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novelWriter – open-source plain text editor designed for writing novels

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Re: novelWriter – open-source plain text editor designed for writing novels

#64

Post by Grimm665 »

sicariusnoctis wrote: post #6
maydup-nem wrote: post #3

it's amazing what people will do to avoid using emacs

This is a strange way to say "stubbornly use an editor that is inferior to vim". :P

Genuine question: as a long time Emacs user, and someone with 0 hours writing novels, I feel I would already have a general idea of how to set up Emacs org-mode to be comfortable for novel writing.

How would you approach this task in vim? I use vim extensively, but only on remote servers and without configs or plugins. What plugins or settings would you use to set up vim for novel writing?

Re: novelWriter – open-source plain text editor designed for writing novels

#66

Post by Jeff_Brown »

crooked-v wrote: post #60
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crucial ideas in a piece of fiction, I find I generally can absorb much faster in some other format. It's true that the flavor of the world and the human interactions is lost. But I have an actual world to provide those. I can see the argument that my experience of human interactions is a biased and incomplete sample. That's clearly true. But they are the relevant ones to my experience. And I'm always disappointe…

You seem to be entirely overlooking the existence of books that have very limited stakes and don't even feature "bad guys" in the first place, like Andy Weir's The Martian .

Fighting to survive alone on an alien planet seems pretty high stakes to me.

But you're right, there do exist such books. I said "almost entirely". I admit I'm limited to the sample I've experienced personally but it's over 90%.

Also I admit it omits children's lit and romance novels, which are two huge omissions.

Re: novelWriter – open-source plain text editor designed for writing novels

#67

Post by Jeff_Brown »

spookybones wrote: post #59
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crucial ideas in a piece of fiction, I find I generally can absorb much faster in some other format. It's true that the flavor of the world and the human interactions is lost. But I have an actual world to provide those. I can see the argument that my experience of human interactions is a biased and incomplete sample. That's clearly true. But they are the relevant ones to my experience. And I'm always disappointe…

This comment reads as someone who doesn’t read much fiction. Your misconception is that fiction is merely a capsule for the delivery of ideas rather than being a multifaceted work. It is like someone who proclaims that cuisine is not the best delivery of nutrients, that it’s much easier to blend ingredients, and then, impressed with his assessment, proclaims that he should make his own smoothie.

The "should write a novel" bit was a joke.

To your broader point, it depends what you want out of the novel. If you want world-building and dialog -- as I pointed out -- you won't get those from the Cliff notes.

I think that's fine, as I don't want them. Or rather, I don't want them as much as I want other things I can spend my time on.

And you're right, I don't read much fiction. The only piece I remember reading all year was The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, a short story by Hemmingway. It was fine.

Re: novelWriter – open-source plain text editor designed for writing novels

#68

Post by browningstreet »

flenserboy wrote: post #27
the_lonely_road wrote: post #12

If anyone is looking for a paid product, Scriviner has been amazing for my novel writing productivity. You can sync your smart phone version to your desktop version using Dropbox. It gives you Jira level power over how your organize your project and has really easy export functionality that turns your writing into all kinds of industry standard sizing and layouts. I know it sounds like I'm affiliated based on that gu…

I know plenty of writers who are fond of Scrivener. My personal choice for a paid product (as I use a Mac) is Ulysses — going back and forth between the Mac & iOS versions is painless, and its bare-bones, grouped-file interface fits right with my workflow. Export options are plentiful, and it pairs well with Pandoc. Both are good.

I tried using Ulysses with Leanpub and it wasn't compatible - it adds blank markdown here and there and breaks the Leanpub rendering process.

Couldn't get either Leanpub or Ulysses to fix it, and it was a known problem.

That said, Ulysses is a nice editor, as long as that behavior doesn't cause issues.

Re: novelWriter – open-source plain text editor designed for writing novels

#70

Post by browningstreet »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #67
spookybones wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment reads as someone who doesn’t read much fiction. Your misconception is that fiction is merely a capsule for the delivery of ideas rather than being a multifaceted work. It is like someone who proclaims that cuisine is not the best delivery of nutrients, that it’s much easier to blend ingredients, and then, impressed with his assessment, proclaims that he should make his own smoothie.

The "should write a novel" bit was a joke. To your broader point, it depends what you want out of the novel. If you want world-building and dialog -- as I pointed out -- you won't get those from the Cliff notes. I think that's fine, as I don't want them. Or rather, I don't want them as much as I want other things I can spend my time on. And you're right, I don't read much fiction. The only piece I remember reading al…

This is funny, thank you.

Reminds me of my father, who claims there's no better wine than Carlo Rossi, and no good movie since Dr Zhivago.

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