NaNoWriMo has started
Nov. 2nd, 2011 01:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tephraI'm almost a full day ahead on my word count already with 3101 words right now.
This year I actually have a planned story structure, a beginning scene, an ending scene, and signposts at specific points in time to stop and write. We'll see if this makes things easier or not when I'm further along.
Another new thing for this year is that I'm not writing one big plain text file with nothing but multiple returns or scene dividers to break things up. This year I have the trial for the Windows version of Scrivener running. (Thank youclare_dragonfly for letting me know there was a Windows beta!) The plan is to win NaNo and use the 50% off coupon I will earn to actually buy this software. Last month I spent some time importing my old NaNo stories into Scrivener and even just using it for editing like that made me want it.
On the surface it looks like a complicated program that will make you change the way you write, but it's not, trust me. Yes, it can do a lot, far more than I'm using it for, but it doesn't have to. I am, right now, using it pretty much as a rich text document editor. Sure, I took a bit of time and made thirteen chapters over in the binder, which since I'm used to Windows is basically a nifty folder tree, and there's one text file sitting in each of those chapter folders waiting for text... Oh hold on a bit, I'll just screen cap this to make things easier on all of us.
Okay, click for bigger. This is what it looks like when I'm writing. Down the left is the binder. There's a lot of stuff in there that came with the NaNo writing template that I'm not using. You can see I've actually deleted some of it down there in the trash folder. Note that Scrivener doesn't actually delete things until you empty the trash. That doesn't stop you from just selecting a bunch of text and hitting the delete key, but if you think you might want to be able to scavenge later you might want to just drag the file to the trash and start a fresh one.
So, in the binder working from the top down you see the NaNo template information sheet. I've left it there because it's out of my way and I might want to refer back to it later. Then there is the Manuscript folder, that's where the actual novel is being made and that's the only section that gets included in the compile and export for validating (or publishing, it can be tweaked a LOT). The compile feature actually intimidates me a bit, which is why I'm using the NaNo template, it's already got the settings all sorted out for validation.
The NaNo template is based off the Novel template so it came with a full submit-it-to-the-publisher title page and a minimal page. Since I'm doing NaNo I dumped the full page into the trash to get it out of the way.Hmm, maybe I'll go move that to the templates folder. The minimal title page is just your title and your by line, completely acceptable to include in your word count by NaNoWriMo rules.
After that is the synopsis for my story. That was not included in the template, I added it just after midnight on the first so I would have something written before I went to bed without getting into my first scene. It sucked so I started on the scene anyway.
Under that are my thirteen chapters, for now they are labeled with the month roughly corresponding to the full moon I'm writing about in that chapter (hence, number thirteen is labeled "Blue"). I did this just because it helps me think of the correct time of the year and I'm not used to thinking in moons. I've expanded April and titled the scene inside it. That's the part I am working on now and the text of it is in the middle pane, all blurred out so you can't read how awful the first draft is. ;) At the bottom of the middle pane in the center you can see I've set a word count goal for this file, and how much I have written. This is actually multiple scenes since I haven't figured out if you can do a target over a set of files. Once I've completed this section I'll split it into separate scenes.
On the right you can see the index card view of the scene with a synopsis, the general meta-data like the fact that it should be included in the compile and therefore the word count, and finally the document notes where I put the full moon names and the age of one of my characters that I need to keep track of.
Going back to the binder on the left, after all the chapters there's another text file I added called "locals". I made that today to keep track of characters I create on the fly since I never know when they might turn into something I should pay attention to. Since I wrote that today I'm keeping it in the manuscript for inclusion in my word count.
The other folders below that are not included in the manuscript and are notes to myself. I wrote those before NaNo started so they aren't in the word count.And I had better blur something out there, it's a spoiler.
The research folder is damned nifty. In this case it is mostly stuff I copied from websites. I could have imported the web pages directly but since I wanted just specific information I just took the text and not the images and ads. For other projects that folder holds things like a family tree file (it is a link that opens the appropriate application), PDFs, sound files, video, images (you can see I have my cover image in there on this project), imported web pages (including entire tiddlywikis on some of my old projects), and so on. Very handy.
