Chapter To Write Your Text In

In WriteItNow, and with The Writer’s Interface, you can write your actual chapter text right into all the planning that you do. Note the square cross above as a button. When you click on this you produce a blank chapter with no title. Where it says Title put your title: something like: Chapter Story 1. At the left the title will appear as written when you type text into the below text box.

The little buttons just above the text box contain menus for common functions like copying text. An important button there is Links. This function you might use a lot in story development. You place your cursor in the text where you want to start a link. A link is a connection between two or more diverse elements to indicate similarity. Thus, if a certain action appears in chapter one you want to follow up on in chapter four, make a link at where that element, character, action, etc. is in the text of Chapter 1 and then click the Link button and read the little menu which has a list of chapters on it and click the right one. Then while you are in Chapter 4 you can link back to Chapter 1. As you build story you will find this useful to keep reviewing and heightening the connections in the story that are important. Do major ones, not necessarily minor ones. The reader is always making connections in her or his mind. So build them in.

You don’t print out in WriteItNow 3 to paper. You export a rtf file, or a text file, which can be read by any word processor. You can even export in html and thus read your text with a Web Browser. The export menu shows a list of options that you checkmark. Thus you can checkmark only chapters and thus have a file of only chapters. Thus you will have your story chapters and your planning chapters, and will have to eliminate your planning chapters in the word processor you use. Your planning chapters may be first useful in reviewing your story planning intentions. Then you eliminate them to produce your final text.

Chapters do not have a menu function that directly links them to characters or to events. Character pages have a chart of relationships between characters but not to chapters or events. We look for these functions to appear in the next edition of the WriteItNow software, but, hey, no guarantee! With the present software you might want to link characters to scenes by the linking button and function. You can link chapters to characters and events, and the reverse also.

The Links button will give a little menu that says: add Chapter link, or Event link, and so on to the main folder titles at the top. This cross-linking function is amazingly useful in developing interconnectivity.

Interconnectivity

Many good novels fall down on interconnectivity. Imagine a writer trying to do this all in his or her head! WriteItNow makes it easy for you, but you have to actively use it. A novel can appear effective in some aspects only, such as with a great action plot or a major character description, and fall down miserably in other story element areas. Don’t miss out on interconnectivity. It makes your story deeper to read and figure out, and to amaze at times. Both The Writer’s Interface and the WriteItNow organizing software are intelligently crafted tools. Use them well to heighten your own intelligence and story-telling ability. Intelligence used beats out the competition!

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