What I Use to Write - WriteItNow4 (Method Mondays)

Sorry for the unexpected Method Mondays hiatus - I took one week off due to Thanksgiving, and another because this post ended up a lot bigger and more time-consuming than I expected! Sorry for the delays, and back to our regularly scheduled programming!

    So I'm just going to say it: you don't really need to invest in a fancy writing program to call yourself a writer, or to have a good chance of finishing a novel. Am I saying writing programs are useless, or pointless? No. I've got one, and I love it! I'd recommend one as an eventual investment, but if you don't have the money right now don't stress about it. Ask for one for a holiday or birthday instead, haha (but only if you want to)!
    Some time in the coming weeks I'll do a tutorial of sorts on how I organize things in Google Drive or Microsoft Word to keep everything straight for a novel, in case anyone wants to go that route and is curious of one way to organize things.
    The program I currently use (which was a gift, thanks Mom!) and have used for quite a while now, is called WriteItNow4. It's available in both digital download and physical CD form. If you look it up, there's actually a new version - WriteItNow5 - out now, but I haven't updated yet. I most likely will in the coming weeks, and when I do I'll try to do an overview of new features.
    So - I can't speak to the new features of this version, but if it builds on the version I have, I'm sure it's wonderful.
    Also helpful to note: once you've bought this program, you can use it on as many devices as you choose to.
   

     Opening up the program, this is the first screen you'll see. Right now, I have the example story that comes with the program open. In the sidebar, you can see Chapters, with scenes underneath. The way this is set up, in the chapter heading, there is a summary of what needs to happen in the chapter, while the actual writing is in the scenes. I don't use it like that, I prefer to just use the chapters space to write in (mostly because I'm bad at breaking chapters up into scenes), but it is an option. You can also see the rest of the sidebar just to the right, here.
    Below that is characters. You can colour code the characters to distinguish their icons without needing to look at the names if you choose to. Within the character tab, there are numerous options.



     For example, here you can see the Character Generator the program offers. This is one of the best ways to quickly sum up what you can do using the characters setting on this program. I used the name and personality generators, and for the timeline I chose Victorian Britain, just for kicks. This is what it gave me. Of course, you're more than able to type in your own details and forego the generator entirely, but I really like it, especially when you need names for "extras".

     Another wonderful feature of the Characters tab is the 'Relationships' option. As you can see, there are 3 separate tabs - family, personal, and other. They really help to keep your characters and their relationships straight, as they can generate this lovely and very helpful web as well, which is especially good for people who are more visual. (All the graphs can be accessed through the "Graphs" tab near the top of the screen).

     Moving down the sidebar, you have the Events tab, which opens up a screen like this. If you have definite dates for your story, you can set those, as well as what characters are involved in the specific event. This also generates this lovely timeline, which really helps to keep multiple characters in doing different things in different places at the same time straight.

      Also under the graphs tab is this, the conflict graph, which you can add things to using the buttons just along the top of it. It really forces you to think about the function of conflict in your stories and make sure you don't have too many pointless or "filler" scenes.

     Under that is the locations tab. It's pretty straightforward but useful, especially if your story requires multiple locations (ESPECIALLY if they're fantasy locations or you have a hard time keeping details straight). Locations, notes, and ideas have largely the same layout.

     This just details some of the tools you can use. Most are pretty self-explanatory. Story readability will give you an "age range" for your writing, but that's only for how simplistic the writing is and doesn't judge content (so just because your dark horror says 8.6 doesn't mean you should donate copies to the elementary school!) I find it helpful because it keeps you from getting all posh and "writerly". The story board tool is pictured below. Writing targets allows you to set a time or word-count goal, and prompts generates writing prompts to help you along.

    One of my favourite features of the program, purely for how many times it's saved my life, is the "snapshots" feature. You can access it under the file menu. Basically, it saves the entire file every few minutes (you can set how often under Tool Settings), and if, for example, your computer crashes, or you accidentally delete an important chapter, or any number of things happens, you can save your story from oblivion with minimal loss, depending on how often you have it set to take the snapshot and how fast you write. The entire program and the individual files can also be copied to a USB, if you're worried about losing things if the entire computer stops working.

    So there you have it! This review by no means encompasses all the features of the program, nor does it cover all the features of the new program. The lovely people at Ravenshead Services were kind enough to send me the details of the new features when I contacted them about this review, so I'll include those below. I'll also link to my review of WriteItNow5 once I've upgraded and learned a bit about it so I can write the best possible review.
    Thanks for reading!