And that's just the document view. I also use the cork board.
This is my manuscript as seen as index cards. As I mentioned, this year I actually have a structure in mind. This is not how I usually write. I do, however, edit this way so my old NaNo stories also have very pretty index cards with a synopsis for each scene. I don't normally write in chapters at all and instead group scenes into chapters at the editing stage. Since I had a plan this year I went ahead and used the synopsis area of each chapter's index card to store the full moon names and the age of my key character. I also marked each equinox and solstice, just in case I might need them. When it comes time to write these chapters I'll copy the synopsis information into the document notes on the scene file like I did for April.
I have tweaked the display a bit. Normally the binder and index cards are not color coded. I've chosen to use the label colors to color the icons in the binder and the cards on the cork board as a visual reminder of what season I am writing in. On other projects I've used labels to indicate location (so all scenes in the same area are the same color) or point of view. What labels I use are very dependent on the project but I mostly ignore the default labels that come preset in Scrivener (though I am using the Character Note, Notes, and Idea labels from the NaNo template in this one).
Now I will admit, it does take a small bit of retraining to use Scrivener. It isn't what you would expect. Scrivener auto-saves every two seconds. So that periodic ctrl-s you're used to using? Unnecessary. This does have a downside, however. Earlier tonight I accidentally hit ctrl-3 rather than shift-3 and about had a heart attack. My lovely middle pane with my NaNo in it? Went blank. I knew from previous flubs that ctrl-z doesn't work as I expect it (I don't think it does multi-level undo like I'm used to) so I carefully didn't do anything other than open the manual and search for what ctrl-3 did. Turns out it just flips to outline mode, which when you are in a text document rather than a folder gives you a blank page. Crisis... never really existed. So while my normal approach would have been to reload from disk and minimize my loss, that approach would not work with Scrivener, it would have saved my blank page, if it had actually been blank. Because of this I do recommend importing old projects and playing around with them for a while before you tackle something new, just so you can figure out the quirks without losing something critical that you could not recover.
Goodness I got wordy. Pity it wasn't novel content. :)
This year I actually have a planned story structure, a beginning scene, an ending scene, and signposts at specific points in time to stop and write. We'll see if this makes things easier or not when I'm further along.
Another new thing for this year is that I'm not writing one big plain text file with nothing but multiple returns or scene dividers to break things up. This year I have the trial for the Windows version of Scrivener running. (Thank you
clare_dragonfly for letting me know there was a Windows beta!) The plan is to win NaNo and use the 50% off coupon I will earn to actually buy this software. Last month I spent some time importing my old NaNo stories into Scrivener and even just using it for editing like that made me want it. On the surface it looks like a complicated program that will make you change the way you write, but it's not, trust me. Yes, it can do a lot, far more than I'm using it for, but it doesn't have to. I am, right now, using it pretty much as a rich text document editor. Sure, I took a bit of time and made thirteen chapters over in the binder, which since I'm used to Windows is basically a nifty folder tree, and there's one text file sitting in each of those chapter folders waiting for text... Oh hold on a bit, I'll just screen cap this to make things easier on all of us.
Okay, click for bigger. This is what it looks like when I'm writing. Down the left is the binder. There's a lot of stuff in there that came with the NaNo writing template that I'm not using. You can see I've actually deleted some of it down there in the trash folder. Note that Scrivener doesn't actually delete things until you empty the trash. That doesn't stop you from just selecting a bunch of text and hitting the delete key, but if you think you might want to be able to scavenge later you might want to just drag the file to the trash and start a fresh one.
So, in the binder working from the top down you see the NaNo template information sheet. I've left it there because it's out of my way and I might want to refer back to it later. Then there is the Manuscript folder, that's where the actual novel is being made and that's the only section that gets included in the compile and export for validating (or publishing, it can be tweaked a LOT). The compile feature actually intimidates me a bit, which is why I'm using the NaNo template, it's already got the settings all sorted out for validation.
