrawsoft.com/freemind.php

and it's free. I'd say, play around with it a bit, and see if you like it. :)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Mind mapping--coolio. I've geeked around with that before for work purposes, and it doesn't match up to my super-linear way of organizing stuff, but it might work for more creative stuff. This looks like a good implementation (free=good!). I'll see if it fits, thanks!

[gryphynshadow.livejournal.com]

I was thinking it would work pretty good for visualizing timelines. That way you could keep track of who was where and when.

And, sometimes I'm very visual. In fact, most of the time, which makes it fun to tell stories. It has to go from feeling to vision to words, in my head. I'd think the edraw program would make it easier, but I just wound up geeking around with it. Got caught up in the visualness of it, and didn't move on to wordiness.

Hope it works for you!

[marydell.livejournal.com]

That's the model a lot of the software uses. Unfortunately it doesn't help to build multi-layered structures (for me, anyway). My plotting tends to be done on a big sheet of drawing paper, and I use visual composition models for figuring out what needs to happen. (I'll see if I can put up an example)

One of my favorite books is Wuthering Heights--that beautiful parallel structure that links and contrasts the stories of the two generations. In my mind the events of that book don't lay out in a straight line; they're more like a 3-dimensional grid. I'd love to find software that could capture that and make gaps and bad balance apparent.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

1. I hated the characters so much I never even thought about the plot. Cliff 'em all!

2. Architectural software? Ask randwolf. He's doing nifty things with...well, frankly, I don't even know what it's called. But it's really cool.

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

Go analog: Get three big whiteboards and dry-erase markers.

No more proggies to make you angry.