Writing tools

Posted by Sebastien Berthet
Apr 9, 2007 at 09:14 PM

Hello,

I’m a big fan of SNC. I’d even say it’s the only tool worth using to structure a novel. I tried Writer Blocks, ndxCards and a few others and I just can’t see them help me in any way. Scrivener looks great, it has more bells and whistles, but I don’t think it comes close to SNC when dealing with fiction writing. For example, SNC has 3 major features which are crucial to me (I asked for them to the author of SNC, and guess what : he *did* them):

1) associations : you can associate a character (or whatever) with a card and add a comment (in a kind of footer note) about *why* you did this association. It’s very helpfull to quickly check the consistency of the story.

2) The flatten mode : you have all your cards in folders (“deck” in SNC), and at any time you can “flatten” all your card hierarchy. It’s great to have an overview of the story, and quickly re-order cards and modify them.

3) Colored plot symbolized by *stickers* on the cards. When you want to know how often a sub-story is developed in the main frame, these stickers are heaven !

Of course, I forgot millions of things, the flags, the metrics, the keyboard shorcuts (how many writing tool allow you to forget the mouse ?)...
I simply think SNC is a giant step in the field of writing tools, and I feel lucky I’ve found this gem that early.

Sebastien