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Mrenda posted:I had no illusions it would be easy. But I didn't think it would be this tiring. I'm plain mentally drained after it, to a surprising degree. I knew I wouldn't be writing 5,000 words a night, I am writing the amount I thought I could write. I didn't think the only thing I'd be capable of is refreshing forums to read inane comments after 1,819 words. I figure my stamina will build up, slowly. This is just a little surprising and I'm not in any way trying to disparage the effort the history of writers have been putting in for millennia. Oh, I wasn't trying to be a dick or anything. A lot of new TDers, including myself, finish their first story and are taken aback at just how hard it is to make poo poo up from nothing. Everyone has seen a cheesy movie or TV show and thought they could do better, but when you sit down in front of a blank page it becomes a different beast. That's a respectable amount to be writing, and for a complete beginner, it's really impressive. I don't write anywhere close to that amount and it's actually inspiring to see someone so new write so much. If you ever want critique, enter a round of ThunderDome and I would be happy to throw a line-edit your way.
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May 1, 2015 06:09
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Mrenda posted:I had no illusions it would be easy. But I didn't think it would be this tiring. I'm plain mentally drained after it, to a surprising degree. I knew I wouldn't be writing 5,000 words a night, I am writing the amount I thought I could write. I didn't think the only thing I'd be capable of is refreshing forums to read inane comments after 1,819 words. I figure my stamina will build up, slowly. This is just a little surprising and I'm not in any way trying to disparage the effort the history of writers have been putting in for millennia. Wait until you are night 30 before you talk about how hard it is.
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May 1, 2015 07:08
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LOU BEGAS MUSTACHE posted:can someone tell me the aspects of scrivener that make it appealing and the features they find most useful? I agree with everything Battuta said. Also, one of its most useful features for me has been the ability to nest notes under actual scenes. Mine isn't broken into chapters yet, but when it is, it will have a top node for chapter, then sub-nodes for scenes, then under each scene, I have a note file. I get ideas for what I want to put into any given scene at random times. So, for example, I was writing "Scene 20" today (I don't use numbers, I use descriptors, so this was "Elevator Make Out," but it's roughly no. 20) and while writing that, I thought of a few things I wanted to do in an earlier scene to make this one more powerful. So I just jumped to the notes for that scene. But since it's filed under the actual scene, it's much easier for me to jump. Also, I can just minimize all the sub-nodes, and see an "outline" of all my scenes. I also split the screen between my note doc and my draft doc pretty often. You can do that with any two docs, but I really like being able to keep mine together -- it's like a paper clip. You can also make a notecard for each document, so for each scene, I have a notecard with the main things that happen in the scene. You can view these on a pin board display, or as an outline. Mine are inconsistently filled out and constantly changing...just like if I had paper notecards! So, conceptually, I have for each scene, a paper-clipped pile of papers, a summary notecard, a draft of the scene, and notes. As I complete more drafts, they will be clipped "on top of" the older drafts. When I combine scenes, I just clip their notes together under the new scene. The ability to rearrange scenes has also been incredibly useful to me. I've been waffling back on forth on when in the story the "first kiss" scene goes. I can just drag that node up and down the file structure every time I change my mind. Being able to easily view each scene individually also has obvious merits, IMO. But it's easy to view them all together in a "finished" manuscript, as well. I also am starting to use the custom meta-data tagging. So now, I have tags for Point-of-Vew (Heroine/Hero), Relationship movement (are they moving closer together or further apart in this scene?) and intensity. Once I finish my draft, I'll be able to combine this with the "note card" function to have an overview of how the POV and emotional arcs move through the story. For my scatter-brained style of writing, Scrivener has been invaluable in keeping things organized without making me feel oppressed by an organization scheme. I'm a huge fan. Dr. Kloctopussy fucked around with this message at 08:12 on May 1, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 07:23
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I have not been concentrating on outlining this short story I've been wanting to work on for some time now.. I don't know if it's the outlining itself not being enjoyable and just plain tedious or all the stuff going on in my life recently (E/N crap; none of your concern) or me being distracted by meaningless crap like browsing lovely websites but whatever the hell it is, I gotta sort it out right now because poo poo's killing me.
