by Dave Haslett
You can easily move scenes around using either the Story Board view or the Tree View.
You can set a daily writing target (time spent writing or number of words written) and it shows you how close you are to achieving your goal throughout the day.
The built-in word processor is basic, but it does the job.
The Submissions tab records where and when you submitted work for publication, the result (accepted or rejected), the publication date, the amount you received, and so on. You could use this to record information about everything you write, including novels, short stories, articles, non-fiction books, scripts, screenplays, and more.
WriteItNow stores all of your notes for your novel in one place. It’s much better than having dozens of pieces of paper, newspaper clippings, text files, and word processing documents scattered everywhere.
When you use the software, a basic storyline comes together quickly, even if you have no idea what you want to write about. You could start by generating a character automatically. When I tried it, it came up with a fellow called Andrew Patterson, complete with his full set of attributes – which I could change if I wanted to. It also mentioned his childhood friend, Ashley McNamara. That was useful – I immediately created another character based on him. Andrew has been married for ten years to a girl named Stephanie Logan, so I created another character based on her. It also told me the date of their marriage and plotted it on the timeline.
With three characters created in a matter of seconds, I used the built-in idea generator to come up with a storyline in one click. In this case: Andrew thinks Ashley has stolen something from him. I made a note of that in the Notes section. You can carry on generating more ideas like this, and writing down all the good ones, until the rough outline of your story begins to emerge.
You can then think about the locations where your story will take place, and create a record for each of them on the Locations tab.
Then you can organise the story into key events and scenes, and either group them into chapters or move them around on the Story Board until everything flows smoothly.
There are several free add-ons, including timelines and background information for Victorian Britain, Tudor Britain, Stuart Britain, and other periods. If you install these and enter a character’s date of birth that falls within that range, you get a handy list of historic events that took place during his lifetime. It also tells you how old he would have been when each event occurred. The add-ons can even generate authentic character names for each period, as well as giving useful background information about day-to-day life at that time.
WriteItNow is available for Windows PCs and Apple Macs from Ravenshead Services. More details, screenshots, and a free demo version are available on their website.
Scrivener
Scrivener is similar to WriteItNow and is highly regarded by novelists, non-fiction writers and scriptwriters. It makes organising (and reorganising) your book easy and lets you store your ideas and research notes, including documents, images, web pages and PDF files.
It has a built-in outliner and a corkboard where you can pin index cards – which could represent scenes or camera shots, for example – and move them around easily.
Scrivener can display several windows at once, so you could have a list of all your scenes on the left, write the text of a particular scene in the centre of the screen, and have your research notes on the right. (It helps if you have a large screen!)
The built-in word processor is more powerful than the one in WriteItNow and can handle things like tables, bullet points, images, comments and footnotes. You can also split your document into as many pieces as you like, and it’s easy to manage each part. These could be the separate parts of a scene, or sub-topics within a chapter that you’ll work on in each of your mini writing sessions.
Many writers love Scrivener’s ability to format and export your finished work as an e-book. The e-books it creates are compatible with all the major self-publishing platforms, including Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, and more.
Scrivener is available for Windows PCs and Apple Macs for a very reasonable price. Their website has more details, screenshots, and a free trial version.
Dabble
Dabble is similar to Scrivener, but simpler to use. It only launched in 2017, but the developer has big plans for it, and it looks well worth following. Try a free 14-day trial at dabblewriter.com.
Final Draft
Final Draft is aimed at scriptwriters and screenwriters, but if you want to adapt your novel into a film, TV or radio show, or stage play – or write one from scratch – it’s just what you need. It puts your script into the correct format as you type, and has all sorts of time-saving features, such as automatically inserting character names and scene and page details.
You’ll find full details on their website, including a comprehensive walk-through of the whole product.
The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing
Evan Marshall’s book (and workbook) The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing: The 16-Step Blueprint To Take You From Idea To Completed Manuscript In 30 Days or Less walks you through the process of creating a novel scene by scene. If you write novels, it’s the perfect companion to this book.
I’m always pleased with the results it gives. It tells you (more or less) what to write in each scene, and how many scenes and viewpoint characters you need depending on the length of your story. It also allocates different scenes to different viewpoint characters. It makes outlining a novel really easy and very fast – as long as you don’t mind its prescriptive approach.
