Tools of the Writer's Trade

What do you use to write with? What do you use to help you?

This is a thread to talk about wordprocessors and writing software, about ways to keep track of your worlds and characters, about pens and notepads and typewriters if you prefer a more old-fashioned approach.

This is also a thread to talk about dictionaries and thesauri and other reference books you find useful.

And in general to chat about the physical act of writing and how you get there.

What do you use? What do you do?

A brighter future for a darker age.

I'll start, I guess. I do most of my writing in the wonderful Mac (and, more recently, Windows) program called Scrivener, which is about US $40.

I've recently started playing with ommwriter for a distraction-free environment for knocking out new text; it's designed as a relaxing, un-distracting environment for concentrating, including built-in ambient music, dreamy backgrounds, and a selection of different key sounds, from musical tinkling to clacks and beeps, to keep you in "the zone". I haven't definitively decided on that one yet, but it's fascinating.

A brighter future for a darker age.

I use Microsoft Word when I'm at my laptop (no music, or if there is music it's just instrumental). When I'm away from my laptop, I use a small spiral notepad, pocketsized, and whatever pen or pencil I have handy. Things in the spiral notepad might be later transcribed to the laptop, they may not be.

(edited for some unusually numerous typos)

edited 2nd Apr '11 5:49:22 AM by LoniJay

Be not afraid...

I use mostly pencils and loose-leaf paper in a hanging file folder (I find it the least damaging and the most flexiable method of storing papers) and when I do type, I use Microsoft Word.

I type everything up on Word. If I'm away from the laptop, I have a small notebook I can scribble down notes on.

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

I use Open Office — it seems it doesn't have a built-in grammar checker, but at least I can have more flexibility in sentence structure without worrying about the green squiggly lines. It's free to download too.

I use the internet as both information resource, and to check whether I'm using a goodly word. I never found jotting notes in a notepad useful. The notes don't seem fresh for me as when I'm actually typing the story out.

Multiple copies of pages printed from the computer that would otherwise be recycled, pens and pencils, a 5 gallon bucket to hold all of my notes, a lap desk with Ziggy on it,*

a 3 or 5 subject notebook, an emotionally neutral room, and occasionally a cat.

Now you probably understand why I have most of this stuff, but you are probably thinking, "Why does this guy have a 5 gallon bucket, an emotionally neutral room, and a cat?"

Well the 5 gallon bucket holds all of my notes, but there is little you can do to organize it. This is good for me, because I can just randomly select a page of notes and expand on it through tangents.*

The emotionally neutral charged room is due to need, being a rather emotional person, a place where I am not around negative people.*

My bedroom for a while has served this function, but it hasn't really worked out that well. I'm thinking of maybe trying out some other more public places.

The cat is pretty self explanatory if you own a cat, but since not everyone owns a cat I'll enlighten you. Cats only approach you on their own terms, so if you see them coming your way they most likely want something from you. If they want attention they might hop onto your lap *

so they could be petted. I find this beneficial because petting my cat calms me down when I am tense. If they don't need your attention they'd just lounge around, allowing you to write whatever you want or inspire you to write a quick poem about the cat lounging around.

That said when not jotting down notes on paper I use Open Office or Neo Office. Why pay for things when you can get open source programs that do the same thing for free?

Has ADD, plays World of Tanks, thinks up crazy ideas like children making spaceships for Hitler. Occasionally writes them down.

I also need a quiet room to be with myself. Having anyone else in is like having someone barge in your private imagination. It gets awkward if anyone's peering over my shoulder as I write stories.

Having a room with a view is a big plus. Some might say it's better if you write in this dull dull chamber with absolutely no distraction, but distracting myself often can get myself writing again. I like a mountain-side vista, or if I can see the ocean, or the sunset down the horizon.

So far, I have been using a bunch of TextEdit (Mac OS X's version of Notepad) documents to keep track of everything. I have an appendix with a list of all of my named characters, I have an A-Z list with notes about various aspects of my world, and an entire tropelist and character sheet in this wiki's Unpublished Index that is heading towards a complete overhaul now that I have decided to remove the Pokemon aspects from the story.

As for how I keep track of plots, it's all in my head. Any attempt to create a timeline for my story has failed miserably, so I have given up on it for now.

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

Laptop with microsoft word user here (like most people), I tried open office but after writting a short story on it I came to hate it.

Also, I always play some music, if I'm writting something happy then happy music gets me on the mood, the same is true for sad/dramatic/action/etc.

I usually write on my room, but last week I made an experiment and went to a caffeteria, got me a beer and started writting, I had a great time and actually advanced a lot through my long story, I guess I'll be doing it again sometime soon.

I'm not a native english speaker, please forgive my bad grammar and misspells.

I'm using Open Office.org for the writing proper (it does have spell checking and dictionaries, installed separately on Windows). Snippets and ideas are written in paper first, if they come on the fly, and then uploaded to a private DokuWiki database which also holds structure and categorization details for the ongoing plots, as well as selections of links to different webpages for research. For the most complicated storied, StoryBook is used to plot the, uh, plot, as well as plan scenes and chapter and keep chronology, motivations and plot holes in check.

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

Let's see... my tools are OpenOffice.org (as many have pointed out, it's free!), my books (I've been re-reading them, taking note of the writing style, and asking why the author made the decision he or she did), my Pandora station (Power Metal FTW), and a large bottle of tequila. Despite efforts to actually plan out a plot, I often find myself writing as I go.

edited 2nd Apr '11 10:27:14 AM by KillerClowns

@ Silent Reverence: Hmm... Storybook may be something I should look into. Do you find it effective at writing your larger projects? How easy is it to use?

