Hatrack River Writers Workshop: A Writing Application

This is topic A Writing Application in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Mind Surfer (Member # 1686) on :

So for those of you who don't know, I am a software developer who loves to write. I tend to hate how Microsoft Word works. I'm fed up with it's inconsistencies, crashes, and overall evilness. So I've decided to develop a tool to help writers write. An application that is based on a simple text editor, so we don't get lost in all the functionality that we never ever use. I envision something simplistic to the point that really anyone can use it without any real training. Since you are all writers here, I would love some feedback as this project is in the beginning stages of development.

So I need some feedback on character development. I'm thinking of creating templates where you could just fill in information about your characters. Would this be helpful? Any other templates that might be helpful?

I would be interested in anything you all have to say. Whether it be ideas or if you would even use an application like this.

Thanks in advance

Chris

Posted by wetwilly (Member # 1818) on :

my personal fear is that character templates like that might suck the life out of my characters and turn them into flat cardboard cutouts with no life. After all, you don't get to know people in real life by filling in a template about their traits, and my theory is that we use the same methods to get to know characters in stories as we do in real life. Templates like that might be a good reference, though, just to help you remember details about different characters without flipping back and searching through a hundred pages. Searching through chapters to see what color you made a characters eyes or what kind of gun they like to use gets old.

Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :

My first question would be, why are you using MS Works to start with? Or do you just mean, the entire Microsoft engine?

I use Corel and like it very much--the only thing I wish it had was a good word and common used pharse finder.

Shawn

Posted by Lord Darkstorm (Member # 1610) on :

I threw together a little utility which did some word counting with some filters. I use it on occasion to show me some of my overused words. But it doesn't have a find function at the moment.

And I am still working on a phrase search that does not take all day.

[This message has been edited by Lord Darkstorm (edited December 14, 2003).]

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

I've been thinking about this one, and as I suppose your're looking for honesty...

I use MS Word. Probably because it came with the computer and it would be expensive for me to buy Corel, which I would probably prefer once I got used to it. But in the meantime I've been using Word for years and despite things that annoy me (like automatic capitalization and spelling corrections when I actually meant it to be the "wrong" way) it would take a heck of a program for me to switch. The truth is that most of Word's annoying features can be turned off. A better word would still have those features, but they would automatically be disabled with the capacity to enable them. I would still want most of them there.

Are you planning to work on this alone or try to get a team together? Are you thinking about making it shareware or do you actually want to market this?

I'm asking those questions because I'm trying to get an idea of the scope of the word processor. It seems like you're trying to go back to basics, back to some of the simpler word processors that could actually work with only 640 k of memory. (Ahhh, memories of Professional Write, my first word processor...)

But I wouldn't go back to Professional Write, not really. It didn't have the mouse click centering, font adjusting, paragraph alignment, spell check, etc. It didn't have a grammar check, either, but as far as I'm concerned neither does anyone else. If you can get a grammar check working correctly you could make a lot of money.

There is a small market for tools to help writers write, which, since you asked about character templates, I thought you might be going for. If that is the case, character templates could be helpful depending upon how dynamic they are. I use a program that has preset fields for characters, not all of which I use, and sometimes I take the ones I don't use and pretend they're some trait that was never there.

So, I guess even after saying all that I would sttill like to know a little more about this project. What exactly are you thinking of doing?

Posted by Narvi (Member # 1376) on :

Speaking as a programmer, I think you're going to spend an awful lot of time re-implementing things that aren't central to what you're working on. I would seriously suggest taking some existing word processor and adding the features you want (possibly removing or at least hiding those you don't).

Offhand, I would recommend Abiword. It has all the basic features a writer will not, and not much cruft. It runs on Windows and *nix (through Gtk), including XDarwin. It's lightweight (runs comfortably on a 486) and reputedly well designed. IIRC, it's written in C++, but it's been a long time since I looked at it.

It's GPL, so what you write will have too be also. That's probably a good thing.

Speaking as a writer, there aren't all that many features I need. In a really long story, it might be nice for my notes about a character or place to show up in an unused section of the screen when I bring the cursor over the name, but that's about it.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you run into specific trouble.

Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :

In addition to Navi's suggestion, you might want to look at Open Office. It runs on linux and is an open source (GPL) program written in C++.

But I think he hit exactly what I tried to say before and never actually got around to saying....I think what you're planning to do has, for the most part, already been done. If you just need a few extra features or need some turned off, don't start from scratch. I would suggest using one of the open source programs out there and modifying it for your use.

