OpenOffice is a free alternative to Microsoft.

* a database sort of thing that warns you if a story has been out too long (you set for the magazine how long its turnaround time would be). Otherwise, it would be like a regular database, or excel, just for recordkeeping.

* a program that lets you have trees, as in

thing to accomplish, which has two arrows going into it from subtask1 and subtask2; and each of these can have arrows going into it from sub-subtasks...

...and you can tell the item "expose your subtasks" or "hide them." There might also be a temporal component -- things that have to happen before something else happens. This would be to order events in a novel.

So...

...would these things be useful?
...are there programs that do this already?
...are there other features these programs should have?

[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited October 05, 2006).]

WIN is a simple software that has some wonderful features. It has character tabs where you can keep track of who's who, what's interesting, different or "characteristic" of them; you can keep notes on all kinds of stuff - I have notes on locations, magic spells, historic stuff, etc. It will print out in submission format all by itself (when you tell it to) if you've done your stuff properly (block format, double-space between paragraphs, * * * or # to divide scenes, etc.) It cost me $34 and it was worth the cost because it taught me a LOT. Oh, it has a way to keep track of submissions, too. www.ravenscroft.com - I think that's their URL.

I've just downloaded yWriter, which is from the guy who made the yTimer used by NaNoWriMo participants (that's how I found him). He writes the Hal Spacejock series (published in Australia). yWriter looks like a more intuitive system than WIN - or perhaps I've simply learned how to use such programs, having battled with WIN for a while now. This program has interesting prompts such as what the goal is for any scene (it has places for you to write the goal, IOW). And you can import your story much more simply than you can with WIN as long as you use * * * as your scene breaks rather than #. yWriter is free, as is the yTimer. www.spacejock.com, click on "downloads" (I think that's right) or the "for writers" links.

For screenplays, I'm in a screenwriting workshop at Context 19 this week, and the instructor sent us free screenwriting templates that work in Word. I downloaded them but have no clue how to get them started. They seem to be Macros of some kind, but I don't really understand those, either!! Sorry. But they're free - I don't know where she got them, sorry. Maybe you can do a search for them.

For Word, I've learned the hard way that you can't keep your whole novel in one long file, no matter how much easier it is to do a search and replace when you get crits back!! They need to be saved as chapter files (which both of the softwares I mentioned above do quite well). I've also learned that formatting holds better in .txt files than in .doc files, but you can't use underlining in .txt files - you have to do them _this way_, then change them to [u]this way[/u] when you submit the novel to agents or publishers (they can't see the _this way_ markings as easily. Those underlines will be converted into italics in the printed version of your story, in case you didn't know).

Hope this helps!

I've kept this forum open to the public. You don't have to join Liberty Hall to read about the software we've found.

I'll eventually be moving all these resources to our new blog, hopefully before January 2007, so if you read this after that, go here instead: http://www.libertyhallwriters.org/wordpress/

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thought about getting Final Draft for screenwriting projects (though, I'll have to be saving up a bit for that. It's a bit on the expensive side).

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Try this instead: http://www.celtx.com/overview.html

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Celtx is Pre-Production software for film, video, theatre, and animation.

START YOUR STORYOutline ThumbnailUse the Celtx Scene Details and Character Background forms to create dynamic story lines. Add sound files, pictures and video clips to help create a media rich Outline.

WRITE AWAYEditor ThumbnailCeltx has a full industry standard screenplay editor that includes all of the features writers need to keep their fingers moving, like intuitive formatting, text auto-complete, pagination, script styles, CAPS selection, scene management, spellchecker, embedded notes, find and replace, PDF generation and other export options.

Celtx also supports writing plain text documents – so you can write a poem, music lyrics, or your complete Novel.

SO YOU CAN PRODUCE YOUR PROJECTReports ThumbnailComplete a media rich breakdown of your project, tagging key items like props, and actors and special effects with notes and pictures and even sound files to help give shape to your Story.

Use the built in Calendar and Reports features to keep your Project organized and to help keep track of any production requirements by scene or character or dialogue or action or any number of other ways that Celtx makes possible.

WHILE YOU COLLABORATE WITH TEAM MEMBERSCeltx has a secure, built in Collaboration feature that lets you share your entire Project – scripts, breakdown files, budgets, schedules, location forms etc. – with team members.

