Submitted by Theresa de Valence on Sun, 02/01/2009 - 07:03
Software created in Britain by Ravenshead Software.
http://www.ravensheadservices.com/
Sorry, but we've been bombarded by spam, so not only must you create a login to post, but you must use the Contact form to request a login. We apologise for its necessity, but spammers must be circumvented :)
- Login to post comments
-
Write It Now
I have used Write In Now for several years and love it. It is a British program relatively cheap ($40 last time I looked), has multiple tabs where you keep track of story, characters, places, timeline, even submissions. It is easy to use, and exports to Word to print (has preprogrammed headers and footers). See their website (www.ravensheadservices.com) for free download and details.
B.J. Hobbs
www.bjhobbs.com
bj@bjhobbs.com
Why do you like the software?
B.J., can you tell us more about why the software works for you?
Reading sales material rarely gives enough information about a program's function, and doesn't tell us a thing about why YOU find the software useful, or what you use it to do.
Please tell us more.
Writing software in general, Write It Now in particular
There are advantages to writing software if you have a complex novel or simply have issues staying organized within your novel. I know some people who compile masses of notes, charts, etc., either in hardcopy form or in documents like spreadsheets or separate word processing documents. Some writing software helps to eliminate all that messiness.
For example, Write It Now (published by Ravenshead Software):
- has a tab for your novel synopsis
- has a tab for your chapters (i.e., the main body of your novel)
- has a tab that allows you to keep up with your characters and all their characteristics, within the program instead of on little post-it notes or file cards stuck on the wall (as some people do)
- has a tab where you list the major events in your novel, and allows you to directly annotate which characters are involved in those events
- has a tab for listing all the locations in your novel, again allowing you to link to the characters and events occurring at each location
- has two tabs just for notes and ideas
- has a tab with very, very cool charts: one for a timeline showing when events happen and for how long (I can click on the event in the chart and it takes me to the detailed description in the Events tab), and another chart for characters and their relationships. These charts are automatically constructed as you enter the Events and Relationships data.
- finally, a tab that allows you to track submissions very easily
Now, you could do much of this in Word, OpenOffice, or some other word processor true, but you would need separate documents, or have to scroll up and down to different parts of your document to get to the information. Here, it's all in one place--you just click on the tab and boom, it's there.
I also know you may or may not use every feature for everything you write, but it's nice to have them there if/when you do need them.
I understand the desire some authors have to stay with a "standard" but even Word isn't "standard." For example, I also am an editor, and I sometimes receive Word documents that are in DOCX format. My version of Word wouldn't open them unless I went and downloaded a special patch from MS that allowed me to do so. Documents written in older versions of Word sometimes give me problems, too.
Write It Now exports your novel as an RTF, text file or even as HTML. I don't know any editor or agent who won't accept RTF, although such people may exist. I can open an RTF file in a heartbeat and never have any problems with them the way I have with some MS Word documents.
Write It Now has spell-check, if you want that, as well as other standard functions like search and replace, word count, insert accented characters and so forth.
It also comes in a full-function, downloadable trial version.
Personally, I hate MS Word, too, even after working with it for umpteen years as a writer, journalist and tech writer, but I keep it installed on my machine for when I do need it. (And no, I don't own stock in Ravenshead Software, but I wish I did.)
Tony Burton
"When choosing the lesser of two evils, remember it is still an evil." -- Lerner
Writeitnow software flaws
Guys,
I like using the writeitnow software package, however, recently I saved a file and went to bed only to find I lost power to the PC and when I restarted it the file was corrupted. I was lucky that I had made another hard copy in a different location which protected my file. This is a flaw in their software. You will need to re-save a different file in a different location every time you work on your craft, or else you may end up losing all of it.
Corrupted files are a typical benchmark
Thanks for visiting, Dennis.
