 I previously reviewed one of the first Vooks, back in November of last year. Even in the short amount of time that has transpired since then, there’ve been some nice improvements. I purchased The Master of Rampling Gate by Anne Rice from the iTunes store for $0.99 and installed it on my first generation iPod Touch, which has the latest OS.
What I Like About the New Vook
• Gone are the short dramatizations that repeated part of the text. Instead, there are mini-documentaries that relate to the chapter. I wasn’t against the dramatization, per se, but I had not liked the way it repeated the text, providing no new content. It makes sense to me that this version of the Vook didn’t have them.
• There is now a clearer separation between the story content and the ancillary video material. Once I figured that out, I took out my earphones while I was reading, which is more comfortable for me.
• There were still images included with the text of the book.
 Still Image from the Text Part of the Vook • The videos were high quality and added quite a bit to my enjoyment of the whole Vook experience. Including Gothic Historians for a Gothic piece was fitting as were the older silent-film type clips with voice overs. It was a nice balance between engaging visuals and talking heads.
 The beginning of the first video. • I like the new slider at the bottom to help me navigate at a faster clip through the text. Gone are the up and down arrows at the top that didn’t really do anything for me.
 I liked the slider on the bottom for navigation. The up and down arrows are replaced by the chapter number (3, in this case), and I can have white text on a black background. The blue link leads to a dictionary definition. • Unlike the previous Vook that I’d read, the navigation was consistent and worked fine.
• White text on a black background–hurray!
• The icon for the app was easy to see and it was relevant.
What I Didn’t Like About the Vook
• I wasn’t able to place bookmarks, which has been a standard part of the ebook experience and a feature that I tend to use.
• After stopping and restarting the app, the text of the book doesn’t pick up where I left off. Again, I think this is pretty much expected in any ebook. Likewise, when I went to the table of contents for the book, I couldn’t easily get back to where I had been reading.
• The app bombed twice during the videos. This was never an issue with the previous Vook, but the OS has changed, I’m sure I’ve installed and uninstalled lots of apps, and you just never know where conflicts can arise. It was annoying but I’m not sure I can really fault the Vook. Oh, wait–even as I write this, the iTunes store has offered an update for “typos” and “persistence”.
• I was initially confused by the non-fiction video content at the top or end of a fiction chapter. I think this confusion probably stems from my previous experience where the videos shown in the book were dramatizations of the text. After watching the first video and checking the others, I simply read the story, then watched all of the videos afterward.
 The thumbnail for the video shows Anne Rice in a coffin and I was confused since I thought it might be a dramatization of part of the text. • I’m not sure if the gravedigger in the video about the black plague was a character or not. I’ve decided that he is, although he was so unlike the silent film actors that I couldn’t quite tell.
• Most of the videos end a little abruptly, which is fine, but I was hoping for something a little less abrupt on the last one. I call it the “last” one, although you don’t have to watch them in order.
• A final niggling detail: the video titles in the table of contents didn’t match the title as shown in the video. Oh, this is picky, I know.
Nice Improvement
I enjoyed this Vook much more than the first one and not just because it’s by Anne Rice. Some of things that I had wanted are now here (white text, video that adds context instead of repeating the story). Some items on my wish list are still missing (can’t read text in landscape, can’t listen to my own music while reading). Overall though, I was encouraged by the changes that I found and I’ll probably start to actively look for more Vooks that I might enjoy.
In my quest to find the right tool for my revision, I have passed on the more tangible forms like index cards and sticky notes, as noted in my first post on visual techniques for revision. Then, in my second post, I went to my all-around best-ever writing tool, Scrivener. I found, though, that I needed more layout flexibility and visual flags than are available.
Now, I have ended up where I was probably heading all along, the geek’s delight and the nerd’s best friend. I decided to use the spreadsheet in Google Docs. Here’s the high-level view.
 A Google Docs spreadsheet used as a beat sheet. The names have been Gaussian blurred to protect the innocent. Let’s break it down.
The first column is just a running number that tells me which scene I’m on and also lets me know, by the end, how many total scenes I have.
The 2nd column is my brief description of the scene.
The third column is the type of scene we’re dealing with: Action (blue), Setup (grey), Reaction (green), and Deepening (purple).
The fourth column, column D, is the intensity level of the scene (see Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell for definitions of these). They range in value from 0 to 10.
