An easy and visual way of managing and reordering scenes and sections of a book in an Outline view. Usually this has been left to a complicated and unintuitive system of hierarchical headings which was confusing and occasionally unreliable in use.No one needs much to write a book: a computer, some software, a printer at some stage and a few good ideas. You probably have most of what you need at home already. But producing a full-length fictional manuscript is not the same as tapping out a one-page letter to the bank manager. When your project starts to take off you will find yourself with a writhing tangle of ideas, possibilities and potential potholes. A book journal will help provide firm foundations. You will still need to maintain focus and control directly through the manuscript too, in the pages readers will see. In short, you have to choose the right writing tools. Here are your options.
Windows or Mac? Desktop or laptop? Big screen, little screen?
The honest answer is: it’s a matter of personal taste and how much you can afford to spend. For many years I was a great fan of the Apple Macintosh. More of my books have been written on the Mac than on any other computer, often with applications specifically designed for the creative writer. The Macintosh is a great computer system with a reputation for being cool, creative and something of a cultural icon to its followers. Readers can’t tell the difference between a book written on a Mac and one produced using something else. Pick the solution that meets your personal taste and budget.
When projects struggle it’s tempting to blame the objects that seem to stand between you and the page. Perhaps some new word processing software, a different screen, the latest wireless mouse will make a difference …
Don’t fool yourself. There are no silver bullets. A well-organised working routine is important since it will help you achieve more in the time available. But it’s no substitute for creativity, imagination and sound craft.
I travel a lot. If you do too then sharing your work between a desktop and a laptop for writing on the road should help you keep the manuscript alive. It took me a while to get into the habit of writing in hotels, on planes and airports. Now it’s ingrained and I never give it a second thought. Working away from your normal writing environment can give you something all writers seek – a sideways look at your work. That looming black hole in the manuscript back home may seem less of a problem when you view it on a laptop screen in a new and unfamiliar environment.
I once set off for Italy wondering how exactly a book I’d just started might pan out in the end. My flight was delayed for ninety minutes on the apron. In that time I took out a pen and notepad and sketched out the entire story in rough. It was finished before we took off, and pretty much represents the finished book. I would never have achieved that if I’d stayed at home. Perspective is good, and that laptop in the hotel room or on the train takes away any excuses you may have for not spending a few spare hours working on your book. From time to time I’ve tried writing on nothing but a small laptop too. It’s wonderful when I need no distractions – and that includes research. If you make sure you see nothing else on the screen – no email, no Twitter or Facebook – you can find yourself on a small island of concentration where nothing else in the world matters.
There’s no need to buy anything expensive. Word processing doesn’t require any great horsepower. A good screen and a keyboard you can type on comfortably are more important than badges on the side. Pick your writing tools for their practicality, not their fashion value.
The computer you use may be of minor relevance but software is different. The choice can be much wider than you think. Over the last decade conventional word processing packages have been joined by a growing number of dedicated writing programs aimed specifically at the creative writer. You’ll find a list in the Appendix. Most will have free trials for download and give you up to thirty days in which to work with them before you have to make up your mind. So the first choice you face is … do you write in one of the big company word processors, usually Microsoft’s, or choose something that’s trying to give you some extra options designed to make writing a book a lot easier?
One thing can be said with certainty: the lingua franca of publishing is Microsoft Word. Publishers and agents will expect a manuscript to be delivered as a Word file which will form the basis of the typesetting for the finished book. This does not mean you need to write in Word if you prefer something else. Rival word processors will export to Word format, as will specialist writing packages, when you want to send off the book. It would be wise to read through that file in Word itself first. Mistakes and format errors can creep in. It would be rash to allow them through for the want of a quick check. This does mean that few of us can really hope to take a book all the way through to publication without, at some stage, viewing it in our own copy of Word.
Where’s the problem? Word is a long-established, rather over-complex word processing package that has, for years, attempted to be all things to all users. If you want to run off a quick letter it will offer a template. It will also handle long manuscripts, deal with footnotes and endnotes, and perform design tricks that were once restricted to desktop publishing.