While I don't know anything about what caused your crash or the appropriateness of my following remarks to WriteItNow software, it is nevertheless true that the prevalence of corrupted files could be a good spot to distinguish between "amateur" and "professional" software.
Modern easy development tools allow people with limited software background to create packages which may have some attractive features, but are often missing some (boring) basics (which a more professional designer would include) such as autosave, safeguards to avoid corruption, and data recovery programs.
One may or may not ever step into one of these "holes" in a software product, but if one does it can be very painful.
WriteItNow and file corruption
I think the idea that you must save each file with a different name is a large and unintuitive leap.
Any time you unexpectedly lose power to a PC you risk corrupting files, whether the power loss is from a power failure, someone tripping over a power cord or from ungracefully powering down before shutting down the operating system. (By the way, I'm a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator, so I've dealt with this a lot.) This is especially so if your computer is an older one. The longer you have had the computer, the greater the chance that the files are 'fragmented,' which means they are not all stored in contiguous areas of the hard drive. If you lose power or shut down your PC while the computer is performing a write operation to the hard drive (while it is storing some amount of data), the chances of it messing something up are manifold.
Liken it to this scenario: you are carefully sorting various colors of small beads from your hand into numerous containers on a shelf. Someone sneaks up behind you and makes a sudden, loud, startling noise. You jump, and perhaps knock over a seed container or two, mixing the seeds and/or spilling some on the floor.
That's analogous to what can happen when your hard drive experiences a sudden unexpected power shut down or a power surge when it is in the middle of writing data to the hard drive. I've never had a problem with saving and re-opening the same file in WriteItNow. However, I have had problems opening files from a variety of programs when power would drop out in the middle of doing some task. That's why I always have a UPS now. It acts both as a backup power source and a sort of "filter" to smooth out those bumps in the electrical road.
Unfortunately, it's a heck of a lot easier to pick up and sort those beads than it is to try to sort out a corrupted file. A better solution is to back up your files regularly, probably daily if you write daily, so you can simply restore the corrupted file if/when it happens.
Faithfully submitted,
Tony Burton
MCSA/MCP
Professional software
Part of professional development is using professional tools. Your seed sorting is the equivalent of writing out everything in a text file. If that is what one does, then there is certainly a risk of losing work from a power failure or other unexpected event, but even then quality word processing packages have autosave features which limit the degree of loss and provide one with an uncorrupted, self-consistent starting point. Yes, if the autosave is every 10 minutes one might have to recreate the last 10 minutes worth of work, but much of the time that won't be too painful.
If one goes beyond mere text into data structures, where the potential for corruption is much more severe, then the importance of the tool becomes that much greater. We've had database systems for years and years which were proof against corruption from "mere" power outages and the like.
Backups, versioning, etc. are certainly sound practices ... but better tools can also make quite a difference.
Professional software is not always proof against problems
You obviously didn't catch the gist of my analogy. I was talking about how files are stored on a disk in a typical Windows computer and what happens when a power glitch occurs in the middle of a disk-write process, not about how a writer uses a software program. Re-read it--maybe you will understand it then.
But even with that, you seem to have unreasonable expectations for home computer systems. I was a Senior Consultant for one of the larger software companies, BusinessObjects, and later for Knightsbridge Consulting. We consulted for major companies (AOL, HSBC, the U.S. Govt, et al.) and they were using some of the most expensive and comprehensive database systems around. Their IT personnel and database managers were highly-trained professionals. They had very, very good and expensive equipment. But no matter how complex or powerful your system is, it is always subject to the whims of "what if." I've seen multimillion-dollar systems go down because of "simple problems" like corrupted files. Data redundancy is paramount.
Yet, you are saying that you expect a home computer system, which probably gets minimal attention and maintenance (because that's how most people treat their home computers) to be bulletproof against a power glitch? That is naive and sets up some very unreasonable expectations for the average home user. You can do your best to have backups, both of files and of power, but sometimes no matter how carefully engineered the software or the system is, sometimes a simple thing can take it down.
