no ideas for a script....

[mattias]

that's a great success story. i'm finished reading another novel any day now and then i'll read yours.

as for paper vs computers, i do all my outlines and take all my notes on paper, but i would never do any writing anywhere but on the computer, for exactly the reasons roger mentions. paper is way too linear and too labor intensive when you want to make changes and do rewrites.

some well known writers, swedish children's novelist astrid lindgren for example, wrote everything in shorthand. that would be cool but it seems like a lost art.

/matt

[MovieStuff]

that's a great success story. i'm finished reading another novel any day now and then i'll read yours.

As I had not heard from you since you bought it, my choices were:

A) you were busy and had not yet time to read it

or

B) didn't like it and were just being polite by not saying anything.

Thus, I chose "A". ;)

as for paper vs computers, i do all my outlines and take all my notes on paper, but i would never do any writing anywhere but on the computer, for exactly the reasons roger mentions. paper is way too linear and too labor intensive when you want to make changes and do rewrites.

I sort of do half and half. I tend to use a large cork board and index cards (not my invention, certainly) to work out the plot and overall events but nothing dialog specific unless I happen upon a cool line or a unique plot device that hinges on what someone says or the way they say it. That I will jot on the index card along with the events for that scene. I use white cards for expository scenes, red cards for romance, green cards for action and blue cards for "eureka" moments. That helps me to get an overall view of the pacing of the story from a distance. Once I have that worked out, I then pick a card and start writing, pretty much from beginning to end. The cards will often get changed daily as I develop new ideas.

In the case of "Transit", I had developed it as a screenplay using the same index card method but realized that it would never see the light of day as a movie so I turned it into a novel.

Roger

[fogo]

In my current writing project Im trying to develop the very idea of a card system for plot development into a plot device itself...its called FORTY POSTCARDS I suspect the finished text may not reach this idealised number

Cheers, Ade

[ccortez]

The concept work is where I'm finding the pencil most handy. We're talking through character traits, relationships and histories, so we don't need real-time editing, we need... freedom... or something. I think I find myself editing and wordsmithing too much in the early phases rather than letting the ideas flow. Of course, now it's pretty much script generation time, and I'll probably be working exclusively in Final Draft for quite some time...

[mattias]

i agree completely. i don't need real time editing though, when i write my first draft i generally do it in one pass, but when i'm starting to rewrite it's nice to have the text in an easily editable format.

hey, speaking of shorthand, has somebody tried one of those fast typing keyboard? they say it only takes hours to learn and then you can write at least twice as fast. there's the dvorak layout of course but also keyboards where you use combinations of keypresses to completely eliminate travel.

/matt

[flatwood]

Does anybody here us specialized script writing software like Final Draft???

[mattias]

i use screenwiter or a plugin for word called simply screenplay. the latter is free and almost as powerful if you know word already, and if you already have word it's a no-brainer cost-wise.

/matt

[CHAS]

i use screenwiter or a plugin for word called simply screenplay. the latter is free and almost as powerful if you know word already, and if you already have word it's a no-brainer cost-wise.

/matt

I use something similar -- !script -- which is another plug-in for Word and works beautifully. Why pay hundreds of bucks when you can get something for free?

[johnnhud]

what about using !script with a program such as Dragon Naturally Speaking and do voice to text?

[CHAS]

what about using !script with a program such as Dragon Naturally Speaking and do voice to text?

download and try...

[johnnhud]

I was asking if anyone has used Speech to Text software to write scripts before.....sorry, it wasn't very clear! :?

[DriveIn]

Whenever typing, I find myself using the notepad program in windows more than any other software. I prefer the simple nature of the notepad text editor. I usually "save as" in numbered drafts as I go, so if I've made significant changes and find I need to back track to a previous idea, I can open up the older text file and read through it, cutting and pasting as neccessary into the more current file. If I need to format any documents for printing, I simply cut and paste the text file into word, adobe, publisher, quark, or whatever application I need to use. Worked well for me over the years. For me, it's like a spiral bound notepad where I can scroll through the previous pages for the older stuff. I save all the files in the same folder for easy management of what belongs to that project. When I get a final draft done, I label it as the print copy, so I know it's the file that's ready to use. Most of my better stories are brought about by tasks I need to accomplish or ways to explain ideas or subjects to other people. From there they evolve into character stories. Fundraising projects has been a good source of material lately.

[DriveIn]

I was asking if anyone has used Speech to Text software to write scripts before.....sorry, it wasn't very clear! :?

Was recently reading an article / interview on a well known author. Can't remember who right now, but one thing stuck in my mind. The author said that ever since speech to text software became available, all of the novels they wrote have been verbally written with a microphone in hand. The author could also record on a portable tape while traveling or walking and play it into the computer to convert the speech to text at a later time.

[mattias]

like a spiral bound notepad

when i was studying user interface design and cognitive science i remember a word processor concept based on the paper metaphor, where if you wanted to insert something in the middle a new page, optionally in another color for example, was inserted into the "pile" rather than everything being pushed "down". that was actually quite clever. this was 10 years ago and sadly user interface design seems to have been moving backwards from there, in all areas applicable, but surely something similar must be around? i'd love to use some more thought through software for a change...

/matt

[MovieStuff]

One of the problems with voice recognition software is that it lacks intuitive punctuation. In other words, the simple addition of periods, commas, quotes, exlamation points, colons, semi-colons, etc become problematic and can actually be more work to insert later than to simply type to begin with (assuming one knows how to type). However, the idea of being able to dictate into a hand held recording device without having to transcribe what you dictated is pretty cool.

Hmmmmm....

Okay (making note to self) my next invention will be a hand held recorder that has different buttons you can press for punctuation while you dictate. Basic buttons like period, comma, quote, exclamation, etc would be on the side and you would push the appropriate button for the appropriate punctuation and it would insert a command onto the tape in the form of an audio tone, like a telephone keypad uses. Then when you play the tape back at your computer, a program recognizes the tones and inserts the appropriate punctuation mark. There would even be one for new paragraph and page break.

I can see how this would make voice recognition software really viable for books and screenplays. Otherwise, to me, having to go in and insert punctuation would be a major drag.

Also, and perhaps it is just me, I find myself looking at how the paragraph or sentence actually appears and where page breaks are and how the structure of the page flows. Maybe I'm weird.....

Roger