Column 5, or E, is the POV character in the scene, generally my lead character (LC).
Columns 6 through to the end (columns F through W) are all the characters in the novel. An “X” in a character’s column means they appear in the scene.
Fascinating Rhythm
I can see the entire 69 scene structure, from start to finish, in order. The wide bands of yellow (or mustard) are major plot milestones. I am immediately struck by the long stretches of action, interrupted by setup, reaction, and deepening. I found a few trouble spots, where too much setup was happening together. I’m not sure if I need more deepening scenes, but based on the way the colors are laying out, I need to be on the lookout for lack of deepening as a potential problem.
The diagonal row of X’s that seems to be forming in the upper right quadrant of the snapshot above shows my supporting characters coming into play. Down in the lower right quadrant, as the end of Act II approaches, they have come together as the momentum builds.
Formulaic
Of course, a spreadsheet is much more than just a grid with colors and X’s. You can do calculations and make graphs! I did say this was a geek’s delight.
 Google Spreadsheet Calculations and Chart for My Novel Revision The main formula I use is the “countif” formula. It automatically tallies the number of scenes called “Action”, the number called “Setup”, and so on. I then do a little division to see how heavily weighted my novel is with respect to these scene types. I am gratified to see that action scenes predominate and that it’s falling into line with other books in the genre.
What I’ve Learned
Types of Scenes – Although I wrote from an outline, I wasn’t really aiming for a certain percentage of this type of scene versus another. Instead, I was writing with a fairly quick pace in mind, something that just felt right, after reading and analyzing other novels.
POV – I also wasn’t aiming for more lead character POV either. I wrote each scene from the POV that made the most sense for the scene and also the overall character arcs in the book. At one point after the first draft was written, while it was aging in my Dropbox folder, I had thought the whole novel might be done in the first-person. Then, when I saw what I actually had (10 of my 69 scenes are narrated by someone other than the lead character) I decided against that. I’m also bothered somewhat by the number of supporting characters. I believe I’ve made them distinct from one another, but I’ll have to read for this as I revise.
Intensity – Although the intensity scale “countif” calculations look like a classic bell curve, with the majority of my scenes in the 4, 5, and 6 range, the graph of intensity over the chronological course of novel shows it edging ever higher, until the climax and denouement. I’m bothered by the flat period in the middle of the book. I’ll need to pay special attention there to try to ramp it up slowly or perhaps interrupt it with a different kind of scene altogether that would still fit the logical flow of the narrative.
Number of Scenes – Because Scrivener doesn’t have a way to automatically number the binder documents, I was under a misconception when it came to the total number of scenes I had. The spreadsheet cleared that up quickly. Although I wrote to an outline, I deviated it from it as necessary as I wrote. I both added and subtracted scenes on the fly and now see that I ended up a little short, although the word count (not part of my spreadsheet) is about where I wanted it (85K).
Onward
Although I didn’t intend to create a beat sheet on steroids, that’s what I’ve done, in my quest for a visual technique that helps me to approach the first revision of a novel. I believe I have some idea of the big picture now. I also have a document to which I can refer as I make revisions. Now I feel prepared to dive in for a closer look (whether I’m really prepared or not). Since that’s all this visual technique was supposed to do in the first place, time to start revising.
Scrivener is my “go to” tool for writing, bar none. I’ve blogged about it previously. Be it fiction, non-fiction, blog posts or random notes, I adore the inherent organizational tools. In terms of plotting, I like to look at the binder as a quick summary of each scene.
But, as I noted in my first post about visual revision tools and techniques, I was looking for something visual in terms of writing technique, something that might help me really see my structure, pace, character development, and point of view in order to reveal whatever flaws and holes there might be.
Scrivener’s Corkboard
So, I turned to the corkboard interface that Scrivener offers. I know that some writers adore this feature of Scrivener, especially when it comes to plotting and revision. This is what my effort looked like.
 See the binder of documents on the left, the corkboard in the middle, and the inspector on the right. Scene Types in Color
According to James Scott Bell’s breakdown of scene “chords” or types, I’ve used the color of the index cards as follows:
Blue = Action
Grey = Setup
Green = Reaction
Pink = Deepening
I’ve set these up by customizing the first pull-down menu in the General window pane of the inspector. I can change how many index cards are in each row, such that all the index cards show, but not in a linear way, not in the way a plot might progress, beginning to end. I can get a general idea of how many actions scenes I have relative to others, although I can’t really see how the action is rising or falling, again, in a linear or chronological way.