WriteItNow software saves a backup of every file, when you save the original. The instructions for retrieving the backup file are in the help files for WriteItNow. But even that, or an autosave function like the one in MS Word or WordPerfect, can always protect you. You do the best you can, but no system is perfect.
(By the way, Theresa, I tried to sign in with my registered ID for this post and my last one, but for some reason it's not recognizing my OpenID.)
After 43 years of
After 43 years of professional software development, it would be surprising if I was still naive. I do know that I work every day with database software which will survive pulling the plug and it has been able to do that since 1984 and yes it runs on PCs among other things. Perhaps I'm spoiled, but I know it is possible.
Clearly, backups, versioning, etc. are important skills for users to learn and good software will encourage these patterns and make it easy. Also clearly, nothing is ever perfect and that is the reason we need backups and versions. Sometimes the software helps to protect us, but the user doesn't get told what to do about it so it doesn't do any good.
All I was trying to suggest was that both the tools one uses to build an application and the skills of the developer come in a range of capability and that there are better tools out there.
Yes, I agree
Naive was a bad word choice. Perhaps yours was a better one: "spoiled." Using the best software on the best systems, maintained regularly by IT personnel, will make a person spoiled. I've been there and experienced it. So, I agree with you on some of this. There are always better tools available, but often the user's personal preferences override the choice of such a better tool--or perhaps the user's budget.
I'm curious if the PCs to which you refer are PCs in a professional environment (which receive regular "care and feeding") or are PCs used by authors who are often self-admittedly technically un-advanced. I know authors who struggle with learning how to use the Twitter interface (one of the simplest in the entire world) or who still type in their word processing program as though it were an Olivetti or IBM Selectric: they hit the Return/Enter key at the end of each line, put in footers/headers and page numbers manually, and use the space bar to center titles. I have held classes to familiarize users with software many times, and it's amazing how many of the simplest tasks seem to be totally foreign to people who have been using computers for some time, simply because they were so focused on one particular program that they never learned the basics. It's like being able to drive a car but having no idea how to check the oil level.
People with backgrounds like that probably are not going to have machines that are professionally maintained, nor will they probably invest the money in a package that has the sophistication of which you speak. MS Word, WordPerfect, MS Works, and older word processing programs like AmiPro or WordStar, all have/had weaknesses... yet there are people who stick with those platforms because they are what they know or what they can afford. (I do know one budding author who does all her work in WordPad... I shudder to think of that!)
Understand: I was not saying, nor do I now say, that a power glitch is an automatic death knell for any software program or any file. It doesn't always happen, and it may only happen one time in a hundred. But as you have worked with computers, you know that power glitches or failures are notorious for causing problems if they occur at the optimally WRONG time, such as during the time the computer is writing to the file. Had the lady's power failure happened ten seconds earlier or ten seconds later, there may have been no problem whatsoever. Who knows?
(Then again, that is why I have a UPS on every computer in my house except for the laptops, and they are for the most part unaffected by power failures.)
I admit that I haven't
I admit that I haven't done a survey to see how widespread the features are in the database with which I am the most familiar and licensing would keep one from using it in a package sold for $29.95 ... I guess that is one of the points that I was trying to make is that there are a lot of differences between the $29.95 software and the $2,995 software, one of which is likely to be the quality of the infrastructure relative to issues like this.
I am very sympathetic about the problem of unsophisticated users. There is an inherent problem in someone wanting to spend $29.95 who actually needs hundreds of dollars worth of training. People don't expect that and often don't accept it. That is why my own focus is more on people who understand the importance of the tool and are willing to pay to do things right. That leaves out a lot of people, but it also leaves out a lot of headaches.
But, for the record, the software I work with can not only be relied on to survive a power failure, used properly in combination with backups can even recover from physical destruction of the disk containing the database. It is licensable for single users, but that isn't its normal millieu.