Writer Resources

10 Apr 2012

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Free Novel and Fiction Writing Software

For working writers and amateurs alike, there are a lot of commercial products out there to help you along the way with your writing career. The problem is that many of them are very expensive or have some kind of unnecessarily steep learning curve…or both. Here is some free software you can use to write and help you along with your writing. I’m gearing this article towards fiction writers, but this software is extremely useful to writers of all types.

1. yWriter

It wasn’t until I got serious about my own writing that I realized just how awesome and powerful a tool yWriter is. It is a program for writers created by a writer. yWriter is billed as a word processor with extra features to help you organize your novel. But I think of it as more of a story management tool.

Not only can you write in it, but you can ORGANIZE with it. You can use it to break your work down by scene and chapter. You can make a database of characters, places, items and notes. In fact, of everything in this list, it is probably the most useful, versatile and powerful piece of free writing software. For each scene, you can add a description, POV characters, individual scene notes and goals. It’s all there. – http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html

2. yEdit

yEdit is a simple text editor. You can think of it as notepad but with a couple of extra features. It is very no-frills and no-nonsense. This tool is useful for those of you that need to just type. Save the editing for later. To help with that, yEdit includes a target word count feature. For example, you put in 3000 as your target word count and you can watch it count down to zero as you type the words. This is helpful if you are trying to write with a daily word quota. – http://www.spacejock.com/yEdit2.html

3. Q10

Q10 is a full screen text editor. If you do not know what that means, think of the old word processors. It takes up the entire screen leaving you free of any background distractions. Much like yEdit, this can be a great tool for those of you that need to just sit down and write. It has word count settings and a timer alarm as well. For fun, or just to change it up, it can use typing sound effects.

I use Q10 whenever I want to just write. To put that in perspective, I use yEdit when I am writing segments or scenes. I use Q10 when I just want to pound out a few thousand words with no distractions, which is typically how I start most of my writing. – http://baara.com/q10/

3.5 Dark Room

Dark Room is similar to Q10. It is also a free full-screen writing environment. I have never used it, but I see it come up often, so I’m including it here as a bonus. – http://they.misled.us/dark-room

4. Roughdraft

I LOVE Roughdraft. It’s so simple and it just works. Now, Roughdraft is no longer maintained, so it may look a little dated, but it also still works, which is the most important part. — “Although suitable for general use, it has features specifically designed for creative writing: novels, short stories, articles, plays and screenplays. It’s designed to be as practical as possible, offering all the features you need, but without being complicated or awkward to use.” —

I found Roughdraft very useful for organizing my writing along with my notes (which Roughdraft saves along with the current file in the same directory). That is to say, I think it’s a very useful tool for when you are first developing your story and just writing out some scenes as you try to figure out what it is all going to be about. – http://www.salsbury.f2s.com/rd.htm

5. Notepad

Yes, I said it, Notepad! You don’t need anything more than that to write. Notepad files take up very little space and the interface of notepad is very minimalistic. A bunch of icons, menu items and sidebars will not distract you. I honestly do not know why people do not use it more often.

Since it’s just plain and simple text, anything you write in notepad can then be imported into any other program including all of the ones mentioned above. If Notepad is not enough, there are other notepad-like editors available free with a lot more features. I personally like Notepad++ because it has tabs, which can really help when you need multiple text files open or if you want one to write on and one to keep notes etc. You can also try Notepad2 or TED Notepad or even WordPad if you want.

Now, there are a LOT more free writing resources out there, but I wanted to keep this to the things that I use most. There are also some excellent free word processing programs out there like AbiWord and OpenOffice. I will write another article on other free programs and tools, including free online-only apps.

I have been writing articles and poetry for a good long while now, if you want to follow me on my journey to writing my very first novel, then you can start here: https://silenciobarnes.net/writing/writing-the-first-draft-of-my-first-novel-01/

For those that are curious, on this novel, I am using yWriter and yEdit heavily. That’s probably why they got the top spots on this list

https://silenciobarnes.net/writing/writing-fiction/

8 Apr 2012

8 Comments

Writing the First Draft of My First Novel 01

In the spirit of finishing all the old stuff and not starting new stuff, I have been working on a fiction story I started and then abandoned previously. It’s a piece of contemporary urban fantasy that I started for NaNoWriMo last year and then put to the side after only a few thousand words.

