There is little as horrifying to a writer as realizing that the novel you've been working on for months has not only jumped the track; it might not have had a track to begin with. A few weeks ago, I was in this predicament, and I began to approach the concept of outlining my fiction. And, perhaps in an attempt to put off actually writing an outline, I decided to research how other writers do it. In my wanton googling, I stumbled on some free tools that might be of help to others.
The first site of interest I came upon is spacejock.com. The site is run by Simon Haynes, a science fiction novelist who has decided to put his computer programming skills to good use. He offers free software for various tasks, including a novel-writing word processor called yWriter which helps you divide your novel into different chapters and scenes so that you can then rearrange them easily. yWriter also has some other cool features, such as boxes in which to write down the scenes' goals, conflicts, and outcomes, and a character list that can keep character bios close at hand. Rearranging and storyboarding scenes is a drag and drop process.
Another particularly interesting program is the yBook reader, which takes e-books and makes them look more like regular books on the screen, complete with flipping pages. The program also downloads Project Gutenberg's library information so that you can quickly and easily find e-books of classic works by author or title. Other programs on the site include everything from a stock tracker to an MP3 player. The programs aren't flashy, but they work well, and Haynes is open to constructive feedback.
As link leads on to link, I eventually found Freemind, which Haynes says he uses to outline his novels. This is easily one of the nicest pieces of freeware I've ever stumbled across. Essentially, it's a tool for building web-style graphs on your computer, helping you brainstorm, organize daily tasks, or (in theory) plot a novel.
In the end, though, I couldn't do it. I paced the room, played around with several of these programs, and got no closer to figuring out where my novel had stumbled. Instead, I bought packets of multi-colored post-it notes and started placing them in bunches around my living room floor: green for scenes, orange for settings, purple for characters, orange for themes, and blue for motifs. Eventually, after my flatmates grew tired of weaving around plot elements, I started writing again, and thankfully it seems I'm back on some sort of track. So, for me the software might not have been much help with my novel. However, now that Freemind has me organized, this gate post is going up exactly when I'd planned (give or take a day or two).
