Michael said:
The good news is yes there is a storyboard freeware. The bad news is that I
don't have a url or name for it -- I dl'd and tested it about six weeks ago.
It didn't suit my needs so I ditched it. Google on "storyboard freeware" and
see what comes up.
Another possible (free?) solution if you already have Word. Use the labels
feature. Tools | Envelopes and Labels. You can choose one of the pre-sets or
create your own size and number. Then click on the 'New Document' button.
You'll get even space, correctly sized boxes on a page. Essentially Word
will create a table. You can edit the borders, remove them entirely, merge
cells, divide cells, etc according to your needs.
yWriter v2.3.2 - 2858 KB
When designing a software program you break big problems (tasks) into
little ones. Then you break those down into smaller and smaller
problems until each can be tackled easily. Of course, you don't want to
lose sight of the overall project, so you give yourself explicit
outlines for each piece of code. Then it's just a case of coding each
of the little pieces and hooking them together into the finished
application.
Despite the mystical arty aura surrounding the process of fiction
writing, at the end of the day most books can be written in a similar
fashion: Break each novel into chapters, break each chapter into one or
more scenes, and give each scene a goal, some conflict and an outcome.
A scene is a pleasant chunk to work on - small and well-defined, you
can slot them into your novel, dragging and dropping them from one
chapter to another as you interleave strands from different viewpoint
characters and work out the overall flow of your book. You can also
drop a scene completely if you've written yourself into a dead end,
without feeling you've ground to a complete halt.
I'm a programmer and a novelist, and yWriter is the result of 3 or 4
years of development. I really struggled over my first novel because I
wrote whole slabs of text into a great big word processor file and
tried to make sense of the whole thing at once. I then tried saving
each chapter to individual files with great long descriptive filenames,
but moving scenes around was a nuisance and I couldn't get an overview
of the whole thing (or easily search for one word amongst 32 files) In
the end I realised a dedicated program was the way to go, and yWriter
is the result. It may look simple, but as the author of three books
written with this tool I can guarantee it has everything needed to get
a first draft together.
Best of all, yWriter is free.
Features:
- Organise your novel using a 'project'.
- Add files to the project, each containing a chapter.
- Add a summary to each file, showing the scenes in each chapter.
- Print out summary cards, showing the structure of your novel.
- Display the word count for every file in the project, along with a
total.
- Saves a log file every day, showing words per file and the total.
(Tracks your progress)
- Saves automatic backups at user-specified intervals.
- Allows multiple scenes within chapters
- Viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome fields for each
scene.
- Storyboard view, a visual layout of your work.
- Re-order scenes within chapters.
- Move scenes from one chapter to another.
- Automatic chapter renumbering.
http://www.spacejock.com/images/yWriterMain.png
Spacejock Software
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter.html
http://www.spacejock.com/files/yWriter2.exe
