Tag Archives: William Shakespeare

The Software Shakespeare Used

Wow!  There are a lot of writing software packages available!

By writing software, I’m not talking about word processors like Corel Write, Microsoft Word, TextMaker, WordPerfect, etc.  I mean software designed to help you write fiction stories, software packages like Liquid Story Binder, Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, Master Storyteller, MyNovel, Power Structure, Power Writer, Scrivener, StoryBlue, Storybook, StoryCraft, StoryWeaver, WriteItNow, Writer’s Café, Writer’s DreamKit, WriteMonkey, and yWriter5.  I’m sure I’ve left out some…sorry.

writing softwareWould you like a nice analytical comparison of all those writing software packages to help you choose the best one for you?  Again, sorry, wrong blog post.  I don’t have the money or time to buy, test, and rate software packages, (though that would be interesting).

When I thought of the idea for this blog post topic many months ago, I had intentions of test-driving at least two or three and giving you a comparison of those, at least.  Alas, that didn’t happen.

However, I did try out yWriter5, so I can comment on that one.  I also was given a disk with Writer’s DreamKit, but it reacted badly with my computer for some reason, and after restoring things I haven’t been brave enough to try it again.  I don’t blame the Writer’s DreamKit software; I was able to explore around in it and get a feel for it, but I had problems when I restarted my computer the next time.

yWriter5 is free!  It allows you to organize your novel by scenes, then chapters.  It keeps readily available all the information about your characters, scene locations, and significant ‘items’ (objects) in your story.   It has a storyboard feature; it includes a word usage feature to see if you’re over-using certain words; and it keeps track of your daily word count in a log.  There are many more features, too.

I used yWriter5 for one of my short stories.  For a short story, yWriter has far more features than I needed.  It was a good way to organize notes, characters, etc.  Since I do much of my writing while away from a computer using an ancient method involving a ‘pen’ and a ‘pad of paper,’ I was pleased with yWriter’s ability to print reports that could include my characters, scenes, items, and notes.  I think yWriter would be quite useful for a complex novel.

In my brief exposure to Writer’s DreamKit, I found that the software asks you an enormous number of questions before you can get going.  If you have good ideas for your story in your head and the patience to answer the questions, I’m sure the software would prove useful.

My overall point here is to set expectations.  Do not purchase or use writing software with the idea that it will make you a published author.  By itself, the software won’t improve your writing.  It won’t think for you; it won’t come up with engaging characters, clever plot twists, or vivid settings.  It will not write the story for you.  Those are the hardest parts of writing fiction, and no software will do those things…yet.

What these software packages will (or can) do is help organize thoughts, keep information readily available to minimize searching for it, measure your progress (word count), and do the sort of low level, background stuff that you wish some assistant would take care of.

No, Shakespeare didn’t use writing software, just the ‘wetware’ within his skull.  I’m not even sure he would have recommended any of the packages currently available if he’d had a chance to try them.  But neither you nor I are Shakespeare.  If you need help with organizing or desire an easy way to sort out scenes, characters, and chapters, then feel free to use software for that.  I’d love to read and respond to your comments about this post.  Now available in version 3.55, I’m—

                                                       Poseidon’s Scribe

August 18, 2013Permalink

Does Blogging Help Your Writing?

If you’re thinking of starting up a blog as a way to improve the quality of your fiction writing, I’m here to tell you—blogging will have just as much effect on your golf swing.

Hamlet blogMy answer is different if you write non-fiction.  Well-written blogs are like essays, with the same structure and purpose.  The skills needed are the same.

For fiction writers, there’s very little in common between your stories and your blog posts.  The talents you develop doing one won’t translate well to the other.

It’s even possible for blogging to worsen your fiction writing.  Certainly it’s cutting into your productivity, at least.  Each precious minute spent blogging is sixty seconds lost and unavailable for writing fiction.

Also, let’s say you become an expert in all the aspects of blogging, able to craft persuasive, short essays with well-researched facts, finely structured arguments, and logical conclusions.  It’s possible for that ‘lecturing voice’ to worm its way into your fiction, and you don’t want that.

Am I telling you, the beginning fiction writer, not to blog?  No, I’m just helping you set expectations; blogging won’t make your fiction better.  But there are several valid reasons for fiction authors to blog:

  • It helps enforce schedule discipline, and to associate deadlines with writing.  This is only true if you post to your blog on a regular basis.  Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, getting to ‘The End’ is important.
  • It’s a form of self-education.  When I come across an idea for a future blog entry, I add it to my list, (which is quite long now).  When I look to see what topic is scheduled for any particular week, I find it generally involves a bit of research.  So while blogging about the craft of writing, I’m coming across knowledge I can use.
  • The best reason for a fiction writer like you to blog, though, is to build your platform, increase your web presence, and connect with readers.