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May 1, 2015 08:05
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angel opportunity posted:Does Scrivener have or plan to have a cloud application? Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no native cloud capability. I do not know if there is any plan for that function, either. You would have to come up with a workaround.
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May 1, 2015 13:40
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Mrenda posted:This is really loving hard. Welcome! What you're doing now will get easier, but then you will discover other, deeper layers which are just as difficult. This process will never end. edit: drat that sounded cold and I didn't intend it to. Seriously, welcome, and your rate of output sounds great. Good luck, have fun, keep going, etc. Hungry fucked around with this message at 18:08 on May 1, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 18:05
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angel opportunity posted:Does Scrivener have or plan to have a cloud application? Syncing with a Dropbox folder or whatever is pretty much the only option, which sucks if you can't install Scrivener because you're then limited to working on your manuscript in individual text files with Wordpad or something.
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May 1, 2015 18:23
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Can you sync with Dropbox on the Windows version of Scrivener, bc I can't find the option.
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May 2, 2015 07:18
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I think Stuporstar means just setting the project save folder to a location in your Dropbox. Dropbox does the synching automatically. That's what I do anyway.
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May 2, 2015 08:33
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Maugrim posted:I think Stuporstar means just setting the project save folder to a location in your Dropbox. Dropbox does the synching automatically. Not quite. I'm talking about the "Sync to external folder" option in the File menu. I can't say for sure if it's in the Windows version though.
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May 2, 2015 16:33
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okay i have tried using this new fangled "scrivener" and the ability to chunk pieces makes pacing a hundred million times easier since our brains like doing that thing of lumping stuff into groups and subgroups and also i wrote a lot of words today using it beacuse it removes a lot of the overwhelming nature because then you can just be like "write a scene" rather than looking at thousands of words and pissing into a pool of more piss thats a lot of words but basically i like this program
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May 3, 2015 02:54
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Scrivener sounds awesome, but as someone who's looking into a chromebook, it doesn't look like an option 
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May 3, 2015 03:03
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Yeah, I love Scrivener, but I'd love it even more if it had an Android version so I could
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May 3, 2015 14:07
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To answer a few questions at once: Write more faster and How to use Scrivener Start out by blocking out your whole story's scenes, a sentence at a time. Some people prefer to sit down and let the story happen, and that's great. I prefer to map out the story, almost start to finish, using just a line to describe each scene initially, and then I can bounce around and insert more stuff as necessary, until I've got something resembling a wikipedia entry for a book. (For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand#Plot_summary) You're still able to free-associate and let your story breathe and find its own pace and arc and let surprises pop into your head, it's just (FOR ME) easier having a starting and ending point for each scene from which to roll the dice. This aids in adding those little foreshadowing tips, character arc development, crap like that. So in Scrivener, your starting document is a single page of sentences describing your initial idea for your story. At this point, you can break each sentence into its own separate document/chapter which does two things: helps you establish if you need to have more crap happen in your story, (assuming you have an average word length for each chapter, I try to go for 2K in each chapter but it's just a wild estimate). AND it helps you envision the pacing of your entire story. My first MS had a whole lot of action in the last 25% of the story. The rest of the book was, "but there's some great poo poo coming up, keep reading!". That will not hold most readers for 75% of a story. Another option, (instead of breaking your summary up into individual docs right away) is to jump straight to the scenes that already have your brain jumping up and down and start writing out what I call stage direction for that scene: "X needs to tell Y something but doesn't want Z to hear them, so they have to get into the kitchen without Z suspecting. How do I do that without making it a big deal? X asks Y to help open a jar of pickles? Who knows. But half way through telling, Z walks in to try to assist and discovers they aren't opening the jar what the gently caress do I do then?" Here's a screenshot of my next MS in its current (abandoned) state. to give you an idea of what that might look like:  This is pretty much a mess at this point, I've got a lot of reworking to do, but the story isn't just bouncing around in my head at this point; I've got characters, big moments, little moments, and at some point hopefully, an idea of what needs to happen to make the ending THE ENDING. I realize this is more like building a house than making an artistic splash of words, but it helps when I'm trying to get words onto the page. My first draft (the one that is finally writing the story instead of some vague dialog to myself) needs to get onto the screen in a flurry of excitement for me. If I'm not excited writing it, I don't know who's going to give a poo poo reading it. WRITE MORE FASTER: plot out your scene before you start writing - know the beginning and the end of the scene, and try to identify the parts that might make you stop (while writing) to figure out some complications. TRY to solve those ahead of time. So then you're writing the story, you're focused on the nuances, and the bigger picture, and you can change any of your initial plans of course, but it's better to start with a sketch and erase, than to start at a blank canvas and paint yourself into a corner. SCRIVENER WILL HELP by letting you sketch out your story, break each part into a separate doc, move them around, change the order, insert another idea, link to character summaries, etc. -- edit edit edits. The writing more faster comes in large part from this book: 2K to 10K magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 16:00 on May 3, 2015 |
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May 3, 2015 15:41
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just put the save file in google drive?
