The other day I downloaded Scrivener. Scrivener is creative writing software. It is designed to bring a story all the way from idea to finished product. Its early days yet but I have high hopes that this will be useful.
The main feature I’ve used thus far is the cork board. Essential you write ideas in little boxes, these could be paragraph or chapter summaries, to get the overview of the story. You can then rearrange them to get a clear idea of the story in a simple form. This is invaluable if writing a novel as its easy to get lost in the hundreds of pages a novel can be.
Scrivener offers a 30 day free trial. What is great about this is that it is a true thirty days. i.e it’s thirty days of actual use so if you used it once a week it will last 30 weeks.
I should declare that this isn’t sponsored. There are many other creative writing programs out there. You could probably get more or less the same effect with a spreadsheet. Though a spreadsheet is not designed with this idea in mind.
I have no idea how many restarts I’ve had of my novel. It has been time for plan B for a long time. Time to plan and write the novel out in two hundred sentences before making it a 100,000 words or so. I used to think planning was boring – maybe it is – its also essential.
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O’Neill:”It’s time for plan B.”
Carter: “We have a plan B?”
O’Neill: “No, but it’s time for one.”
Stargate SG-1 – Orpheus.
Unstable Orbit 