Switched Keys

There are many people that enjoy talking or being listened to. Then there are those that like to sit/stand/watch and Write. That would be me.

A few years ago I contemplated life and love and wrote (and had published) a lot of poetry. Since high school and a lot of other interests I have written a lot of technical non-fiction. Then a couple years ago I started on a new novel. Still unfinished I now have a new tool to use to possibly breath some new life into it or should I say into the author.

yWriter is a novel organization tool. There are others but this one is free and as the nature of free or open source software there is probably a not of grass-root support for it.

In short yWriter lets you break down your work into projects chapters and scenes and provides tools for you to keep up with the characters Viewpoints and plot. These are the type of things I've been doing but I've been doing them manually one way or another. The yWriter interface once you learn it allows you to work (if you consider writing to be work) more efficiently.

There's also a storyboard in it and a place to describe a location. There is not however a place to insert a map of the town in which the novel is placed. Yes I do have a map of the town for the novel I'm now working on. If you want to make a place more real act as if it is real. When you do you are less likely to forget this or that about the characters sites and which side of town you are on.

This tool could not only be useful to authors but also to students writing short stories as assignments. It appears to be intuitive. The intuition (and inspiration) of many authors however is often not all that organized so this might not be the tool for you. You may want to work freeform at least in the first stages. The best novels like the best in life isn't always predictable organizeable.