I love its prescriptive approach. In fact, I would have liked a little more prescription and hand-holding through some of the middle sections.
Writing longhand
Although this book concentrates on writing on a computer, many people prefer to write by hand. Here are some tips to help you speed up if you write this way:
Make sure your writing is legible. Somebody – perhaps you – will have to read it at some point and type it into a word processor. The more difficult it is to read, the longer this will take. Rather than scrawling illegibly at high speed, it’s worth slowing down and taking a little more care.
Unless you’re writing in small notebooks, it’s a good idea to divide each page into two columns. Draw a line down the middle of each page, then write from top to bottom in the left-hand column, then from top to bottom in the right-hand column. This reduces the arm and wrist movements you need to make, so it’s less tiring – and slightly faster.
Earlier in the chapter, I mentioned a shorthand system called EasyScript. You can use this when writing by hand too.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is the world’s most popular word processor. It has numerous features that can save you time and make writing easier.
Spelling checker: off
Like most word processors, Word underlines incorrect and questionable spellings as you type. I recommend turning this function off while you’re writing your book, as it’s too distracting. Stopping to correct every mistake will interrupt your flow and slow you down. Turn it back on once you’ve written the entire first draft of your book.
To correct a mistake, right-click on the underlined word and a list of suggested corrections will appear. If the correct spelling is there, click on it and it’s fixed.
Grammar checker: off
Word also has an automatic grammar checker, but most writers turn it off as it isn’t particularly reliable. It’s worth turning it back on when you edit your book, as it may pick up mistakes you might miss otherwise.
Right-click on each word or phrase it marks to find out why it thinks it’s wrong, and to see a suggested version.
Often, the suggested version won’t make any sense. Perhaps one day, in a future version, it will work as it should.
Thesaurus
When you’re searching for the right word, or looking for a better way of saying something, a thesa
urus comes in handy. Word has a pocket version built in. Right-click on any word then click Synonyms to see a short list of alternatives. If you see a word you like, click on it and it will replace the word in your document.
Headers and footers
The headers and footers tool is a boon for book writers. It automatically puts certain pieces of information at the top and bottom of every page. That could be your name, your book’s title, the chapter number and name, the page number, the total number of pages in the document, and so on. This saves you at least one line of typing on every page. If you decide to change anything in the header or footer, you only have to do it once and all the other pages update automatically.
Templates
If you find yourself writing similar documents – such as query letters – over and over again, a template will save you time. Create the document in the normal way, type in the information that will stay the same each time, and leave blanks for the bits that will change. Save the file as a Word Template instead of a standard document. (There’s a drop-down list of document types on the Save screen.)
When you want to use the template, click on File, then New and you’ll see a list of them. Open the one you just created, and fill in any blanks you’ve left, such as the name and address of the editor you’re sending the letter to. Everything else – your name and contact details, a description of your book, a summary of your marketing plan, your publishing history, and your mini biography – will already be there. Save the letter as a standard Word document and your template will be ready to use again next time.
Find and Replace
Every word processor has this essential function, but Word’s is more sophisticated than most.
A basic find and replace is useful for things like changing a character’s name throughout the story. Type his old name into the Find box and his new name into the Replace box and click Replace All.
If you’ve split your book into separate documents for each chapter, you’ll need to do this for all of them. But if you’re planning to combine the chapters into a single document later, leave yourself a note to change the character’s name when you’ve done that. Then you’ll only have to do it once.
You can also use the Find function to look for a particular word in your book and jump straight to it. For example, you might remember discussing clouds at some point and want to see that section again. Type clouds into the Find box and click the Find button.
Word’s advanced find and replace options can also replace all word forms. For example, if you wanted to replace ran with jogged it would also replace run with jog, running with jogging, and so on.
It can also find and replace text formatting, so you could get it to find all the words you’ve marked in bold, or replace all of the italicised words with underlined ones.
Outliner
Word has a built-in outliner, which you can use to plan and organise the structure of your book. We discussed outliners in Chapter 7.
Keyboard shortcuts and bookmarks
Keyboard shortcuts let you zoom around even the largest documents in a fraction of a second, rather than scrolling through them laboriously. You can also apply formatting and use other commands instead of using the ribbon bar, toolbar buttons and menu. Not only is it faster, you can also keep your hands on your keyboard.