POV in the Stamp
I’ve also used the stamp. Each card is stamped with the POV character for that scene. Again, I’m trying to establish, for the purposes of revision, if it’s lopsided, or if the ebb and flow of the different narrator voices serves a useful purpose in terms of the plot structure. I’ve customized the second pull-down menu, below the first, to accomplish this stamp.
A Wish List
But now that I’ve customized these two menus, I’m done. Unfortunately, for the purposes of analyzing the first draft, I’d also like to look at a few other things as well: I’d like to set the intensity level for a scene (numbered 0 to 10), I’d like to know the setting of the scene, and I’d even like to know where the major plot milestones are falling. Just those few things would mean that I’d need three more pull-down menus that I can customize.
Let’s just say I could have those new pull-down menus. How would they get displayed on the cards? I could possibly have a second stamp or perhaps it’s possible for the card to be colored one way and the pin a different way. Honestly, I haven’t a clue as to how my new scene information might be shown.
So my pursuit of the big picture, being able to see the entire novel at once, continues. In my final post, I find that the spreadsheet is the tool for me.
Pending critiques from my fabulous reader, I have set aside the previous WIP (now with a new subplot and a faster pace) and turned my attention to an entirely different WIP. At 85,000 words, it’s not an enormous first draft, not by any stretch, and yet, it looms.
I found that after so many words and so much text, that I wanted something visual in terms of beginning this revision. Although I’m as digital as they get, I investigated all manner of visual revision techniques. I was looking for something that could show me the structure and pace of the novel, virtually at a glance. Although I never did light upon the magic method that would make clear to me my path, I found several things to think about.
In this three-part series on methods of visual revision, I want to share with you the results of my searching and the two applications that I ultimately used (Scrivener and Google Docs’ spreadsheet) to give me a handle on the big picture.
Hey, it’s called the big picture for a reason.
This first post is my breadcrumb trail of the internet resources that I pondered. Each has good information on revision and plotting, as well as offering something in terms of a visual technique.
The Index Card Method and Structure Grid by Alexandra Sokoloff
Although I’ve analyzed novels using the index card method, I’ve never written or revised one using it. While the article doesn’t provide any images of index cards on a corkboard, they’re readily imagined. In spite of many writers employing the use of index cards, I still resist it (not digital enough or neat enough and my handwriting sucks). Ironically, I would later use Scrivener’s corkboard and index card view.
The Beat Sheet – Your at-a-glance revision blueprint by Roz Morris
Again, no images, but Roz provides a complete description on how the beat sheet should be drawn and colored, with a passing nod toward the spreadsheet.
How to Write a Book by C. J. Omololu
I thought this was an interesting spin on using a grid on paper. I particularly liked how adjacent grids were next to each other for a reason.
Plotting? Moi? by Terry Odell
Of multi-colored sticky notes and a foam core triptych–and finally, a picture here.
Nano Tip #13: Pace Charts by Scott Westerfeld
Scott used to use a spreadsheet but is now using Scrivener’s corkboard. It would seem we are ships passing in the night.
How to write a novel by Justine Larbalestier
Justine is using a spreadsheet and coming dangerously close to what I think will turn out to be my favorite method.
Plotting with Scenes by Darcy Pattison
I enjoyed the images of office products that might prove handy.
Below are some visual techniques for brainstorming, not really for revision, but I didn’t want to leave them out.
Bigger Paper, Bigger Ideas by Kitty Bucholtz
Sometimes it takes something very different to break out of a writing rut or see things in a new way.
Brainstorming with the Wonder Wheel by Shonna Slayton
I just had to play with the wonder wheel. It is Google after all.
SimpleMind Express
It’s a free tool for the iPhone or the iPod touch that’s similar to Google’s Wonder Wheel. I’ve used it a couple of times, just to see what the brain would storm.
Do you have a visual technique that you use for writing?
Oh what a wonderful resource the internet is for writers. Of course I regularly buy books about writing, but sometimes I just want a quick answer to something that’s going on in my WIP. Today’s issue was backstory.
In the whole media res mode, after reading over and over again about how important that first part of the manuscript is and how it needs to hook the reader and then not let up, I chopped out the first four chapters of the WIP. Ouch. I got right to the dead body. Bam.