@ QQQQQ: Do you write in those locations often? I know that I personally cannot reach those places easily.*

I'm also thinking about getting a recording device for personal dictation, so that I could go jogging*

and note ideas, plan plots, and "write" stories at the same time.

Has ADD, plays World of Tanks, thinks up crazy ideas like children making spaceships for Hitler. Occasionally writes them down.

Laptop with Open Office. I have several docs open when I write:

• A character sheet with all the major characters
• A world sheet with important locations and landmarks
• A rules sheet with magic systems and other info

I usually have TV Tropes, Wikipedia, and Google Translate open in Firefox so I can look up more info as it's needed.

And if I'm feeling particularly creative, I'll dig out my sketchbook and draw the main characters or a few scenes to help visualize them.

And I always have iTunes running, on shuffle, occasionally skipping songs that jerk me out of a writing mood.

No one believes me when I say angels can turn their panties into guns.

Currently I'm using FocusWriter and 750words — especially 750words. I love that site to death, and it got me to write about 30k last month alone. I'm a huge fan of full-screen-green-text-on-black-background, and have both of their color themes set to green and black.

I also use TextEdit a lot, though not so much for writing stories. Its mainly for situations where I don't want to open something big and bulky that can distract from other programs, like when I need to take notes while doing research. I also use it if I need to c&p something between multiple files and programs, since it makes the process less of a hassle.

When it comes to storing things, I exclusively use .txt files. This has the benefit of meaning I can store all my writing on a flash drive and still have an ungodly amount of room left over in there. It also means I can sneak a Mac and a PC version of FocusWriter in there too, and take all of it with me wherever I go.

When I don't have a computer to write with, I use a composition book and mechanical pencil. Its useful for keeping notes and drawing diagrams and pictures, but I also keep it near my bed so I can jot down ideas I come up with right before going to sleep, which happens fairly often.

edited 2nd Apr '11 4:23:32 PM by Dec

Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit Deviantart.

Never heard of Focus Writer.

I seem to be in the minority in that I never write by hand.

A brighter future for a darker age.

A friend of mine used to carry around a pocketsized spiral notepad, like I do now. The difference was, she wrote two lines of writing for each line in the notebook, so she could fit twice as much on each page. I have no idea how she managed to write that small consistently for hours, but she did.

edited 2nd Apr '11 5:13:22 PM by LoniJay

Be not afraid...

I did too.

@Eldritch: Well, I have only one running big project at the moment, but yeah, it has helped me make sure the chronology stands firm, which is a key point in development as I'm doing Rotating MythArcs. The software takes somewhat of a long time to learn because of all possible interaction with the user and between story elements, but as a counterpart a project is quick to set up — I set up my settings and chars in less than 5 minutes.

What will likely take the new user the longest to learn and use correctly is "strands", which is what the program calls the different ongoing plotlines, and their interaction with scenes, which is something happening between certain characters in a specified setting. Again as a counterpart, you don't need to actually write the story in — you can link or insert individual text or Open Office files as chapters (which blends quite nicely with OO's "Master Document" feature).

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

@Eldritch — I do have a nice sunset view, and I'm lucky to see the mountains where I am. But I am for want of a nice ocean breeze..

I like to jog every now and then on the treadmill. Do jumping-jacks to get the blood rushing. Good way to start having playback of scenes to write.

I used to write in pencil in a notebook, but I flip back and forth so often I use only pen now. Generally, I prefer to do longhand scenes in a notebook that I can transfer onto Word later; this ensures that a preliminary edit takes place during the transfer. If no notebook is at hand, I'll use anything from a napkin to my own arm. (Ink poisoning, here I come!)

In Word, I use coloured backgrounds and coloured fonts to avoid the dreaded white space of a page with nothing typed on it.

I usually have some sort of distraction going on in the background: a movie, some movie soundtracks, websites, cooking/baking. I'll write anywhere the inspiration strikes. I employ character sheets for one novel and a series of descriptive character paragraphs for another. For a time I used a tape recorder to record some mad ramblings but gave it up after I realized how absolutely insane I sounded. Now, I read the chapters aloud into the recorder and listen to them to catch odd sounding sentences, dialog, etc.

Basically, I'm very unorganized in my approach. If something works, I'll take a shot at it.

Too geeky to live, too nerdy to die.

For my big fantasy project I did set up a Media Wiki installation on my Mac and started a wiki for it. However, I found myself failing to keep the Wiki synchronized with the current state of the story and have pretty much abandoned it for now.

A brighter future for a darker age.

I use OpenOffice.org for the big stuff, including the universe bible I use to keep track of facts and figures. I keep everything in .doc format since my co-writer uses MS Word and it can't read .odt files.

For quick notes, I put those into a NotePad file, save it, and then transfer it into the main file. I highlight in yellow notes that haven't been fleshed out.

If I'm out and inspiration strikes, I scribble it down on a convenient piece of paper and transfer it into the .txt or .doc where applicable.

edited 3rd Apr '11 2:55:09 AM by DarkSoldier

My Blog | My Steam profile

I've tried using paper and pencil, but that just doesn't work for me. Most of the writing I get done I do by opening up word and going for it. If I ever need to take note of something, I usually fold it up and store it in my brain, too hard to keep track of otherwise.

The thing about making witty signature lines is that it first needs to actually be witty.

Part of the reason I've never used Word for this kind of thing is that I've known too many people who've been burned by file corruption using it.

That and the fact that using Word makes me want to strangle someone, because that program is so damn non-deterministic.

The tools I use all use a fairly plain-text file format. Scrivener uses a Mac bundle, but that's really a directory with a special flag set, and the text is contained in RTF files within that bundle. So no matter what, I'll be able to extract text from it if something really goes wrong.

A brighter future for a darker age.