But still, if you want to try to come up with a good grammar check...I know I know there are reasons it hasn't been done yet, that just makes it a challenge.

Posted by Narvi (Member # 1376) on :

IMHO, anyone who can deliver a reliable grammar checker deserves a Turing award. Consider the following sentence:

quote:

Hanging off the edge of the cliff, a sweat drop tickled my face.

Most of us would regard this as ungramatical: the participle phrase is dangling. However, if the preceeding sentence is

quote:

I glanced in the mirror and saw my forehead looming like a cliff, ending sharply at my eyebrows.

Now the preceeding sentence is grammatical! It still isn't very good, but that's beside the point.

The point (in case you've lost track of it) is that to determine if a sentence is grammatical, you first need to know what it's talking about. That is a problem researchers have been working on for over 40 years.

Now, it might be possible to do something useful by statistical learning analysis or by only trying to handle special cases, but it would only be a partial solution, and I doubt it would be very useful.

P.S. I considered OpenOffice, which is more powerful and will have a native OSX port in addition to *nix and Windows any day now, but I still think Abiword is better. It's a lot lighter weight, and has a more convinient build environment.

Posted by Lord Darkstorm (Member # 1610) on :

I actually switched to Word Perfect (picked it up from a 3rd party through amazon for $40). Word Perfect isn't as pretty as Word, but it does have a much better grammar checker. It can also parse sentances into it's basic forms and show each word as it applies to the sentance. Although the extra features are a bit of a pain, they are usefull.

I have also looked at Dramatica Pro, which is very overpriced, not to mention over-complex. I would love a story management tool that would help in keeping novel length stories strait, but I have settled for several utilities to do it for me. Not as efficient, but it works.

Now something that did outlines and helped organize charater details, and other story details without costing an arm and a leg...that would have some potential.

If you think about it, most people go at thier stories in different ways, and as a result very few tools would fit all writers.

Posted by Mind Surfer (Member # 1686) on :

Thank you all for replying. It's hard to give a lot away seeing as I wouldn't want my ideas to be duplicated elsewhere before I get a chance to do create them.

The reason for me wanting to write this program is simple. I am anti-Microsoft, I use a Apple, and I don't want to pay big dollars for software. I think that software should be affordable, so that way everyone will have access to it. I'm planning a Java version, which will be platform independent.

I will give a little background on what I plan on doing. At the base of this whole project is a simple text editor. When I say simple I don't mean just plain text. You would be able to use text styles and colors, but it would be limited. I don't want to worry about how Microsoft Word formats my document, it gets annoying. So now that we have this text editor, I plan on creating "tools" that are geared towards helping writers organize, outline, take notes and many others. None of the tools will be required of the program, you choose the ones you want to use, kind of like add-ons. I don't want to have to use 3 different programs to help me write or organize, I only want to use one. I have somewhere around 10 tools currently planned. Many of them are tools that all of you have spoken of already, but there are some that no one has mentioned that I myself will think useful. Thank you all for your input. It's all very helpful.

I am still interested in anything anyone has to say about this. Any "tools" that you would want to see implemented, I would be willing to take a crack at. I'm scared of the grammar tool, but I may try it.

Thanks again, more feedback is encouraged

Posted by James Maxey (Member # 1335) on :

I used to use WordPerfect but switched to Word a few years back. For 99.9% of my every day use, the two programs are identical. WordPerfect had some nice printing features that came in handy when I was publishing a zine, but I don't miss them for normal writing. Word has some terrific tools for making tables, but it's surprising how seldom I need to make a table when I'm writing a novel. I don't think Word is missing any features that would make my life easier. As has been pointed out, the real problem with Word is that it has too many features. It makes annoying guesses as to what I'm attempting to do and offers to help ("It looks like you're writing a letter!"). But, as has also been noted, all of these features can be turned off. And some of the guesswork is kind of handy. It's nice that Word autocorrects simple typos, turning "teh" into "the" automatically, for instance. On the other hand, if I was writing a SF novel and had a character named "Teh Ziznik" this feature might be a problem.

As far as a grammer checker goes, nothing beats the human ear. Read your work out loud to discover overused words and awkward phrasing. A program that could read my work back to me in something approaching human inflection might be useful to me, but I doubt the technology for it will exist in my lifetime.