Note: the below is copied from an email from Rob Walton of Ravenshead Services; none of it is my own words.

Major Changes
--------------------

New PDF Manual

To learn more about WriteItNow 5 's capabilities download a copy of the comprehensive 300-page manual, "Up and Running with
WriteItNow 5" from our website. There is no charge for this.


New Sections

There are new sections In the Main Tabs and Tree Panel.

New sections include `Front Matter' and `Back Matter', which can be used to add an introduction, prologue, epilogue, etc.

A new background section is Props.


New Export Options


ePub export for creating e-books. Quickly create eBooks in ePub format.

Microsoft Word export. Export a project as a Microsoft Word document.


A Better Importer


WriteItNow 5 can now import Microsoft Word documents.
There is also an interactive importer that makes importing much more flexible.


Storyline Editor

A Storyline Editor. Use the storyline editor to keep track of who does what, where, and when.


Summary Editor

The scene and chapter sections now have a summary editor for recording a summary plus details of the characters, locations, events, and props.

These details are used by the new Storyline Editor.


An Improved Editor


The editor now includes colored text and background, strikethrough, subscript, and superscript.


New Editor Tools

Text Compare shows the differences between the current text and earlier versions that have been
saved as snapshots.

Use critiques to find cliches, repeated words, etc.

There is a 'tidy text' tool to quickly tidy up text.



Print and Print Preview

Select the print menu to print and preview sections directly.


New Writing Targets.

The writing targets can be shown at the bottom of the screen.

Pictures on More Sections

A picture can be added to each event, location, note, idea and prop.


Picture Links

Links to pictures can now be added anywhere in the text. On export these
can be converted to pictures.

Completion Status

Record how complete each part of the book is using completion status

Where Does Inspiration Come From? - Method Mondays

    Where does inspiration come from for my writing?
    Everywhere.
    Thanks for reading, have a good week!

    I'm kidding, of course. Well, I'm not. Inspiration can come from anywhere, and everywhere. It's actually kind of incredible, all the different places. For me, it comes especially from real life, TV and movies, music, other books, and Pinterest. This would be a massively long post if I covered all of those things in one go, so for today I'll just cover inspiration coming from books and TV/movies.
    You might be wondering how you can take inspiration from movies or TV or other books without plagiarizing. It's quite easy, in fact.
    I could take the "deep" route and argue that any story has been done before - after all, at its heart, every story is just character vs. something. Character vs. character, vs. nature, vs. society. You see where this is headed.
    Honestly, one of the most important things to do is read in the genre you write in. You don't know what's popular and what people want to read if you don't. I'm not saying you should see that, for example, books set in high schools are popular and immediately sit down and write a book that's set in a high school if that's not what the story in your head is about. If you're not passionate about your story, it won't be as good as it can be, so don't just jump on popular plots or settings just because they're popular. But reading in your chosen genre will show you what is popular and what's getting published; what types of conflicts, what sorts of characters, all kinds of abstract concepts that make novels great.
    Similarly with movies or TV shows; maybe a line of dialogue sparks a scene between two characters, or a certain character or plot idea may inspire you. Does that mean you should copy a character completely from a movie or TV show, or copy the plot of a movie? Definitely not, but taking inspiration is perfectly okay.
    I just want to stop right now and say this isn't legal advice. Don't copy the plot or characters of a movie, TV show, or another book and put it in a book, then say "well this blog said I could" if you get in trouble. I'm not saying that's what you can do. What I am saying, is that you should, basically, be looking for inspiration anywhere. The littlest thing can plant a spark in your brain and result in a subplot, a plot twist, a character trait, or maybe even more than that.
    The most important thing to remember is MAKE IT YOUR OWN. It's easy to just copy a character from here, a plot point from there, and smash them all together into a novel. But that's not really writing; that's clever plagiarism. I'm doing a terrible job of explaining this, and I'm aware of that, but hopefully you're getting the drift. Inspiration is everywhere; let it burrow into your brain (that's a disturbing way to word that) and see what comes of it.
    Bottom line: absorb ideas and let them grow within your mind; don't copy them. That's the best way I can put it, hope it makes sense to all of you!
    As always, Tweet any questions to me or comment them here!
    Thanks for reading!