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May 5, 2015 00:25
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Just use google drive and the awesome table of contents add on. You can make drive folders and put your dumb photos and whatnot in there for "reference" and then use table of contents to keep your chapters accessible at the click of a hyperlink in a toolbar. It doesn't have the fancy sexy look and extras of Bartleby the Scrivener, but it works and it's free. I could be wrong but if you NEED Scrivener in order to write productively, you might have other problems. If you just want it cos it's cool and makes you happy, than more power to you.
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May 5, 2015 01:28
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I just finished "The Martian" by Andy Weir and while I enjoyed the story I felt like from a technical perspective it wasn't that well written. Like, characters with little more development than "the German one" or "likes disco", dialog that felt unnatural, etc. I also thought everything written about the Earth side of things was really weakly developed. Did anyone else feel like this or am I just in an overly critical mindset after trying to write my first thunderdome story? I put this here rather than in a book discussion thread because it's about how the book is written, rather than what it's about... Hope that's OK.
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May 5, 2015 02:34
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Pham Nuwen posted:I just finished "The Martian" by Andy Weir and while I enjoyed the story I felt like from a technical perspective it wasn't that well written. Like, characters with little more development than "the German one" or "likes disco", dialog that felt unnatural, etc. I also thought everything written about the Earth side of things was really weakly developed. Did anyone else feel like this or am I just in an overly critical mindset after trying to write my first thunderdome story? I actually stopped reading the story for the same reason. People were really raving about it and into it, but I couldn't really enjoy it. I'm not usually a huge huge critic of stuff like this, but I guess ~as a writer~ it kind of grated on me. I also felt like the mission control scenes were tacked on when he realized he could make money off it, and he wanted to make it seem more like a novel, so he threw those scenes in to "flesh it out".
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May 5, 2015 02:36
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It's a very linear, procedural novel. I found it compelling, in that it compelled me to read from scene to scene, but when it finished I immediately forgot almost everything about it because the function of its words is to push you to the next word.
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May 5, 2015 02:56
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Compelling, but shallow was my take as well. It just forces tension by having catastrophic poo poo happen each chapter (and those are some smaaaall chapters).
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May 5, 2015 03:01
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Martello posted:Just use google drive and the awesome table of contents add on. You can make drive folders and put your dumb photos and whatnot in there for "reference" and then use table of contents to keep your chapters accessible at the click of a hyperlink in a toolbar. It doesn't have the fancy sexy look and extras of Bartleby the Scrivener, but it works and it's free. Eh, trying to imagine using Google Drive like Scrivener makes me cringe. I'd sooner try the same thing with Evernote than Google Drive, and that's only marginally better in terms of organization and web integration. Once you find a tool you like, like Scrivener, it's hard to let go. I just use the Scrivener/Simplenote pairing they built in, for when I work on my tablet. It's totally bare bones, but I actually found that an asset. I used to get annoyed whenever it stripped my italics, until I realized it was breaking me of using them as a crutch for emphasis. So gently caress it, now it's just me and the words. It's nice being able to organize those words in Scrivener once they're down though, because half the time they come out and I don't know where they're going.