None of these things is of much interest to someone wanting to write a novel, though that doesn’t stop thousands of writers using Word as their first weapon of choice, usually because they’ve tried little else.
Taking a little time to fine-tune your word processing skills to the arcane business of fiction writing is worthwhile. You’re going to spend a lot of time inside your writing application as the book develops. It’s important you feel it is on your side, not one more obstacle to overcome.
Word and most other off-the-shelf word processing apps have traditionally stumbled at several key tasks that authors should crave to keep their project in check. Three fundamental tools essential for managing a long and complex manuscript come to mind …
An easy and visual way of managing and reordering scenes and sections of a book in an Outline view. Usually this has been left to a complicated and unintuitive system of hierarchical headings which was confusing and occasionally unreliable in use.
A simple way of calculating the word count of individual scenes.
Authors need to know the length of the component parts of their story.
A tool to find words in context. The standard ‘find’ function in mainstream word processors hasn’t changed in decades. If you want to hunt for an instance of the word the program will find the first, then the second, then the third … and so on. In a brief document that may not be a problem. In a book running to more than 100,000 words it can make tracking down elements a dreary and time-consuming chore. Specialist writing apps have known this for years. Most offer instead a context-sensitive find. Instead of seeing just the next instance of the word you’re looking for you are offered all of them, and a sample of the text surrounding them.
These navigational and structural tools make the storyteller’s job a lot more agreeable but they have usually been absent from office word processing packages. Software does get better though. Office 2010 for Windows has them if you know where to look. Unfortunately its sibling on the Mac, Office 2011, doesn’t, not with the same fluency anyway.
Setting up a project in Word 2010 for Windows is very simple and visual. Let’s suppose this is a book that will be outlined entirely within the word processor, with no detailed scene-by-scene synopsis held separately in a journal. We go to the Outline view and type in some headings. This is very similar to the standard outline view seen in earlier versions of Word and other mainstream word processing packages. The outline is based upon the paragraph style. The principal entries are top level headings. Hit carriage return, then tab, and you will, in Outline view, find yourself in the subsidiary Heading 2 style automatically. Do that again and you’re in Heading 3. For most projects three levels of heading will suffice. If you’re having a rush of inspiration just sit there and type, hit return, tab and then type again as you map out a line of scenes and events that will begin the book.
The titles here are for the writer’s convenience, not publication. So pick headings that mean something and give you a sense of the direction of the story. Move any of those titles to a different location and any body text – the scene itself – you have written beneath it will follow. Shifting events around is a good way of exploring possibilities. How might the story change if a key event happens earlier or later than planned? Outlining makes it easy to play with ‘what if’ ideas, and it’s a cinch to undo them or try something else by simply dragging elements to a new location.
Seen as a straight page outline headings can become somewhat confusing once your book expands to multiple scenes with text attached. One of the new features in Word 2010 is a navigation pane that reads the outline structure and displays it as a live bar next to the editing window. The timeline of your book is visible on the left when you need it. You see this as a formal book layout – parts, chapters and scenes. In an instant you can visualise the direction of the story, the events you’re aiming at.
The hierarchy is now very flexible. You can collapse parts into the heading above if the list is so long something is hidden at the foot. Once again dragging a heading to a new location will take the text with it. If you want your chapters numbered you can even set up Word so that you get an automatic renumber when things float around too.
Scene headings are for your benefit, not the reader’s. You’re outlining narrative possibilities in a way that will let you navigate and manage them easily. Once the scene is written you can remove any of these headings altogether or, if appropriate, replace them with chapter numbers or headings intended for publication.
We also need a way to get notes into our scene from the very beginning – ideas and observations that are attached to the text but not a part of it and too long to be a subsidiary heading. Most conventional word processors will let you insert comments. They’re ideal for this purpose.
