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Writing tools
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Posted by Thomas
Apr 5, 2007 at 01:18 AM
Given low traffic on the forum and low price, I was surprised by very prompt support of SuperNotecard.
(Asked them about adding bullets to the editor, they said it’s already planned.)
Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Apr 7, 2007 at 08:29 AM
The most prominent feature common to SuperNoteCard, Writer’s Blocks, and Scrivener is their cork board metaphor - although that metaphor is explicit only in Scrivener, which also is the one you like best. The concept of moving blocks of text around in a plane until you get them right is elegant and alluring, but it seems favored only by writers of fiction. Some of them continue to use the technologies they’re accustomed to when they add non-fiction to the mix. Scrivener has outlining too; usually the outliner’s are rather puny in these programs that emphasize contiguous organization - any writing, I suppose, that follows a timeline.
I don’t think I recall you’re writing any fiction. If not, I’d guess the appeal of these programs comes partly from the modular approach to writing, which I haven’t used in a while. If I were to use a modular approach to writing—drafting sections of text initially without regard to order—I think I would implement it in OneNote. The main reason, apart from the obvious ones shared with other programs, is noteflags. It seems to me they would be extremely powerful in pulling together snippets initially produced in haphazard order.
To spell it out, one would write the snippets using whatever organization suited you; outline a structure; assign a unique noteflag to every first level outline heading; apply the noteflag to the snippets, one by one; collect noteflags; move the items with the corresponding noteflags under the corresponding outline headings; repeat at deeper levels if necessary; sequennce the snippes in each category.
I think that’s the way I would now write a book.
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>In one of the recent previous topics, someone mentioned writing tools… as opposed
>to information/note management. Whizfolders seems to be gaining in popularity. No
>one has mentioned SuperNoteCard or Writer’s Blocks. I’m wondering if anyone uses
>these applications, and how useful they find them to be.
>
>For actual composition, I
>still find myself using the plain text editor NoteTab. It’s clean look helps me focus
>on writing, and it has a very nimble editor—by nimble I mean it has full extended
>selection capability, making it easier to re-write and re-organize. I tend to do a lot
>of revising as I write, which is why I appreciate a nimble editor. But NoteTab is really
>a default choice, because I have not found any other editor that I like better. I have to
>say that I was drooling over the screen shots of Scrivener… If I were in the Mac world,
>I’d definitely give Scrivener a try. It seems to combine several different tools into
>one… with its notecard and outline functions. This is why I asked about
>SuperNoteCard and Writer’s Blocks, which are the two “index card” type programs that
>come to mind for the PC.
>
>Steve Z.
Posted by Randall Shinn
Apr 8, 2007 at 02:46 PM
I have to agree that Scrivener looks incredibly appealing for fiction writing. I would probably be using it if I used a Mac.
I own Writer’s Blocks 3, and I have tried using it in storyboard fashion to help structure fiction writing. I also wanted a program that allowed me to print out my outline so that I could study it without scrolling around a computer screen. Given the same amount of information, I personally found that the printouts from either NoteMap 2 or Mind Manager were more useful to me as a view of the whole.
The rub with all of these programs is where to do the writing itself. Writer’s Blocks 3 tries to address this with a writing pane, but I don’t remember being impressed by it (I should try it again). In this regard a two-pane outliner is very handy, providing the writing pane has the editing tools you need, and that the outline tree can be marked up in various ways. I find various means of marking up the outline in a two-pane outliner a handy way of keeping track of various aspects of the work process.The latter is a feature I find appealing in WhizFolders Pro 6. The soon-to-be-released MyInfo 4 will add spell-checking, group-selected keyword editing, tree text font editing, more and easier to use tree icons, and rtf export (according to the blog). These features might make it a useful writing tool as well.
I’ll no doubt try OneNote 2007 at some point, given its high praise from forum members, but I am in the middle of two projects that have deadlines, not a good time to experiment with new approaches. It’s interesting to notice what programs I rely on when deadlines create an absolute demand to produce new work. It’s during such times that you sometimes imagine features that you wish the software had, and, lately, various means of tracking progress have become increasingly important to me.
Randall Shinn
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