The NaNo template is based off the Novel template so it came with a full submit-it-to-the-publisher title page and a minimal page. Since I'm doing NaNo I dumped the full page into the trash to get it out of the way.
After that is the synopsis for my story. That was not included in the template, I added it just after midnight on the first so I would have something written before I went to bed without getting into my first scene. It sucked so I started on the scene anyway.
Under that are my thirteen chapters, for now they are labeled with the month roughly corresponding to the full moon I'm writing about in that chapter (hence, number thirteen is labeled "Blue"). I did this just because it helps me think of the correct time of the year and I'm not used to thinking in moons. I've expanded April and titled the scene inside it. That's the part I am working on now and the text of it is in the middle pane, all blurred out so you can't read how awful the first draft is. ;) At the bottom of the middle pane in the center you can see I've set a word count goal for this file, and how much I have written. This is actually multiple scenes since I haven't figured out if you can do a target over a set of files. Once I've completed this section I'll split it into separate scenes.
On the right you can see the index card view of the scene with a synopsis, the general meta-data like the fact that it should be included in the compile and therefore the word count, and finally the document notes where I put the full moon names and the age of one of my characters that I need to keep track of.
Going back to the binder on the left, after all the chapters there's another text file I added called "locals". I made that today to keep track of characters I create on the fly since I never know when they might turn into something I should pay attention to. Since I wrote that today I'm keeping it in the manuscript for inclusion in my word count.
The other folders below that are not included in the manuscript and are notes to myself. I wrote those before NaNo started so they aren't in the word count.
The research folder is damned nifty. In this case it is mostly stuff I copied from websites. I could have imported the web pages directly but since I wanted just specific information I just took the text and not the images and ads. For other projects that folder holds things like a family tree file (it is a link that opens the appropriate application), PDFs, sound files, video, images (you can see I have my cover image in there on this project), imported web pages (including entire tiddlywikis on some of my old projects), and so on. Very handy.
And that's just the document view. I also use the cork board.
This is my manuscript as seen as index cards. As I mentioned, this year I actually have a structure in mind. This is not how I usually write. I do, however, edit this way so my old NaNo stories also have very pretty index cards with a synopsis for each scene. I don't normally write in chapters at all and instead group scenes into chapters at the editing stage. Since I had a plan this year I went ahead and used the synopsis area of each chapter's index card to store the full moon names and the age of my key character. I also marked each equinox and solstice, just in case I might need them. When it comes time to write these chapters I'll copy the synopsis information into the document notes on the scene file like I did for April.
I have tweaked the display a bit. Normally the binder and index cards are not color coded. I've chosen to use the label colors to color the icons in the binder and the cards on the cork board as a visual reminder of what season I am writing in. On other projects I've used labels to indicate location (so all scenes in the same area are the same color) or point of view. What labels I use are very dependent on the project but I mostly ignore the default labels that come preset in Scrivener (though I am using the Character Note, Notes, and Idea labels from the NaNo template in this one).
Now I will admit, it does take a small bit of retraining to use Scrivener. It isn't what you would expect. Scrivener auto-saves every two seconds. So that periodic ctrl-s you're used to using? Unnecessary. This does have a downside, however. Earlier tonight I accidentally hit ctrl-3 rather than shift-3 and about had a heart attack. My lovely middle pane with my NaNo in it? Went blank. I knew from previous flubs that ctrl-z doesn't work as I expect it (I don't think it does multi-level undo like I'm used to) so I carefully didn't do anything other than open the manual and search for what ctrl-3 did. Turns out it just flips to outline mode, which when you are in a text document rather than a folder gives you a blank page. Crisis... never really existed. So while my normal approach would have been to reload from disk and minimize my loss, that approach would not work with Scrivener, it would have saved my blank page, if it had actually been blank. Because of this I do recommend importing old projects and playing around with them for a while before you tackle something new, just so you can figure out the quirks without losing something critical that you could not recover.
Goodness I got wordy. Pity it wasn't novel content. :)