Put your cursor where you want to make a comment, insert it and you get this box at the side. If we’re starting the scene this can be used for a brief synopsis or note of an idea. Comments can be hidden from view or seen in their entirety as a list. Use them for thoughts, notes, scene synopses and planned word counts. With Word 2010 there’s now a very simple way to get accurate statistics for any story element based on an outline heading.
Select the scene you want in the navigation bar and right click on the heading. You will see this. Pick ‘Select Heading and Content’. At the foot of the page you will get a split word count. The first number gives you the count for all the text beneath that heading. The second (which is always there) is the word count for the whole document. Note that you can perform this trick with section headings containing multiple scenes. So we can quickly get a word count for the whole of Part One simply through a right click and a glance at the screen. This is a great advance on the old days of manually selecting text and hunting for statistics.
Many works of popular fiction try to standardise on scene word counts so that the reader sees chunks of text that are of similar lengths and demand similar amounts of time. Use this technique and it’s very simple to check the length of one section against another.
Lastly we need a way to navigate the book swiftly and accurately. Here is what conventional ‘Find’ looks like.
In Word 2010 if we go back to the new navigation panel to type in a search term we see this.
The right-hand tab will give you a preview of each occurrence of the word in the context of the sentence surrounding it. The middle tab shows you pages containing the term. The left-hand tab displays all headings where it appears and will, like the other options, highlight any instances in the text. Use this for quickly tracking down any item you need to look at in the manuscript. If you’re worried you’re overusing a particular word or turn of phrase, a search here will show you how often it appears.
This is a giant leap from earlier versions of Word and probably sufficient for many established writers out there. But beginners may need more control and structure. Apple users should also bear in mind that the current version of Word for the Mac lacks some of these features, notably the flexible outlining in the sidebar. You may wish to explore Apple’s Pages word processor as an alternative. At the time of writing it still has its foibles, but is rather better at most things than Microsoft’s word processing offering on the Mac.
But what about software written specially for writing fiction?
Specialist writing packages
Scrivener is one of the best-known specialist writing apps, used by many professional writers around the world. It’s the work of an English schoolteacher – now software developer – who wanted to write a novel but was unhappy with conventional word processors. The first version appeared on the Mac but you’ll find it on Windows now too, though the Windows version is a little behind in features. Scrivener is far from alone in the field of software for writers – see the Appendix. But it is a great and powerful example of what these applications hope to add to the game.
In Word a book can all too often appear to be a single, long slab of text. This is illusory. Novels are more mosaics than monolithic structures. Conan Doyle knew that when he was writing Sherlock Holmes. So did Hemingway standing up, tapping away on his Royal typewriter in Havana. Both worked with the physical medium of paper. They wrote in a standard fashion, so many lines to the page. They could gauge the length of a chapter very easily by picking up and counting the pages. Then they could set that section to one side and work on another, monitoring the progress of the next chapter through the pile of sheets on the desk.
Word processing has hidden the mosaic of writing to some extent. We have no physical concept of length, no weight of paper to show the extent of a scene. Just those blunt word counts which, until Word 2010, were restricted to the document as a whole without a lot of fiddly extra work.
Packages like Scrivener attempt, among other things, to bring back the piecemeal nature of writing. Books are no longer single, very long chunks of text. They appear as individual linked scenes, each with their own statistics, notes and place within the novel structure.
Here is Charlie and the Mermaid as it would appear in Scrivener.
The outline idea is pretty much the same: hierarchies of main headings and subsidiary ones. There’s a word count for the whole of Part One at the foot of the screen because that is the section selected. To get the entire word count you’d choose ‘Manuscript’. You can divide the work into as many chapters, scenes and parts as you want, and drag elements between them. And you get a template for a proper title page, too.
If you hit the Inspector button at the top right and go to an individual scene you start to see some of the key differences, as in the screeenshot at the top of the next page. The word count now applies to this individual scene. It is, if you like, a separate writing document contained in a binder for the project as a whole. On the right we have a synopsis box and some other tools. We can label this element of our book – chapter, scene, concept, or anything else we choose. Or we could tag it with a keyword as a particular character’s point of view. Beneath the label is a status option. Here we can mark the phase of this scene – to do, first draft, second draft, revise or finished. We know when we last worked on this scene because the ‘Modified’ option tells us. We can also write scene notes in the panel below and store photos there to remind us of a location or a character.
