WolvenWriter

Hey DragonMaci, Have you gotten anywhere with this? I was kind of hoping that you might have it for sale by now (or at least beta-testing)....

I've tried various speech-recognition programs (including the famed Dragon Naturally speaking) on variously powered platforms with various soundcards, CPUs, microphone configurations, etc. and have found that (so far) they really just don't work for a fiction writer. One odd thing happens when you're writing fiction out loud (think back to the way Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian, etc.) "wrote for the ear" speaking/yelling/acting as he typed, getting out of his chair and choreographing the sword fights around his office and out itn the yard, trying to remember it all and carry it back to the typewriter in his head... Most fiction writers when trying to write outloud "get into character" and even get excited in the fast action parts and all melo-dramatic in the slow, moody scenes. What happens is the voice inflections change and various fluctuations and nuances enter the voice... meanwhile the "trained" voice recognition software was trained to recognize a calm voice speaking as though it were reading something boring -- it has no ability to adjustt for character changes. It certainly does not recognize a change of speakers and make a new paragraph. It can't tell when you're narrating versus dialoging.... The best I've ever gotten out of Dragon Naturally Speaking when writing fiction was about a 22% "sort of" accuracy -- as no writer while writing out loud thinks or says: "End Quote. New Paragraph. Quote" or any of the other ridiculous "typing/formatting commands" that such tools tend to use. Though, perhaps, that might have some minor use for a stream-of-conscioiusness writer that doesn't use punction for speech, but would be pure idiocy for a writer working on an "as told" story within a story (requiring "nested 'punctuation'" around "all 'layers of speech.'") Isacc Asimov tried to record his scenes on a tape player and have his wife type up the stuff. But she was disturbed by his "rantings" and "lunatic voice changes." She couldn't do it. Various hired assitants/secretaries couldn't do it, either. No one could figure out who was saying what to who or where any paragraph should be. Eventually he tried himself to listen to the recordings and he became agitated and disappointed in what he thought was supposed to have been good writing. Recording has proven useful for notetaking. I keep a small digital recorder handy, especially when researching in libraries or museums and have been known to record passages from rare (either glass-cased or un-removable copies). I actually found and adapted a 16th century recipe from a French Inn that way, too. SO... my point is this: Technology ain't there yet for the rantings of fiction writers caught-up in the throes of creativity or passionate visions. Even the voice play-back functions found in some scriptwriting software is down right annoying. Skip these concepts for now. Story and Novel writing is about getting the right words WRITTEN the right way in the right order that carries the visons, emotions and experiences of the characters into the readers hearts and minds. Other than the judicious use of alliteration and onomatopoeia it has nothing to do with sound, but has everything to do with the written word. Only some forms of technical writing really make use of the WAY the words are presented (or displayed)... story and novel writing -- even screenplays and stageplays -- follow rigid manuscript formatting rules (or they don't get published or even read by an agent's assistant or a publishing house's First Reader [who would summarize it and make recommendations to an Editor regarding marketability and audience reception/readership reaction]). SO... stick to the basics of story development and forget the glittzy, glamorous techno-dweeb stuff, and give us writers a toolbox that actually helps get the written word written. Stick to helping writers create, write, organize and reorganize, rewrite, revise, and submit (and even track submissions, agreements and payments for) good works of the written word and you'll achieve a significant contribution to the humanities and the community of authors and writers.

I would like to see a good writing program that allowed a tree structure on the left showing scenes and sequences (series of scenes) that could be layed-out under chapter headings ( and perhaps Parts above that) and given their own names that don't (have to) show-up in the printout. There should also be the ability to have 3-5 alternate scenes, sequences, and chapters for each "piece" of writing. There needs to be a way to distinguish turning-point scenes/sequences from simple story-lines. There also needs to be a way to show concurrency of action (when using a train-wreck [convergent story-lines] plot ) or dependency of action (when using a Hero's Journey or Coming of Age type story-line). All this organizational stuff needs to be visual (recognizable icons) and renamable (placeholder variables that the writer-user can rename for each project) with their base philosophy/syntax stored as a "seed" for all projects to grow from. Obviously, seperate character and setting notes are nice, but most tree programs like TreePad Business Edition or Golden Section Notes makes this fairly simple to do as a seperate companion file for most writing projects. Also readily apparent is the need to manipulate the treed-outline of a novel to easily throw scenes, sequences or chapters around. Spell Checkers are definately necessary but grammer checkers are ridiculous and nearly pointless for stylistic fiction writers. Basic Manuscript Formats right out of Writer's Digest or Writer's Market ought to be the ONLY standard, built-in "Styles" right down to page level and paragraph level for Short Stories and Novel Chapters to Screen Plays and Poetry submissions AND their shuold be an option to eliminate non-standard fonts (Courier New [or Courier Final Draft], Times New Roman, and [sometimes] Arial or Universal are [in most cases] the only fonts most publishers and agents are willing to even look at without throwing your submission from the slush pile to the trash can in one flick of the wrist). Standard formatting for cover sheets/title pages and submissions packaging (Cover Letter, Querry/Synopsis) also ought to be built-in. I use MS-word, psiWord and Abi Word for the writing. Visio for some plotting (Timelines and sequencing), TreePad Business Edition for note-taking, research, character, setting, and background/backstory work -- all the stuff that only makes it into the novel by creative fusion in the writer's mind sifting out what's necessary for the reader from what was needed by the writer to make it all work. Also: real VERSION CONTROL is absolutely necessary on long, complicated projects. One novel I've worked on has "developed"/grown into at least 7 uniquely different ways/styles of writing it (or parts of it: PoV shifts, character changes, time or setting shifts, action-reaction/recovery sequences, PoV "pops", even character intents and purposes have changed beyond mere descriptions or backstory) but keeping track of which files contain which evolutions is a nightmare in Word--basicly, just NOT possible. It would be nice to just hover your mouse cursor over a file's name in the directory and see a good paragraph's worth of description/summary about what that file is in terms of the writing in it just pop-up, rather than having to open a 70,000 to 115,000 word document and try to recognize the subtle and major variations by scanning through it all. Well, that's my wishlist... so far.