To see the list of shortcuts, press the F1 key to open Help, then type keyboard shortcuts in the search box.
Table of Contents and Index
Word can generate a table of contents for your book automatically, based on the chapter and topic headings in your document. You’ll need set all your chapter headings to Heading 1 style and all your topic headings to Heading 2 style so it knows what to look for.
Word can also generate an index for you. You’ll need to mark the words in your document that you’d like it to include. Check Word’s online help for full details.
When your book is published, the number of words per page will almost certainly be different from your Word document. As a result, the table of contents and index in the published version might give the wrong page numbers – and it might be your job to fix them. Keep Word’s automatically generated versions to hand so you know which words you’re looking for and (more or less) where they are in the document. This will save you heaps of time.
AutoCorrect
Word’s AutoCorrect function fixes many typing errors automatically. You might not even notice it’s done it. If you type adn, for example, it’ll change it to and all by itself. If you regularly mistype certain words but Word doesn’t correct them, add the correct and incorrect spellings to the AutoCorrect table so that it does.
AutoText
As we saw earlier, AutoText can paste whole chunks of text into your document. Give each chunk a short name, and when you type the first few characters of that name a box containing the text will appear. Press the Enter key to paste the text into your document.
The chunk of text could be your name and address, a list of the books you’ve written, the answer to a commonly asked question, or anything else you find yourself typing over and over again.
Managing chapters
In the first edition of this book, I recommended using Word’s Master Documents feature to organise the chapters in your book. But most readers found them too complicated and didn’t bother with them – and I don’t use them any more either.
Instead, I recommend keeping your chapters in separate documents while you’re working on them, as it’s quicker and easier to move around inside them. Combine them into a single document at the very end. Your page numbers will then run consecutively and you can generate a table of contents and index and send the file to an editor, publisher or publishing service.
It a good idea to name your chapter files so you know what’s in them. “Chapter 17” isn’t a particularly good name. “Ch17 Stan car chase, hospital, arrest” is much better. It tells me the chapter number, the point of view character, and the key events.
You could go further and split your scenes into separate documents, especially if the point of view character changes. These might be called:
“Ch17a Stan car chase”
“Ch17b Martha witnesses car chase”
“Ch17c Stan hospital, arrest”
Free alternatives to Microsoft Word
If you don’t have Microsoft Word and you can live without its more advanced features, try OpenOffice or Libre Office. Both of these are free, and their documents are fully compatible with Word. At the time of writing, their Find/Replace and Outline functions are less sophisticated than Word’s, but otherwise they should have everything you need. They’re updated regularly, and are gradually gaining more of Word’s features.
OpenOffice and Libre Office are complete office suites, so as well as a word processor you also get a spreadsheet program, database, and drawing and presentation tools – for free!
The next step
We’ve looked at lots of techniques that should enable you to write your book in double-quick time. But if it all seems like too much work, you might be thinking Can’t I just cheat? Well, yes, of course you can – professional writers do it all the time. The next two chapters should give you plenty of ideas!
14. Cheating (part 1)
This book aims to help you write the first draft of your book in under a month. But sometimes even that’s too long. You need it done now. There’s no time for research, organising, planning, brainstorming, Mind Maps … or even thinking. Or maybe it all seems like too much work. Either way, there’s only one thing for it: you’re going to have to cheat.
You’ll recognise some of these tips from earlier chapters as I thought they were worth repeating here. But there are some new ones too.
Non-fiction in next no time
Spend two or three intensive days collecting all the information you’ll need for your book. It shouldn’t take you any longer than that. No matter how exotic the subject, it’s unlikely you’re the first person in the world to write about
it. All the material you’ll need should be available somewhere.
It’s always best to start with an online search.
You might also like to visit your local public library, including the reference section and the children’s section. Visit the main library for your county and do the same thing there.
Visit an online book store such as Amazon and see what’s available on your chosen subject. Don’t forget to use the Look Inside feature.
Visit some second-hand bookshops and buy a copy of anything that looks relevant.
Visit local and national newspapers’ websites. Contact their head offices to ask whether you can access their archives online.
If you can find any businesses or organisations that might have anything to do with your subject, visit their website or call them and ask for a brochure. If they have an office in your area, go along in person and ask questions.