I have no interest at all in tools for developing characters, outlining plots, etc. There are dozens of such products available but I can't imagine that any successful professional fiction writer actually uses such tools. They seem to me to be more targeted to people who can't write. They hope that there's some simple technological solution that will make them great writers so that they can avoid the years of hard work and dedication that go into mastering the craft.

Hope this helps,
James Maxey

Posted by Lord Darkstorm (Member # 1610) on :

quote:
I have no interest at all in tools for developing characters, outlining plots, etc. There are dozens of such products available but I can't imagine that any successful professional fiction writer actually uses such tools. They seem to me to be more targeted to people who can't write. They hope that there's some simple technological solution that will make them great writers so that they can avoid the years of hard work and dedication that go into mastering the craft.

I have to say that good tools can be helpfull for orginization. It is nice to have minor characters, that pop in the story from time to time, details so you are not looking back through the story to get an idea of who they are. It does not mean you have to have or use them to write, but I would bet good orginization can make it much easier to keep up with a novel length story much easier.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

I use both Word and Word Perfect.

I like to use Word's tracking feature when I am editing. I know Word Perfect has something similar, but since most of the people I have had to edit use Word, I haven't bothered to learn Word Perfect's version. (I use Word Perfect to format the monthly newsletter for science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers that I publish.)

For my own writing, I use a very old program (on a fairly old computer, because it's DOS-based--I sympathize with those who are anti-Microsoft). Anyone here ever heard of LEWP?

If you are going to try to come up with a tool that will be helpful to writers, try to include something that facilitates critiques (that imitates the kind of "writing on the manuscript" that critiquers do in hard copy).

Posted by JK (Member # 654) on :

Ooh, while we're talking about word-processing apps, I'd like to hijack the conversation in order to ask a question. Being: does anyone know how good the Appleworks processor is?

I thank you for your time.

Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :

Bravo Kathleen, yes being able to use the copy edit marks I learned in school would be great!

Word does have a merge documents feature that works well to combine critiques if you are in a group and everyone uses the track changes feature and saves as a .doc. It puts them all in the same document in different colors saves a lot of time and makes it obvious where more than one person agrees.

I've used WP since --well, when you had to worry about screen burn in with the bright white or yellow letters--I still use it. I love the drop down word suggestion window in the tool bar and the fact that the key shortcuts I learned in the 80's still work today--nothing new to learn. UGH

As far as the new Word 2003--I beta tested it--IT SUCKS ROTTEN FLESH! It takes that assuming thing to an absurd level--and you can't shut it off. It also takes the "go to start to shut down, do you really want to shut down to an annoying level as well--asking you when you highlight to delete if you really want to delete the text--you have to actually push the y key to tel it you really meant to hit the delete key. Talk about slowing a person down!

I would love to have a program I could put in editors shorthand--as far as a character story program, no thanks.

Shawn

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

You know what would be a heck of a lot more sensible given today's massive amounts of storage would be a non-linear undo history so that you could go back and undo only certain changes.

But even the regular undo is totally adequate for dealing with an accidental deletion of a block of text (unless the idiots took that out while they were so busy 'improving' things). Sometimes I think that...well I suppose it doesn't need to be said.

Posted by Jules (Member # 1658) on :

A few tools that I would find useful that don't exist in current word processors:

- word frequency analysis (as mentioned previously)
- approximate word count (that is, count average number of words on complete lines of text and multiply by total number of lines of text)
- ability to store notes that are either attached to the document in one location (or possibly multiple locations) or detached from it entirely. It should be possible to add notes to notes.
- maintains a complete version history of the document using something like rcs [ http://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/rcs.html ], so that I can at any point look at what changes were made when, view what the document looked like at some point in the past, etc.
- incremental autosave very frequently, so there is never any question of losing work

Some of these features might tempt me away from OpenOffice. Possibly. But the UI would have to be good, and my general experience of Java suggests it won't be. Java makes lowest-common-denominator user interfaces that are rarely satisfying for me, except for really simple applications.

(NB: that's not to say I have anything against Java itself, I use it all the time personally, I just despise AWT and Swing).

Posted by Mind Surfer (Member # 1686) on :

Thank you everyone for your feedback. I've taken note of it all and have converted all to requirements for the application.

I'm curious, How many Mac users are out there? If so what OS? I'm curious because I want to do a OS X native port of this application.

Thanks. Merry Christmas(or whatever holiday you celebrate) to all.

Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :

quote:
You know what would be a heck of a lot more sensible given today's massive amounts of storage would be a non-linear undo history so that you could go back and undo only certain changes.

Wow. I understood that. Cool.

Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :

And I'll second that one.

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

quote:
asking you when you highlight to delete if you really want to delete the text--you have to actually push the y key to tel it you really meant to hit the delete key. Talk about slowing a person down!

That's a "Word Perfect compatibility" feature. There's a way to turn it off. My mother had the same problem in a previous version of Word, and it took a while of searching through various web pages to find the solution.

Though it might be slightly different for Word 2003, try going to Tools > Options > General, and then uncheck anything that mentions WordPerfect.

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

quote:
approximate word count (that is, count average number of words on complete lines of text and multiply by total number of lines of text)

Is there something to this I'm not getting? Every word processor I've used for years will give you an exact word count, either for the full document or for a selection. If you want to round that number, you can do so. What advantage would there be to having an approximate word count based on the old system for calculating words on typewritten pages?

Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :

Because:

It is an

= 3 words to word count

= 1 word and a 1/3 to editor

Word count counts words. Editors count spaces. For them, a word is six characters.

Hence:

sanitation

= 1 word 2/3

Posted by glogpro (Member # 1745) on :

How about a design tool for object oriented writing? You could build hierarchies of events and characters, with precedents and dependencies, incorporate them all into some large data structure, and then present multiple views. So, you could begin with a plot outline and create hooks between the outline and the narrative. Or you could start writing, and create events/characters in the outline as you go along. Rig it so you can right click a part of the main text and then select preceding and dependent events, or character information and relationships. Or, from anyother view you can generate links to the relevant parts of the text. Say you are looking at a list of characters. You select one and that provides pointers to where that character appears in the text. I envision a cross between ms-project and one of those fancy c++ developer environments. Probably a lot of work for the potential audience. But as long as we are blue-skying here ....

Posted by DragynGide (Member # 1448) on :

Forgive me if I'm repeating anything that's already been said; I didn't have time to read the whole topic.

My two cents: What I would find really useful is not a template, but a bunch of different areas where one could store notes on the appropriate item and access them quickly. These areas would have to be editable-- so that we could name them (character A, world B) and put in any notes we need. It'd be really nice if we could attach images to each of these areas as kind of a creativity-boosting mnemonic device.

Just a thought.

Shasta

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

Phanto, if that were the reason, then the proper solution would be to divide the number of characters by six (thereby giving an exact "6-character word" count), rather than count up the number of words on an average line and multiply by the number of lines. There's nothing that guarantees that method would average out to six charactyers per word; in fact, it's just a more inaccurate way of counting the number of words in a document.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

I think that I should point out here that if the average number of words per line is calculated by anything like the normal procedure, that average multiplied by the number of lines will simply give you the number of words....

But perhaps a listing of the ascii statistics of your document (considered as plain text only) wouldn't be entirely amiss. I don't know, myself.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

The reason editors want a word count that boils down to a character count (as in six characters per word) is so that they can tell how much space the text is going to take up when the story is published.

This kind of information is especially crucial for magazine editors, but it also matters for book editors.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

For that, wouldn't they also need to know the number of line returns...and whether the line returns were near the beginning of a line or near the end...which would mean needing to know...wouldn't they only be able to get an accurate idea of how much page space a work would require by actually putting the text into their own format (font, margins, columns, page size, illustrations, etc.)?

Why not just tell them the number of ascii characters? Save the file as simple text, and tell them the filesize in bytes (divided by six if they're picky).

Posted by Thieftess (Member # 1683) on :

MindSurfer - back to your Mac question -- I have an iBook and use most of my programs on OS 10.2. I have 9.2, but I never use it anymore. My boyfriend has 10.2 Jaguar on his G4, but that first incarnation caused a bunch of problems, so I'm just happy with my plain old 10.2.

Unfortunately, I'm one of those evil people MacLovers hate 'cause I have Word for Mac and use it religiously. I grew up on PC and use one at work. I have to factor in compatibility -- all my wise readers, be they PC users or Mac users, can open a MS Word program with no problem.

Alethea

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Survivor, the problem of page returns and so forth is one reason why editors ask that manuscripts be in mono-spaced font and either 10 or 12 pitch type. They can look at such a manuscript (with experience) and tell about how much space it will take up when printed.

Then they use the approximate word count to figure out how much to pay the author. (So there's that to consider when you try to determine how many words are in your story as well.)