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May 5, 2015 05:46
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I dunno, I just worry that some people want to use Scrivener as a crutch. I guess personally I've just never had the need for all the extras. I tried it for a bit (at your recommendation of course) and I found the extra features more of a distraction than anything else. It could just be the way I write. I guess a lot of people do the whole notecard, tacked-up stuff physically, and Scrivener DOES replace that very well. For me, as long as I can jump between chapters and go into my subfolders to find ~world-building~ reference material, that's all I need. Also you can take my italics from me when you kill me.
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May 5, 2015 11:24
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angel opportunity posted:I actually stopped reading the story for the same reason. This is quite literally the exact post I would have written so I'll just say "ditto".
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May 5, 2015 14:55
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Martello posted:Also you can take my italics from me when you kill me. I finally figured out how to change the italics to underline setting for manuscript compilation.  Took me way too long to realize which menu I should have been looking at.As someone who formerly used tons of sticky notes and index cards for organizing story beats, Scrivener is my jam. If you're sick of losing jotted down notes, I think it's one of the best ways to go. I was trying to use google docs in a similar manner, but obviously that can be a pain in the rear end. I just use docs supplementally now.
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May 5, 2015 15:22
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I use an ancient version of Microsoft Works and it's super laggy and I hate it. EDIT: Also, was it one of you guys that wasted ten bucks on my avatar? I liked the blank space, dammit. Screaming Idiot fucked around with this message at 16:57 on May 5, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 16:54
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I found listening to the audiobook version of The Martian a lot easier as I could just zone out and drive as he talks about "poo poo! Imma die. Oh wait, Science! Yay! Oh poo poo, still gonna die!" It also helps the narrator has a really serious voice that goes funny everytime he does a "Yay!". There're a lot of Yay!s in that book.
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May 5, 2015 17:03
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Screaming Idiot posted:I use an ancient version of Microsoft Works and it's super laggy and I hate it. Username/post combo right there
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May 5, 2015 17:07
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Martello posted:I could be wrong but if you NEED Scrivener in order to write productively, you might have other problems. Martello posted:I dunno, I just worry that some people want to use Scrivener as a crutch. I guess personally I've just never had the need for all the extras. I tried it for a bit (at your recommendation of course) and I found the extra features more of a distraction than anything else. It could just be the way I write. I guess a lot of people do the whole notecard, tacked-up stuff physically, and Scrivener DOES replace that very well. Quit acting so superior about the fact that you don't use Scrivener, jesus christ. It's not a "crutch." It's a useful tool, just like everyone has said. This isn't the first time you've suggested that if someone does anything other than sit down and write in a text file, they "might have problems" as a writer, and that's garbage. Different things work for different people and finding that "extra features" makes life easier isn't some sort of moral failing. It's not like Scrivener writes the loving words for us. Edit: 
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May 5, 2015 18:36
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:Quit acting so superior about the fact that you don't use Scrivener, jesus christ. It's not a "crutch." It's a useful tool, just like everyone has said. This isn't the first time you've suggested that if someone does anything other than sit down and write in a text file, they "might have problems" as a writer, and that's garbage. Different things work for different people and finding that "extra features" makes life easier isn't some sort of moral failing. You didn't get the Ghostwriter DLC pack?
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May 5, 2015 18:38
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Calmness, people. Calmness.Martello posted:I dunno, I just worry that some people want to use Scrivener as a crutch. I guess personally I've just never had the need for all the extras. I tried it for a bit (at your recommendation of course) and I found the extra features more of a distraction than anything else. It could just be the way I write. I guess a lot of people do the whole notecard, tacked-up stuff physically, and Scrivener DOES replace that very well. It's just a difference in workflow. I pretty much poo poo out my words into individual text files, on bare-bones writing apps, because anything more is a distraction. But once the words are down, I need a program like Scrivener to help me make sense of them. I never finished a novel before it existed, because poo poo like MS Word tried to force me into a linear mode of thinking that never jived with me. I'd never thought of trying to organize my thoughts onto index cards and crap before Scrivener simulated it for me. It's just what my jumbled up brain needed.