We also have far more flexibility over our outline. Choose the Corkboard option in group mode and you see this.
Imagine a set of index cards. Whatever you type into that synopsis field populates the cards. You can write and rewrite the contents here and drag them around your story structure at will. Just as with the headings in Word, any scene text contained in these documents will follow to the new location.
Alternatively you can look at the same book structure as a conventional outline by choosing the third group icon.
Scrivener is full of well thought-out features aimed at fiction writing. If you add a keyword to scenes recording specific information, such as character point of view or, in the case of a book written across different eras, the year concerned, the software will gather all these items together so you can see them in one place as a ‘collection’. This doesn’t change the order of the scenes in your narrative. It simply gives you a quick way to look at specific aspects of the book, based on POV, time or location, very quickly to check for continuity for example.
So we could now see every scene in which Charlie is the point of view character and make sure they follow logically.
You can also comment very easily in the sidebar.
Save different versions of the same document as snapshots, seeing the old version as you work on a revise.
One other handy tool is a sophisticated word count target. Set the number of words you want to write – both for the book as a whole and your current session – and the software will let you know how you’re doing. It’s a small thing, and one should avoid obsessing about word counts. But useful for those who need it.
Templates come with pre-formatted folders for character sketches, research and locations. You can store text, photos, PDFs, even videos.
There are also templates for keeping character and location details. Fill in the form such as this …
… and you can record what your characters look like and what drives them, and drag in a suitable photo. You can edit these templates to get rid of stuff such as internal and external conflicts, by the way.
So all the material that can go into MacJournal or OneNote could equally be accommodated here. Is that a good idea? For me, no. I like to keep the left brain and the right separate. One is for planning, one is for writing. For the first I like to put the manuscript to one side altogether. It’s another instance of perspective. But you may feel differently, and you could simply set up a separate Scrivener document as your left brain information store, keeping practical material there and writing the book in a different file.
Scrivener also boasts a Trash folder. If you delete something it won’t disappear. Instead the file goes into the trash and stays there in case you need to retrieve it at some stage. Delete something in an ordinary word processor and (unless you have a change-tracking option turned on) it will disappear for good. Another useful feature (only in the Mac version of Scrivener as I write, though coming soon to Windows) is the ability to export an entire book, with cover and bibliographic information, to an electronic publishing format such as Kindle or epub. In other words Scrivener, along with many other specialist writing apps, is now a dedicated end-to-end epublishing system that will take you from bare manuscript to finished ebook ready for upload should you need that.
If this were simply a battle of features, specialist writing apps would win hands down against word processors. But it’s not really as simple as that. Most of us know our way around Word already. Software like Scrivener can take more than a little learning before the light bulb finally goes on. That export process into a Word file for delivery adds work and complexity. While it’s a good idea to think of your book as a mosaic of scenes and chapters you also need to be able to see your work in full too. You can manage that at the revise stage by running that final read-through in Word, not a book-writing app. But you still need to refer back to the end of one scene at the beginning of another, for example.
Scrivener handles this full-book view very well, but not all scene-based apps are quite this slick. Sometimes all you see on the screen at any one time is the scene or chapter in question. You have to click from one to the next to follow or go back in the story, with no combined view for both. If you’re testing something else, best check. I’ve found that writing apps that offer only the scene/chapter view, not the whole manuscript, become progressively more annoying as the narrative grows larger, so much so I’ve always abandoned them halfway through and moved to something else.
Like most software, writing apps are full of powerful tools, some essential, some frankly esoteric. Find the ones you want and ignore the rest.
It’s best to settle on your writing application well before embarking on your book. The pros and cons are relatively straightforward. Conventional word processors may be limited in power in some areas but they are ubiquitous and, in the case of Word, you will probably have to run your book through it at some stage anyway.