It was liberating, exciting, and totally writerly! It also left me with a huge backstory hole. The new first chapter has a sequence of scenes where the characters now have insufficient motivation for what they do.
So, some judicious use of backstory seemed to be in order and I had thought that I might try a brief flashback. That’s where the wonderful internet resources come in and I thought I’d share them.
Anatomy of a Flashback by Peter Selgin
Mastering the Long Flashback by Anna Staniszewski
Mastering the Short Flashback by Anna Staniszewski
Short Story Flashbacks by Anna Staniszewski
All About Backstory by Rachelle Gardner
Fatal Backstory by Darcy Pattison
Writing Flashbacks by Darcy Pattison
Ask the editor: 7 techniques for a dynamite plot by Alan Rinzler
Ask the editor: Tips for blending in the backstory by Alan Rinzler
My take-away: Try a mini-flashback. I kept it to one four-sentence paragraph. I showed what motivated it. I departed from a strong scene. I summarized the past, instead of reenacting it. One sentence with the word “would” got me into the flashback and one sentence got me out. Done.
Does it work? I think so, but I’ll leave it up to my beta reader to decide!
Do you have any flashback techniques that you like?
Do you use flashbacks at all?
In fact, I’m pretty sure he was.
“Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, fell in love with the handsome Theseus the moment she saw him disembark from the boat that had brought the pitiful group of Athenian youths and maidens for the Minotaur. She found a way to talk with him, and declared that she would supply a means to help him back out of the labyrinth if he would promise to take her away from Crete with him and make her his wife. The pledge was given. Ariadne turned for help, then, to the crafty Daedalus, by whose art the labyrinth had been constructed and Ariadne’s mother enabled to give birth to its inhabitant. Daedalus simply presented her with a skein of linen thread, which the visiting hero might fix to the entrance and unwind as he went into the maze. It is, indeed, very little that we need! But lacking that, the adventure into the labyrinth is without hope.
The little is close at hand. Most curiously, the very scientist who, in the service of the sinful king, was the brain behind the horror of the labyrinth, quite as readily can serve the purposes of freedom. But the hero-heart must be at hand. For centuries Daedalus has represented the type of the artist-scientist: that curiously disinterested, almost diabolic human phenomenon, beyond the normal bounds of social judgment, dedicated to the morals not of his time but of his art. He is the hero of the way of thought–singlehearted, courageous, and full of faith that the truth, as he finds it, shall make us free.
And so now we may turn to him, as did Ariadne. The flax for the linen of his thread he has gathered from the fields of the human imagination. Centuries of husbandry, decades of diligent culling, the work of numerous hearts and hands, have gone into the hackling, sorting, and spinning of this tightly twined yarn. Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
In fiction, it is often said that the first line of the story is the most important. I have my favorites, as I’m sure you do. As a non-fiction writer, though, I began to wonder about first lines of non-fiction. So, without having to go far, I looked up the first lines in the following works of non-fiction and thought I’d spring them on you.
His arrival in Philadelphia is one of the most famous scenes in autobiographical literature: the bedraggled 17-year-old runaway, cheeky yet with a pretense of humility, straggling off the boat and buying three puffy rolls as he wanders up Market Street.
Walter Isaacson
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
John Wilkes Booth awoke Good Friday morning, April 14, 1865, hungover and depressed.
James L. Swanson
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer
Vatican propaganda notwithstanding, Peter was never “bishop of Rome.”
Thomas Cahill
Pope John XXIII: A Life
“I promise you four papers,” the young patent examiner wrote his friend.
Walter Isaacson
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary history took place on a cool and misty late autumn afternoon in 1896, in the small village of Crowthorne in the county of Berkshire.
Simon Winchester
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
In the early nineties (it might have been 1992 but it’s hard to remember when you’re having a good time) I joined a rock-and-roll band composed mostly of writers.
Stephen King
On Writing
If the intended reader of this book should want to go beyond disagreement with its author and try to identify the sins and deformities that animated him to write it (and I have certainly noticed that those who publicly affirm charity and compassion and forgiveness are often inclined to take this course), then he or she will not just be quarreling with the unknowable and ineffable creator who–presumably–opted to make this way.
Christopher Hitchens
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
I am not all here, it’s true.
