I recently discovered a novel planner/writing program that doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of publicity behind it yet. It has a lot of good, useful features, so I wanted to do a quick review of it.
Quoll Writer is a free, open-source program with a minimalist feel. Unfortunately, it is currently only available for Windows, but it looks like they are trying to feel out if people are interested in a Mac/Linux version.
You can create scenes, chapters, character bios, locations, and items. This is the main screen:
At the bottom of the main screen’s navigation pane, there are options to save chapter text, add new items (like plot outline, scenes, characters, etc.), edit chapter information, view wordcounts (I’ll come back to this), toggle the spellcheck, delete items, and other tools.
Character Bios:
You can link characters to other characters, as well as tag them to specific chapters. As you can see at the bottom of the Character screen, clicking on any specific page (Character 1, Chapter 1, etc) will open up a new tab rather than a new window. I particularly like this because it cuts down on distraction and makes it much easier to switch between different items.
If you click the fourth symbol on the bottom of the main chapter screen, it will bring up wordcount and other information, including words typed in this session, and words per chapter:
If you click the ‘View Detail’ link, it will bring up a handy chart showing your progress:
You may have noticed by now several icons in the upper right-hand corner. The first of these will take you to an Idea Board, where you can add ideas for chapters, scenes, characters, locations, and items. You also have the ability to create your own Idea categories, which I think is a nice touch.
The symbol on the farthest right will bring up a menu where you can open different projects, save snapshots of your projects, and import and export. It also gives you access to the Warm-Up exercices, which is one of my favorite features of Quoll Writer. It gives you a writing prompt, and you can set a time or wordcount goal. You can even add your own writing prompts.
Another fun feature is the Achievement board. As you use Quoll Writer, you can earn achievements. You can even set Quoll Writer to play a small sound to alert you to a new achievement.
There is also a full-screen, distraction-free mode:
Quoll Writer seems like a great program. So far, I have only found two downsides to this program. The first is that it may be difficult to organize worldbuilding notes. The second is that you cannot import pictures, which is a major drawback for me because I love to include character inspiration pictures. However, I contacted the creators and they said that is a feature they plan on including in one of the future updates.
If you’re interested in learning more about Quoll Writer, you can find a full list of features here, and download it here!
But what if half your ocs are softys and not made for fighting?
dating sim
this post changed the game
Hey btw if you don’t know how to program, you should check out [novelty], which is a free Visual Novel creation software. Absolutely no programming required, and it’s super easy to use, I played with it some when I was a teen but the only reason I didn’t do much with it is cuz I made my story complicated and had like 5000 different branching routes that kept spawning new routes and made myself confused LMAO
But yeah, it’s a WYSIWYG with a really straight-forward GUI, if I remember correctly.
It even comes with some free backgrounds and characters and stuff, and this is what it looks like:
Did I mention it’s super duper free? It hasn’t been updated since 2010, but it has basically all you’d need to make a simple visual novel.
Just make sure your DirectX runtime is updated, cuz it can act buggy if it’s outdated, but this program is so old that I doubt it’d even be an issue lol
holy shit
This is so cool? Can you imagine fanfic in this format?
YO
@becausedragonage@ashidoodle can I recommend Choice Script? It’s like a choose your own adventure coding program. The finished product looks like this, where every option sends you down a different path:
They are literally books you can play. You can even insert your own character’s name and pronouns and that would make writing reader inserts so much easier And as a writer who can not art, writing and making dating sims and games is more convenient.
The coding is also super simple and easy to learn and all it requires other than the program files is a text editor. And just like that you can start typing up like you would your own fanfics or stories. Plus it’s very versatile so you can make your game/book as simple or as complicated as you want, and even implement stats and inventory systems.
AND CHOICE SCRIPT IS ALSO SUPER DUPER FREE. THE COMPANY EVEN PUBLISHES YOUR FINISHED GAME FOR YOU AND GIVES YOU ROYALTIES IF YOU CHOOSE TO SELL IT. THE PROGRAM STILL GETS UPDATED AND THE COMPANY PUBLISHES BOOKS EVERY MONTH INCLUDING THE FANMADE ONES. THERE’S ALSO A FORUMFOR PEOPLE TO POST WIPS AND TALK ABOUT CHOICE SCRIPT AND GET HELP.
For any burgeoning digital storytellers/narrative game devs out there! :)
Also good ol’ Twine is incredibly easy to learn for text games with multiple choices! You don’t even need to deal with images if you don’t want to and it works in the browser (there’s also a downloadable version) and it generates html files that you can play in your browser.
Anyway if you want excuses/community for making visual novels NaNoRenO is about to start (March2022 for those reading this message in the future.) on itch.io (like nanowrimo, but about visual novels!)
It is very important that the language in your novel reflects the time and place in which the story is set.
For example, my story is set in Italy. My characters would never “ride shotgun”, a term coined in US in the early 1900s referring to riding alongside the driver with a shotgun to gun bandits.
Do your research! A free tool that I found to be very useful is Ngram Viewer.
You can type any word and see when it started appearing in books. For example…one of my characters was going to say “gazillion” (I write YA) in 1994. Was “gazillion” used back then?
And the answer is…YES! It started trending in 1988 and was quite popular in 1994.
Enjoy ^_^
This is really important, especially because language can change in very unexpected ways.
For example, did you know that before 1986 people never said “I need to”?Instead, they were far more likely to say “I ought to”, “I have to”, “I must”, or “I should”.
Don’t believe me?
Anyway, most people won’t notice subtle changes like that. But your reader will notice and be confused when characters in your medieval world use metaphors involving railroads and rockets.
One of the things you can do besides use Google Ngrams is to read books or watch movies written in the time period you want to set your story. The key here is that they can’t just be set in that time period, they have to have been made in that time period.
Also, there’s a Lexicon Valley episode on this very topic which I highly recommend. It’s called Capturing the Past.
Absolutely vital for writing any period piece, and it goes back for centuries. I use it frequently when writing my Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell prose, to find out what was common usage in the Georgian/Regency era.
Fantasynamegenerators.com has a LANGUAGE GENERATOR now!!!!!! I’m just starting to play with it, but it looks both easy to use and very in-depth. How cool is this?! Go have a look at it, and if you like it as much as I do, PLEASE click on their support link and make a donation. As a community of writers, this is a site we need to continue to support.Okay, off to make a new language, I guess?! FUN!!!
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