Word 2010 for Windows is light years ahead of any previous version and certainly worth the upgrade. It doesn’t have to run in a vile shade of bilious blue like its previous version either. Word 2011 for the Mac is a pale imitation, however, and best avoided if possible. Try Apple’s own Pages, which reads and writes Word files, as a speedier, though still somewhat limited, alternative.
Specialised writing apps tend to come from small companies and have more than a few quirks. All will give you a Word-compatible file export option at the end. But exporting may be a little tricky and you may well want to revise in a conventional word processor in any case, for reasons we will look at later in the section on delivery. They will offer tools you won’t find easily anywhere else. But these can come with the cost of complexity. Scrivener 2 is a fantastically powerful application and can look a bit intimidating at first. Frankly my brief description here scarcely does it justice. The program is positively brimming with tricks and tools, so many that I doubt the average writer will discover some of them. Complexity is fine if you need it and can master it. But as I said earlier … readers have no idea what you use to write your book. They just see the words.
Is the pain of learning a new and sometimes slightly baffling bespoke program worth the gain? Hit the downloadable demos and spend a little time deciding for yourself.
Picked your writing app? Good. Now let’s decide what your screen is going to look like while you’re writing. The vast majority of wannabe writers out there labour under very odd illusions about this. They set their font to Helvetica and opt for double spacing and think they’re being professional.
Er, no.
Back in the days of typewriters we all wrote double-spaced in the same kind of font, pretty much turning out the same numbers of words per page. Editors demanded manuscripts with all that white space because they needed the extra blank lines to write in edit notes and changes. Do they work like that today? Sometimes. We’ll deal with the detail of delivering a manuscript later. But even if your editor is adamant that only double-spaced Helvetica will suffice, that does not mean you have to write that way. This is a computer you’re using, isn’t it? Changing fonts and line spacing are simply a matter of tweaking the style details in your word processor, or selecting the whole manuscript and choosing something else.
Don’t try to second guess what your future editor wants to see on the page. You’ve no idea, and, with the arrival of ereaders there’s no longer such a thing as a ‘standard’. Find a screen layout instead that suits you and gives you power over the page.
If you write in double spacing half your screen is blank. You don’t need that white space – your comments will go in the margin of your software. All that emptiness is doing is preventing you seeing more of the page you’re writing. That can be highly detrimental. Writers always repeat themselves. The less you see of your work as it progresses, the easier it is to let those annoying echoes escape your attention.
Here are two paragraphs with 1.15 line spacing, the way they were written.
Don’t try to second guess what your future editor wants to see on the page. You’ve no idea, and, with the arrival of e-readers there’s no longer such a thing as a ‘standard’. Find a screen layout instead that suits you and gives you power over the page.
If you write in double spacing half your screen is blank. You don’t need that white space – your comments will go in the margin of your software. All that emptiness is doing is preventing you seeing more of the page you’re writing. That can be highly detrimental. Writers always repeat themselves. The less you see of your work as it progresses, the easier it is to let those annoying echoes escape your attention.
Here’s the text with the same amount of screen in double spacing:
Don’t try to second guess what your future editor wants to see on the page. You’ve no idea, and, with the arrival of e-readers there’s no longer such a thing as a ‘standard’. Find a screen layout instead that suits you and gives you power over the page.
If you write in double spacing half your screen is blank. You don’t need that white space – your comments will go in the margin of your software. All that emptiness is doing is preventing you seeing more of the page you’re writing. That can be highly detrimental. Writers always repeat themselves. The less you see of your work as it progresses, the easier it is to let those annoying echoes escape your attention.
You lose two lines of text out of seven by moving from 1.15 to double spacing. That’s 30 per cent of your page gone. Think of that white space. Do those two paragraphs feel as connected as they should?
