Writing Tools

While I'm working my way through the endgame of Mass Effect 3, it appears that much of my thought is focused on my writing. This doesn't really come as a shock to me since as a story junkie, I'm often inspired to think of my own stories while experiencing someone else's. (The Great Backlog War of 2012 continues, though, and I'm making significant progress on this particular front.) As I was putting the finishing touches on Monday's post, I started thinking about the status of the outline for my steampunk murder mystery story, and that made me consider the writing tools I'm currently using. I know there are a lot of great options for novel-writing software, but I thought that I'd take a minute or ten and walk you all through the software I use. Hopefully, it will also help me evaluate how well these programs fulfill my needs as a writer, and maybe even generate some comments from you all that will help me find something even better.



First up, we have WikidPad. I first heard about this program on the Writing Excuses podcast, and it's been a pretty useful tool for worldbuilding so far. I've used it most for keeping track of a couple of my RPG campaigns, but it's also been useful in putting together story bibles for my writing projects. So, for those of you who haven't clicked on the link yet, what is WikidPad? It's what would happen if Windows Notepad and Wikipedia had a baby. Each page in a WikidPad notebook is arranged into a collapsible tree on the left side of the application window, and you can use simple wiki markup to generate links between certain pages. For instance, if I were writing your standard fantasy novel with elves, dwarves, and orcs, I could have a main page for races with a link to each of those specific entries. And because this is still just in Rich Text Format, I can include as much text on this page as I want. I can freely comingle links, text, tables, and whatever else you want on a single page. When I create a new link, WikidPad automatically creates a new page and connects it to the one I just linked from, allowing me to include more detail about my particular flavor of elves (chipotle BBQ, if anyone was interested).

As I said before, WikidPad is a very simple tool, but it's great when you're brainstorming and want to have all of your ideas at your fingertips. I like to think of it as a digital ideaboard with 3"x5" cards and string, like you would see in a private investigator's office in an old hard-boiled detective film. You put your ideas on your cards (the pages), tack them up on the board (the project notebook), and then connect them however you want with the string (links and other markup). WikidPad is only currently available for Windows, but it's completely free on SourceForge. (Long live the open source revolution! :))

Now for the downside: This is a terrible program for actually writing your book. Howard Tayler mentioned this shortcoming on Writing Excuses, and I've corroborated his opinion in my use of WikidPad. The problem doesn't come from the software, though. Like I said, it's basically just a simple word processor with some wiki markup language tacked on. WikidPad falls down as a composition program because we as human beings can't resist clicking on links. The program works fine as a resource, but constantly marking up and being tempted to click on links would slow down even the most relentless writing juggernaut. To add another complication to the multitudinous links you're sure to have when using this program, you can find yourself linking in an infinite loop if you're not careful, and that can get very confusing very quickly.

Second, we have Liquid Story Binder XE. While WikidPad is the simplest implement in my writing toolbox, Liquid Story Binder is easily the most complicated, but not necessarily in a bad way. LSBXE is a toolbox in and of itself. You have sections for character dossiers, image galleries, chapter builders, word processing, and even a music playlist all in one program. My personal favorite is the ability to write scenes and then arrange them into chapters, which you can then arrange into your book itself. And that's only a small portion of the features the program has. It may look daunting at first, but practice has helped me make things work the way I want it to. Plus, you can customize nearly everything in the program to make it just the way you like. It really is a writer's dream program.

Or it can be a nightmare. The program is complex, with multiple ways of doing things and a plethora of tools to use. (This series of user-made tutorials will help, though.) The multitude of options can easily bog you down in just setting up the software, keeping you from your writing. The high cost of the program can also be a negative against it, but it looks like you can still get it for free through TrialPay like I did. (You can find the offer here. Oh, and once you register, you get program updates for free.)

Personally, I love using LBSXE. It fits the way I want to work, even though I do get a little too caught up in customizing my environment sometimes. I really think that problem would go away, though, if I devoted enough time to writing that I figured out the exact configuration I wanted for the program.

And it looks like I've really found my go-to tool here: Liquid Story Binder XE. While WikidPad has the simple, wikified worldbuilding that I find useful, the sheer number of tools in LBSXE (including a mindmap that allows me to use story webs to build settings) pushes it to the top of my list. And since I paid nothing for it other than trying out Netflix for a couple of weeks (I think that was the TrialPay offer I used, anyway), I've liked having it even more. So, if you'll excuse me, I need to go dust off my murder mystery outline and flesh it out a bit more. If you have ideas or suggestions you've found useful in your own writing, feel free to leave a comment. I'm always looking for ways I can get myself out of the way and let the writing happen.