I spent years thinking about and coming up with ideas for an epic fantasy, but realized that I just wasn’t ready skillwise to write it, so I decided to get back to this story tentatively titled Rattle and Thump🙂 I figured it would be short, and good for practice.

Patricia T. O'Conner on First Drafts — Patricia T. O’Conner on First Drafts

The reason for this blog post is so that I can talk to myself about what it is I’m doing. This is my first serious attempt at writing a whole novel. I’m having some trouble with it and honestly, this shit is hard. I’m about 20,000 words in and I’m shooting for about 100,000 which I can probably chop down to 80-90,000 once it’s done.

So, like I was saying, this is just me talking to myself about what’s going on with this story. I wanted to keep a record. Maybe it can also help new writers figure out how to get started with their own stuff.

First off, I’m something of a discovery writer. That means I tend to not plot and outline ahead of time. I just write and see where it goes. The downside of this is that there’s a good chance that a large chunk of what I’m writing is going to disappear when I start the next draft. That is to say, a big chunk of the discovery process is…discovering. So that’s a lot of fruitless writing. However, I also do outline a little. I just do it as I go, as things change in the story. Once I can see where I’m headed, then I can start outlining more and plotting ahead more.

To put this in perspective, when I started writing, I had a definite ending in my mind and a start. However, I had no idea how I would get from one to the other. So I just started writing. After a few thousand words, I have a bunch of new ideas, and I know the material slightly better. Now I have several little scenarios that I know must happen to bridge the gap between beginning to end. So the challenge becomes how do I get from A to B in order to eventually reach Z.

This creates a new set of issues. I don’t even fully know what’s going on yet, and my characters haven’t become human yet, that is to say, I barely know them. The fantasy elements are also a problem. I’m not sure of what type of magic system or what types of beings populate this world. I’m 20k words in and I’m still not absolutely sure if I’ll have the vampires and werewolves and shit like everybody else.

But to go back to the A to B thing. In trying to get to B. In making that attempt, I learn a bunch of new things and the story moves much differently than I expected. Now that changes my pseudo outline and even my ending and also my beginning. I’m not sure, but I think this might be something that stops a lot of writers. Because now, the desire to go back and start over is really strong. You want to make the stuff you wrote previously match the stuff you’re writing now. However, all of the years of writing advice I ever heard tells me this one thing: Finish the rough/first draft!

That is the advice I’m following. I am going to finish this draft before I change anything at all. If I get caught up constantly going back and changing shit and rewriting things, then I’ll never finish. And I’ll also get bored with it, a problem that I am very, very prone to (hence the whole getting old stuff finished thing).

Ernest Hemingway on Writing the First Draft

On a more nuts and bolts level, I’m noticing that it is very, very easy for me to fall into passive voice. I use it all the time. And as somebody that writes articles and copy for others, I realize this is the 666. But I can’t help it. That means that when I go back to do the second draft, I’m sure it’s going to be a super tedious, sentence by sentence rewrite…and that scares me.

One thing that I didn’t realize, and a lot of writing books and writing podcasts don’t talk about it, is that I’m supposed to be writing in scenes. It seems obvious, but it came to me as something of an epiphany. I always thought of chapters flowing from one to the other with each chapter technically being something of a scene. But then I realized that each chapter itself is made up of a series of scenes. I came to understand that was the missing element preventing me from seeing how to segue from one point to another. I didn’t have to write everything between A and B, I just needed to write a series of individual scenes that steer the narrative that way.

This record is my attempt to tell myself that I’m serious this time. I can’t get better unless I write and I have to finish one of these stories. Besides, I may be gone before 2012 lets out. I want to at least make an attempt at doing something I love. Let’s see how it goes and how far we can take it. Unfortunately, working on this story and thinking about it constantly has stalled my work on a bunch of other, non-related stuff…but we’ll figure it out.

If you have any questions about this process, or want me to get into more detail about something particular, feel free to leave a message here or drop me a line and I’ll answer. Maybe we can figure this craziness out together! 🙂

In the next post, I’ll add a bunch of links to people more accomplished and talented than me talking about writing first and rough drafts. I may even add some audio.

If you happen to be curious about what type of writing software I’m using for this project, check out this article I wrote about free (but good!) writing software: http://writinghood.com/writing/free-novel-and-fiction-writing-software/