Blog if you want to, but don’t go into it thinking it’ll make your fiction better.  For those of you who disagree, that’s what the comment feature is for.  Please comment and let your views be known to the world and to—

                                                          Poseidon’s Scribe 

June 2, 2013Permalink

You Might Be a Writer If…

Jeff FoxworthyDo you have what it takes to be a writer?  If you did, would you know you did?  Sometimes it’s difficult to tell.  To make it easy for you, I’ve developed a handy test along the lines of Jeff Foxworthy’s ‘Redneck Test.’  See how many of these apply to you.

You might be a writer if:

  1. You’ve ever jotted down a plot idea by interrupting a shower.
  2. You celebrate the birthdays of William Strunk and E.B. White.
  3. You’ve day-dreamed an entire talk-show interview about your best-selling novel.
  4. You have a favorite intransitive verb.
  5. You’ve cried over the loss of your favorite pen.
  6. You’ve ever invoked Hemingway to defend a drunken binge.
  7. Your muse is as real to you as your spouse, and that seems to bother your spouse.
  8. You have checked the Thesaurus…for mistakes.
  9. You’ve ever sneaked in extra writing time while at your day job, in the bathroom.
  10. Your computer keyboard cringes when you come in the room.
  11. You’ve ever said, “Honest, Officer, I was doing research.”
  12. Your few remaining friends groan when they hear you say, “Want to hear about my latest story?”
  13. You’ve called a company to rant about grammatical mistakes in their advertisements.
  14. You read the dictionary for pleasure, and then re-read it.
  15. The last three months of your wall calendar read October, Nanowrimo, December.
  16. Your study is wallpapered with rejection letters.
  17. Microsoft Word software development engineers call you for ideas.
  18. Your three children have told you they hate their names.  All three of them, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Dostoevsky.

Lastly, you might be a writer if:

19. Your spouse has asked when you’re coming to bed, and you’ve replied “as soon as I finish writing this intimate bedroom scene.”  An hour later, your characters collapse in satisfied weariness, but your spouse is no longer in the mood.

For those of you out there who are already authors, feel free to comment and add any other items to my test.  If you weren’t sure if you’re a writer, let me know if you found the test useful, or at least interesting.  As always I strive to be of help to beginning, struggling writers.  It’s all part of the free service provided by—

                                                             Poseidon’s Scribe

 

January 13, 2013Permalink

The first thing we do, we kill all the darlings!

The title of this blog post combines a bit of William Shakespeare with William Faulkner.  I’m fairly confident neither William will sue me.

Faulkner’s quote actually was, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”  What did he mean by that?  My interpretation is he meant for writers to look, as they edit their stories, for passages with clever phrases, little jokes, or humorous anecdotes—the passages that made them smile as they wrote them for the first time.  Then they are to ask themselves, “Does this passage relate to the story?  Does it advance the plot?  Does it help the reader understand the characters?  Does the style or tone of the passage match the rest of the story?”

Here’s the hard part.  If the passage does not pass these tests, the writer must delete it.  That’s difficult because the writer might consider the passage a demonstration of the greatest height of her talent.  The writer may have fallen in love with a particular clause, a sentence, a paragraph, a character, a scene.  However, for the sake of the story, the darling must go.

Here’s the even worse part.  As he was writing, the author might have thought of and written the darling, fallen in love with it, and then bent the story around to force-fit the darling in.  Now the question of killing the darling involves how much of a force-fit it was, and how much rewriting is necessary for the deletion.  Even so, the writer should think hard about this, keeping in mind the story is more important than the darling.

Fortunately, the darling need not be so terminated that it vanishes to wherever deleted bits and bytes go.  The writer can save it in a separate file, for potential use in a later story, one where it will fit better.  Perhaps an entire story can be written around that darling.  In the directories where I save my stories, there is almost always a “Deleted Sections” file I’ve created to dump the parts of early drafts that I’ve axed.

I don’t know that Faulkner was necessarily advocating more concise writing.  After all, a writer could go back, kill the darlings, then replace them with even longer passages that fit the story better.  I think he was advocating the writing of more integral stories, where each piece of the story is necessary and supports the plot and theme.

As you do this in your writing, don’t think of yourself as moving along the path to becoming a psychopathic murderer.  Think of it as your effort to become a better self-editor, a writer who produces well-crafted stories.  Though I may be known to my computer as the Killer of a Thousand Darlings, to you I’ll always remain—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 12, 2011Permalink