Use the Celtx Collaboration feature to help keep track of their progress and to maintain a common vision among your team.

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I have been toying with the idea of making my *own* writer's software (or giving it to a student as a project).

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1. acts as a writing project manager, including outlining, scheduling, level of effort analysis, brainstorming tools and graphics to assist in the movement and re-asignation of chunks of text from one scene or chapter to another
2. includes the ability to enter text and assign it to scenes, or chapters or any other subdivision you make, and to spell check and to have thesaurus lookup functions
3. acts as a submissions/arketing database, including taking incoming Duotrope Digest email (or other standardized format market publications email) and extracting and storing the info.
4. counts words, counts the number of times you use words, counts and identifies the instances of words that are repeated within a set 'distance' in a chunk of text, including the ability to learn from your text and creates a list of problem words
5. creates query letters and email submittals according to criteria that you enter
6. has the ability to contrast and compare two instances of a chunk of text.
7. has the ability to allow you to paste critique comments into a note tagged to a chunk of text
8. has reminders and scheduling capability and timers built in and can analyze and report on your prductivity
9. can be installed to a pen drive and is capable of operating in Windows (ugh), Mac, BSD and Linux OSes
10. That automates the process of registering your work under the Creative Commons licensing schemes.
11. Exports to .txt, .rtf, .doc, .opd, .html, .xml formats
12. Imports from .txt, .rtf, .doc, .opd, .html, .xml formats

With the exception of #3 and #9 above, I have tools that do all that. But I have to work in multiple operating systems and applications to do so.

Not asking for much, am I!

I also look for an application that lets me customize it and use it however I want, rather than rigidly defining how I should work. ie, if there's a Submission Tracking module and it's set to track 15 or 20 common things, let me add my own things to track; maybe I'm obsessed with tracking reviews of the magazines I watch or something, so I'd want to add a way to do that. (that is just one example; what I'd want is the ability to add and rearrange and skip things to suit me.)

I'd like to be able to save numerous versions of an outline, and produce new ones at different stages in the project's lifecyle. ie, if I write one outline to produce the crappy first draft, I am probably going to produce a second outline to help me see what the first draft looks like, and so on. but I would really like to be able to refer back to the first outline, not have it lost.

I look for having all the information easily available to me, even if in an abbreviated form; if I have to click through four layers to even see if there's any data somewhere, sooner or later I'll stop bothering. yWriter does a pretty good job of this - most of the info from the scene definitions is displayed in the main view.

I am not a very visual person most of the time, so something that relies on visual metaphors (like index cards, say) to display data and the relationships among the data would not appeal to me much. Other people would probably love it - so that implies having multiple metaphors to view data.

I also think well in hierarchies - like the microsoft windows explorer file structure - that's one of the reasons I love KeyNote. I don't think as well in tags (like gmail, writely, etc) - they're useful on a small scale but for me, not useful to organize data for a large project like a novel. (again, just me; other people might find tags a perfectly splendid way to organize large amounts of data.)

More and more I'm interested in web-based applications, because I work now from three different computers, so it's easier not to have to shuttle files around. I also really like the collaboration abilities of some of the web apps I use.

The word count is essential; I've looked at and discarded a number of organization apps because they do not include a word count. (and I know you're familiar with how to do a word count app. I don't think it matters if it's precisely the same algorithm as any other app; mostly I need a general idea.)

I'd also be interested in a module that does something like what Mr. Writing person was talking about a while ago, which would map the relationships between characters. (this is inevitably visual but I will suck it up.)

KeyNote for most my writing, research, and notes. Good hierarchical structure, primitive word processing. I really like that everything is in one single file, not a million different files (as it would be if I used RoughDraft or Word or whatever).

Word for critiques (especially the Show Changes functionality) and producing correctly formatted final documents.

My sub tracking database; one table tracks markets, another tracks stories; queries link which story has been sent to which market.

Duotrope to search for markets (I don't use their sub tracking but apparently it is swell).

Excel for outlining; may do more of this in yWriter in the future.

Writely for making a piece I'm currently working on available via the internet, and for collaboration.

Various dictionaries, thesauruses, and grammar reference guides, mostly hard copy.