Tools for (budding) novelists

If you want to write a novel, script or short story, you could just fire up a word processor like LibreOffice Writer. In doing so, however, you can quickly lose sight of your characters, get bogged down by subplots, and finally deliver a boring, convoluted narrative.

This can be prevented by careful planning using a specialized authoring tool. Such tools first deconstruct your story into individual, standalone scenes. You can then list and sort them into correct order. That way, you always have an overview of the process and the overall story arc.

The whole process can be managed before actually penning your story. First, you set the scenes necessary for the action and only then write the necessary text second.

Who's Who

Longer stories in particular usually have several plot threads, which occasionally come together. Good authoring tools manage these threads separately. This way, you do not run the risk of forgetting about a subplot. The tools also manage all existing characters together with their biographies, so you can quickly check if Erica actually met Carl at the beginning of the story.

Some authoring tools also generate useful statistics that, among other things, flag overly long or short chapters. Thanks to built-in version management, you can always go back to a previous copy of your story at any time. You can also record any inspiring ideas on a virtual Post-it.

The most popular free authoring tools are currently bibisco, Manuskript, oStorybook, and Plume Creator. All four are available under the GNU GPL, but they differ greatly in terms of functionality and operation. See Table 1 for a summary of features.

bibisco

When Andrea Feccomandi wanted to start his first novel, he couldn't find any suitable software, so he quickly developed bibisco [1]. After downloading the Novel Writing Software , unpack it from the archive and start it by typing ./ bibisco in the directory it creates. When you create a new book project, you must set the text language. This can't be changed afterwards.

To create your story, work through the menu items from left to right along the top. Each of them reveal specific questions and tasks (Figure 1). For example, bibisco asks you what the main character looks like. By entering the appropriate answers, you will gradually go from a short summary to a detailed description of the story arc. The tasks and questions posed by bibisco can be marked as not yet completed, almost finished, or complete.

Figure 1: Bibisco takes you by the hand and provides valuable tips for most areas. There is even a list of writing books.

Bibisco asks you to describe the appearance of every character in your story, such as the hair color and even the shape of the nose (Figure 2). If necessary, add pictures to your profile. Sadly you cannot freely describe the character in a large text field. Bibisco distinguishes only between main and secondary characters. Relationships between the characters are recorded in your answers.

Figure 2: Bibisco hides the structure of the story, character bios, and plot development when writing a scene in the sidebar on the left.

Bibisco divides novels into chapters, which in turn consist of several scenes. The text input always takes place in a rudimentary text editor. To resize it, you must close it, then enlarge the main window, and reopen the editor. You can only select from three fonts and three font sizes, as well as bold, italic, underline, and crossed text. You can also insert bulleted or numbered lists. For new paragraphs, the editor automatically indents the first line slightly.

You can also align text left, right, center, or block. Symbols can be used to insert typographical quotes and dashes. The spellcheck is performed in the language you choose. At the bottom of the screen, the editor displays both a word and character count. The built-in version management saves different revisions of a scene on request. Images can't be inserted into the text, and you also have to note any ideas in a separate section of the program.

You can assign a predefined keyword to a scene. These include, among other things, all the locations and characters you previously created. Bibisco can only generate statistics after some text has been entered. The tool then reveals how often the individual figures appear in the respective chapters. However, you must interpret these statistics yourself. The completed work can be exported as PDF, in RTF format, or in a compressed archive. When you export as PDF, you'll get a second PDF with all the story data stored in bibisco itself.