I’m trying my hand at writing a novel and I’ve got enough written that I can no longer keep track of things via a Word document. Has anyone here used Storybook or another organization type software to help with their writing? What are your opinions?
Any feedback, including how to better utilize Word, is much appreciated.
Thanks!
I’ve used Scrivener quite extensively for business and personal projects.
While I’ve done some creative prose with it, my main usage of it is working with lyric writing and for non-fiction.
I really like it. It’s quite powerful and very full featured. A lot of the writing I’ve done with it has been instructional and educational material; its tools for managing discrete content and background have been invaluable.
I do find that having a well thought out template suited to your project and working style helps immensely.
Long story short, Scrivener is really good at managing the process of writing.
For the creative stuff that I have done, I’ve also used Storyweaver. It has a slightly different slant. It focuses on the various literary elements of your work and walks you through developing them: characterization, plot, story arc, thematic consideration, etc. The website is from 1994, and the user interface, while simple and intuitive, does leave something to be desired.
I’d recommend you check them both out. Scrivener has a free trial, and Storyweaver has a 90 day money back guarantee. The websites for both are fairly informative.
I’ve used Microsoft Onenote and MindMeister (web based) can be useful for brainstorming, but any text editor should be good enough.
I manage mostly in my head, though, and use software just to remind me of things.
My husband is a novelist and also uses Scrivener. He has experienced some issues with it, but has had really good support by the Scrivener team, who seem really open to feedback and engaging with their users.
Out of curiosity, what needs to be done that a word processor can’t do? (Or doesn’t do well enough?)
That’s what I was wondering actually Frylock. I may just need to learn to use the Table of Contents and Chapter features of Word more efficiently.
Thanks to all who have replied so far. Your input is very useful.
Expanding on that question, how can you call yourself a writer if you can’t do the basic job of shaping the story elements in your head? Notes are fine, but it sounds like these tools go way past just managing associated info and close in on a write-by-numbers approach.
Not pitting anyone or anything, just a bit bemused at the thought of a novel-writing application. Screenplay tools, I understand, but that’s a very complex and demanding format that often needs to be group-worked. Novels and general fiction… maybe you’re not qualified if you need such training wheels.
I don’t know that those features - which tend to be buggy and MS-weird - will help much. Word is an excellent general writing tool once you beat it into submission by turning off 95% of the auto-features, shape a couple of customized document templates (mostly be removing weird and half-assed settings and styles) and learn never to touch about 50% of the strictly-for-secretaries-and-amateurs features.
But organizing a complex piece of writing is best done with a separate outline in which you can rearrange sections, jot notes, and write speculative passages for later weaving into the main document. You can combine the two by managing them as an interwoven pair of documents - write your outline, color it red or blue, and then write the more complex work within it, absorbing each section and note as the final text is written.
Thank you Barbarian. Your second post was way more useful and actually addressed my question.
I’ll try not to do it again. 
I am in the minority that thinks Word is a damned good tool… but only after you beat it into submission. It’s the majority that try to use it the way MS’s marketing department told them to use it that hate it. (“First up against the wall when the revolution comes…”)
Happy to help walk you through some other useful writing techniques, from a practical point of view.
That is a kind offer and I will keep it in mind. I’ve spent the majority of my day arranging chapters and noting plot holes and doing it with Word. So far so good.
I fail to see why anyone would need special software to write a novel. I’m working on a few writing projects in InDesign, and I haven’t come upon anything it can’t do.
Your Linotype must be in the shop.
I recently had an idea for a novel, and started to look around at software that would maybe format things correctly with indented paragraphs and chapter headings etc, output to PDF, give me a word count, without also having to deal with the excess of MS Word. But all I could find were things like Scrivener and a free one called yWriter that help organise the story in chapter/sequence blocks, apparently so you can keep track of the bigger picture, rearrange things, make quick notes then go into deeper an deeper detail… and no matter how hard I try I can’t imagine writing a story that way. It seems entirely counter-intuitive and unnecessarily complicated, like you have to know how the entire length of the novel is blocked out before you even begin to write.
Now I don’t think writing from the front to the back is necessarily the best way to write either, as you need to go back and forth and round and round to fix things up and make things stronger as new ideas develop, but that’s not really organisational either.
It seems to me that those kinds of apps are only useful for a narrow kind of writer, maybe for non-fiction books or for people who regularly organise their thoughts, either actually or figuratively, like with cards on a pinboard. But I just write out a short list of plot points, then rearrange them into a particular order, then expand on them to a multi-page outline, then get started on writing the first draft. All of that can be done in Notepad.
InDesign.
I use a spreadsheet to help keep track of characters. I also use it (but less) to help keep track of plotlines and chapters and the overall outline. Pretty much the same as index cards, really.
I won’t say that there isn’t any such thing as an application that will help…but I’m really, really dubious. At this point, I cannot conceive of how it could possibly work.
The notion of a “style checker” makes some very limited sense: it could alert you to very long sentences. It’d be nice to have a checker that would catch me when I use the same word twice in close proximity. “The odious Mr. Parker had a tendency to revile his correspondents in an odious fashion…” Oops!
I use the spreadsheet part of OpenOffice. I have yWriter, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with it.
One nice thing about Scivener is you can use it to keep your research at hand. You can tuck in graphics, webpages, charts, etc, etc, and just click to them when you need to check on the spelling of that name or that date or whatever. Much easier than trying to keep track of all sorts of varied files by yourself.
And playing around with the index card views can be very helpful when you’re trying to make sure you have all your clues and red herrings properly distributed throughout the entire mystery.
At least I still have my typewriter, though the ribbons are becoming hard to come by.
I wouldn’t have commented if I thought there was a useful purpose for such software for any type of writer. I’ll concede that TMMV, but in about 35 years of writing almost every form of writted material there is - long and short fiction, narrative and reference nonfic, screen/teleplays, documentation and procedures, formal and informal reports and analyses, and every small thing that jams into the interstices, I’ve never found one that could use specialized “helper” software - the one exception being screenplays, especially those written by multiple authors, for which some excellent groupware and format-management software exists. (Even then, I’ve never actually used any of it except briefly.)
Well, Word has more power for even simple formatting and outlining, so I prefer that. But writing into increasingly detailed outlines and then writing over the outline is the best technique I know of for any form of complex writing. I have found Windows built-in Sticky Notes very useful to hold ephemera and working notes. A colleague wrote a phenomenally complex work by building a six-million-word ‘timeline’ and then edit-reduce-rewriting that into a million-word first draft. It’s the same technique whether it’s a five-page report or a two-volume history.