Terry Brooks
Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life
The title of this book differs by only two letters from that of a book first published in 1988.
Stephen Hawking with Leonard Mlodinow
A Briefer History of Time
In November 2008 the surviving members of the original Monty Python team, stunned by the extent of digital piracy of their videos, issued a very stern announcement on YouTube.
Chris Anderson
Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Flying into Australia, I realized with a sigh that I had forgotten again who their prime minister is.
Bill Bryson
In a Sunburned Country
What should we have for dinner?
Michael Pollan
The Omnivore’s Dilemna: A Natural History of Four Meals
Anybody else have non-fiction line they’d like to throw out?
Do any of these lines make you want to read the book? Or just the first paragraph?
Yet again I have retooled the web site–with more plans down the line. Today’s exercise was one in which I took the latest blog posts and put them in their own section, instead of having them located on the home page. It was incredibly easy using built-in Wordpress settings and some of the theme options for Atahualpa. It makes the site feel more like a, well, a site, and less like just a blog. It took all of thirty minutes.
It also de-emphasizes the blog aspect of the site, since I do less of it. More and more, I apply the time that I have to the work-in-progress and other writing duties. I think it’s “putting the platform before the publishing” to spend too much time on blog entries and not enough on outlining, drafting, and revising. The same goes for social media.
Of course, now that I’ve relegated the blog to an interior page of the site, I blog. It must be that I feel the pressure less.
The fact is that writing something long (like the WIP) has accompanying longish periods where, were I to blog about it, I’d say the same thing from day to day, week to week, and even month to month.
Enough of that. Time to write.
 Wow, I had never realized how much I didn’t want a Kindle until a free one was offered to me. Yes, as the earth shudders in anticipation of the Apple iPad, Amazon has heard the buzz–and is responding.
I have blogged, commented, and tweeted about my great admiration for ebooks, and my great desire not to have to move boxes of books ever again. I have also been a purchaser of digital books. It would seem, however, that I am also “an unusually active book customer” and so deserving of a limited-time offer: buy a 6″ Kindle for $249 and, if I’m not happy with it, get a refund AND keep the Kindle. Say what?
Yes, you read that right. Essentially buy it in the next few days, use the Kindle with my Amazon account, send an email within 30 days that I’d like a full refund (including shipping), and get my money back. It’s a free Kindle.
Well, I’ve seen them in public and always kind of wanted to try one. But one of the reasons I’m an active ebook buyer is that I’m pretty darn satisfied with my current ebook reader–my first generation iPod Touch. It fits in a pocket or purse easily, it also has games, movies, music, news, RSS feeds, e-mail, and the web (if I’m near WiFi). I’ve had it for a couple of years now and it has yet to show its age. It’s got about thirty audiobooks on it now and about thirty ebooks as well.
Well, who knew that “free” could be so clarifying. I like gadgets, but I think I’ll pass on this one.
Anybody out there like their Kindle more than their iPod or iPhone?
Rather than write about writing, or how my WIP is going, or actually work on my WIP, I spent pretty much an entire day listing the books that I’m currently reading in the sidebar (do have a look over there). Had I coded it by hand in a simple widget, it would have taken about 30 minutes. But why do that when I can spend a whole day on it?
I started looking for WordPress plugins that would take an ISBN number and then magically produce a list for me. I downloaded and installed several, only to remove them (some just didn’t work, some didn’t use thumbnails, some only showed one book). Although it didn’t quite do what I wanted, I finally settled on the Now Reading Reloaded plugin and started customizing it. I already had the Amazon AWS key (the thumbnails are pulled from there), so it was just a matter of changing the php templates. Of course, because the plugin is nice enough to produce several different kinds of pages (a list of all books, past and present, books by a particular author, books in the sidebar, books with certain tags that you can search for) I had to fiddle with the templates for all of these pages, because I’m so picky.
Of course, I also had to revisit the whole PHP4 versus PHP5 issue as well, for my ISP which runs an Apache server. Ugh.
By the end of the day, I had basically got most everything functioning, and then I had to start populating the new database. As of now, I’ve only listed a few books, but will work on listing more, particularly as they relate to writing. It just seemed to me that because reading and writing are so connected, it seemed weird not to show books that I’m reading if I’m talking about writing. It’s also an opportunity for a shout out on the books that have really made a positive impact.
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