You wouldn’t read a book in double spacing. You’ve no practical need to write the way authors had to twenty years ago. Choose a font and a size you find easy on the eye. Most people feel that sans typefaces work best on screen and serif ones on paper. So write in something like Arial, Helvetica or, as in the extracts above, Calibri.
If you want to be adventuroustry writing in a monospaced typewriter font such as Courier or P22 Typewriter. Sometimes an old and rather battered font can work wonders on the mindset. It reminds you that you’re trying to produce a work of fiction, not a letter to the bank manager.
When you’re happy with the font, tweak the line and the paragraph spacing until it’s as tight as you can get for comfort. Single spacing will look odd but I find that 1.15 is fine provided you put a little extra space – 10 pt in this instance – between the paragraphs. If you like looser line spacing then cut down or delete the gaps between paragraphs. Then write away to your heart’s content. When you have a finished book we’ll decide how best to deliver it.
Now we have the words looking right, let’s deal with the rest of the screen. Get rid of any rulers and minimise any toolbars. While we’re writing we want to focus on the words, nothing else. Certainly not formatting, which you should set up very simply as a body text you like with the necessary headings.
Here is what Word 2010 looks like out of the box (once you’ve turned off the vile Avatar blue standard colour theme).
For the sake of your sanity do not spend all day long staring at that ribbon. Also I have absolutely no need of ‘Mailings’. I started writing books in order to stop wearing a tie. I’m not starting again now. All of this is easily changed in Word’s options panels and by flicking up the ribbon. This gives us …
I feel a little calmer already. I write in what Word calls Print Layout view with the headers and page numbers turned off too. There’s absolutely no need for them at this stage of the game.
Finally, hunt around and see if your chosen software has something akin to full page view. This is a special way of presenting text designed to let you focus on nothing but your draft. Scrivener, below, does it beautifully, fading the background to black and showing you nothing but a screen of words, with your notes and other reference material if you want them (you use the control bar at the bottom to decide what else you want to see).
In Word things are a little more obscure. We have instead something called ‘Full Screen Reading View’ which fills the entire screen with your text, either single page or two pages next to one another like this:
If you find yourself tired of looking at your words through the same up-and-down screen it’s worth taking a peep at your book like this, with the pages side-by-side. It’s perspective again.
For some strange reason Word won’t let you edit text in this view by default. No problem. Just go to the Reading View Options in the right-hand top corner and tweak a few things there. You can allow typing, turn changes and comments off or on, and fiddle with the screen layout to your heart’s content. On a laptop this is lovely for reading and offers a different view of the work in progress too, one almost like a paperback book.
Short of using a Kindle or iPad for revision, full screen view is the closest any of us can have to that Royal typewriter Hemingway used. Just words and the electronic equivalent of paper. Highly recommended.
There’s one final practical matter so prosaic and obvious you might feel it’s scarcely worth mentioning. Losing ideas and possible storylines is bad. Losing your entire manuscript is unforgivable. The importance of keeping things can never be over-emphasised. That applies to basic common sense over your computer files too. Houses burn down, laptops get stolen, files go bad. If your story goes with it you could lose months or even years of work. I know of one budding author who gave up altogether after his half-finished book vanished along with his laptop. I doubt he was alone.
There really is no excuse not to keep some kind of daily backup of your work. Get into the habit of placing a copy of your key files in progress somewhere safe whenever you get to the end of the writing day. If you want the job automated, investigate one of the many online backup services offering automated storage for around $5 a month upwards.
Investing in a local USB home storage drive with backup software is a good idea too. Not only will that keep your work safe but many will store different versions so that, if things go badly wrong, you can go back in time and retrieve something that would otherwise be lost. That way even if you delete a chapter from Word you can get it back later. Businesses don’t rely on a single form of backup and nor should you. And if you’re on the road with no internet access a USB memory stick is excellent for keeping a working copy of your files in case your laptop goes walkabout.
Something in the way the universe works tends to dictate that those who take care to keep backups rarely ever have to use them. Ignore them and one day soon something will surely go walkabout for ever. It’s not worth the risk.