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May 5, 2015 18:41
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Stuporstar posted:Calmness, people. Calmness. Where's the fun in all that? Stuporstar posted:It's just a difference in workflow. I pretty much poo poo out my words into individual text files, on bare-bones writing apps, because anything more is a distraction. But once the words are down, I need a program like Scrivener to help me make sense of them. I never finished a novel before it existed, because poo poo like MS Word tried to force me into a linear mode of thinking that never jived with me. I'd never thought of trying to organize my thoughts onto index cards and crap before Scrivener simulated it for me. It's just what my jumbled up brain needed. Index cards sound good until you start writing on one and realize that you actually have like 10 pages to write and it will take 100 note cards and what you really need to do is go back and write the scene on paper and then make an index card, and then figure out what to do with that pile of paper to keep it organized while you move around the index card, and what to do if you need to take a chunk out of it and stick it under a new index card. Then, you realize those 10 pages are actually still just notes, not the scene, so now you need to add the draft of the scene to that pile. Then, if you are me, your first draft is TERRIBLE, and you have to write a new draft/make major edits, but you don't want to just throw away the first draft. Plus, you don't necessarily edit the scenes in order, because you need to make sure a few major scenes are really set before you do some of the smaller scenes, so which ones have been edited so far?? You might be able to figure out some sort of nesting file structure to do it, but what about when you want to reorder your scenes? Or read them all together? Find out a total word count across all scenes? Or....  Outline with drag-and-drop rearrangement, ability to split screen between notes and draft, note-card in the corner, and keyboard toggle to make everything but the main scene go away in an instant. If you can't ignore a few extra windows to write, maybe you have bigger problems????????? (Also don't read that, it's terrible) Dr. Kloctopussy fucked around with this message at 19:06 on May 5, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 19:02
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I use scrivener as a crutch the same way I use photoshop or illustrator as a crutch. NOTHING protects me from my lovely creativity. Nothing.
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May 5, 2015 21:11
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lol using a computer is such a crutch why bother if you cant type up everything on your typewriter with absolute precision and never make typos unless you're willing to rewrite an entire page again
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May 5, 2015 21:14
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LOU BEGAS MUSTACHE posted:lol using a computer is such a crutch why bother if you cant type up everything on your typewriter with absolute precision and never make typos unless you're willing to rewrite an entire page again Use a goddamn quill and your own blood, or go home.
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May 5, 2015 21:21
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Wait, are you me? I was wondering where my brain went. Also, Scrivener has that wonderful full screen function that lets you reduce the distractions down to one window, which I need for the first draft—not so much the later ones. I can't even read poo poo on the internet without clean reader apps anymore, because if I want to fully get into something, I don't want some poo poo flashing away on the right hand side of the screen promising to blast my abs or "come hither m'lord" or whatever idiot garbage. It makes me angry. 
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May 5, 2015 21:29
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THE ALTERNATIVE:
Dr. Kloctopussy fucked around with this message at 00:25 on May 6, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 23:22
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Martello posted:Just use google drive and the awesome table of contents add on. You can make drive folders and put your dumb photos and whatnot in there for "reference" and then use table of contents to keep your chapters accessible at the click of a hyperlink in a toolbar. It doesn't have the fancy sexy look and extras of Bartleby the Scrivener, but it works and it's free. I just heat my dick to ~180 Celsius and burn the letters into Javanese hardwood, one agonising stroke at a time. It's not elegant, but it works for me I guess? ymmv
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May 6, 2015 00:07
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tbh I would use literal crutches if I thought it would get my novel done.
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May 6, 2015 00:20
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I concede, I am an rear end in a top hat. My new position is that whatever you do to get words written is cool.
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May 6, 2015 00:35
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Martello posted:I concede, I am an rear end in a top hat. so you're saying you prefer to poop words out in cursive ideographs sebmojo fucked around with this message at 00:49 on May 6, 2015 |
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May 6, 2015 00:42
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