editing programs?

MaeYasha — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 04:45:11 +0000

My apologies if this has been posted... but favorite editing programs?

Re: editing programs?

moonmomma — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:45:35 +0000

I don't think that revising and editing can really be programmed. It's at least as much art as it is following rules. So, other than using a spell-check to catch some of your misspellings (spell-check will not catch things like 'there' instead of 'their'), and something that will help you detect over-used words (Liquid Story Binder has one; other programs probably do too), it's really up to you and your brain. Grammar checkers are of very limited value for fiction. As far as software for managing your manuscript as you edit, you can use whatever you wrote in, or something like Scrivener, Liquid Story Binder, yWriter, or PageFour, which make it easy to divide up your novel into scenes and rearrange them for working on your plot structure, and to keep notes on characters, settings, events, continuity, things you want to change, etc. For guidance on the revising/editing process, I suggest these articles by Holly Lisle: How To Revise a Novel One-Pass Manuscript Revision and this book: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, 2nd Edition Revising, editing, and proofreading are things that you can't really effectively program a computer to do, not with all the individual differences in artistic style and subtleties of language that are involved in writing fiction. It's something you just have to learn to do yourself. And a lot of people really enjoy the process -- it can be incredibly satisfying to take that raw lump of words and shape it into something wonderful.

Re: editing programs?

MaeYasha — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:38:08 +0000

haha sorry, should've clarified. I did mean what people are putting their manuscripts in; my Scrivener trial is gonna run out (boo hoo) and me being cheap... I need something else.

Re: editing programs?

moonmomma — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:13:36 +0000

ah, ok. if you have Windows, get yWriter. it's free for unlimited use of the full program, and you can organize your scenes, keep track of characters, stuff like that. I've never tried it, but I've heard lots of good things about it, and the developer is a NaNoer. :-D See the yWriter thread in this forum for more information and reviews.

Re: editing programs?

type247 — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:40:38 +0000

A tip on yWriter: Drag the divider between the left hand side chapter list a couple of inches to the right, that way when you write a quick synopsis or some key words for each chapter, you can see that and make it an at-a-glance outline for your project. Then move the chapters or scenes around accordingly until you are happy with the structure. Brilliant, recommended!

Re: editing programs?

type247 — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:42:33 +0000

[quote=type247] the divider between the left hand side chapter list [/quote] That's between the chapter list and the chapter list ...

Re: editing programs?

type247 — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:44:30 +0000

[quote=type247] the divider between the left hand side chapter list [/quote] That's between the chapter list and the SCENE list ... LOL Not very good at expressing myself in December ...