SFWW General

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General discussions from members.

Writing software? e.g. Dramatica & Storyview

Submitted by eddycurrents on Sun, 03/07/2004 - 9:45am

I guess the grandaddy is Dramatica Pro, now at version 2.0. The price is a little steep, but it would be worth it in revision time savings I suppose, and of course one sale would pay for it. The other one from the same outfit (Write Brothers, hahahah) that looks interesting is StoryView and they got another one, WordMenu.

http://www.screenplay.com/products/index.html

Can also use:

www.dramatica.com
www.storyview.com

Anyone tried these?

New use for email spam

Submitted by eddycurrents on Tue, 02/03/2004 - 8:38am

Names! Some of them are pretty good in a spec fiction setting. The spammers must use name generators to make something that looks reasonable but isn't a real person... to dupe you into opening the email of course. But I just copy the name and delete the spam. Haha.

OpenOffice

Submitted by eddycurrents on Wed, 10/08/2003 - 1:43pm

This is very very cool. There is an open source (free!) Office suite. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to install it on a spare computer at home soon.

Supposedly this is 100% compatible with Microshaft Office, presumably without some of the extra features.

That's okay by me, because I haven't found any new useful features since Office 97. All that extra crap Microshaft throws in to get people to buy new versions just slows it down and makes it bigger.

So if you can't afford MS Office or don't need the bloat, try out:

http://www.openoffice.org/

Audiobooks + portable MP3 player = sweet combo

Submitted by eddycurrents on Mon, 09/08/2003 - 5:03pm

I bought a wee portable flash MP3 player a few months ago. I chose the MPIO FL-100 because it was very small, has lots of memory, has FM radio and voice recorder functions, and has some features perfect for audiobooks: it has a fast forward, rewind, and it will automatically start playing where it left off.

I downloaded a couple of audiobooks off the internet... ok I didn't pay for them exactly but I did own the books... anyway, it worked like gangbusters and I was hooked.

I slip this little fella in a pocket when I leave in the morning, and anytime during the day when I have a few minutes to kill -- and it's amazing how many of those times there are -- I pop in my earbuds and listen to a few minutes of my book. Time spent idling in traffic or standing in lineups is no longer wasted time.

Last month, I had a 5 1/2 hour flight, in economy (ugh). I listened to an audiobook while standing in the check-in line, while boarding the plane, throughout the entire flight, while picking up my luggage, and during the taxi ride to the hotel. Bloody marvellous! Rather antisocial too, but oh well.

I find reading on a plane gives me a neckache, but with an audiobook you just lean back and close your eyes. Plus, I find reading while driving causes me to swerve. Audiobooks are much safer.

I downloaded some public domain audiobooks (yes there are a few), but once I was done all the freebies, I felt guilty about pirating, so I looked around. Buying audiobooks in a bookstore costs a fortune, and they come on tapes or CDs that you have to convert (time consuming process) to MP3.

Then I found Audible.com. Their audiobooks come already in MP3 format (kinda, see below) and are much cheaper than a pack of CDs. Or you can subscribe: for $15 per month, you get 2 audiobooks up front and 1 per month thereafter, plus 1 audio magazine or newspaper per month. For $20 per month, you get 3 audiobooks up front and 2 every month thereafter. You can always buy more audiobooks at regular club prices (which like I said, are much cheaper than in a bookstore and they are already in MP3).

The catch is, and it's a biggie: they don't really come in MP3 format. They come in Audible's own format, which can only be played on your computer or on one of their supported players (there are actually a lot of supported players).

Or you can burn them to CDs, but then you have to convert all those CDs back to MP3. It's like the bookstore in reverse... then forward again.

The reason they do this is for copyright protection. Their special format makes it harder to indiscriminately copy the books and send them around.

And it's actually a very good format: very high compression ratios with little loss of voice quality. It's much better than MP3. Plus -- and this is cool -- it has a place marker, so if you stop listening to the audiobook and then listen to music on your player for a while, then go back to the audiobook, it starts up again exactly where you left off.

HOWEVER... I don't have one of their special players, so I had to find a way around all this. GoldWave (shareware) can copy their special format and convert it to MP3. (You have to use version 3.5 of the AudibleManager software though, the newer version blocks the copy.)

Then I use CoolMP3 Splitter to split the big long MP3 file that Goldwave spits out into 1 hour chunks. That way, if I lose my place, it doesn't take so long to fast forward or rewind back to it. I also found a piece of software to rename a group of files and another to set up a group of MP3 tags.

All this takes time, but not much of yours. You just let the software chug away.

And it works! I just bought audiobook versions of Stephen King's "From a Buick 8" and Robert Jordan's "Crossroads of Twilight". They are in MP3 format in 1 hour chunks on my hard drive.

FYI, "From a Buick 8" is around 15 hours long, so it's in 15 individual MP3 files. Total is around 183 MB in MP3 format.

"Crossroads of Twilight" is a whopping 26 hours long, so it's in 26 individual files. Total is around 342 MB in MP3 format. When I downloaded it in Audible's special format, it was only 91 MB. That's good compression!

Windows media format is much better at compressing voice than MP3, as well. MP3 is the most portable though.

If you want more details of how I did all this, which software I used, which compressions I used, let me know.

Of course, if you buy one of the MP3 players that Audible supports, you can just use their (superior) format and you don't need to mess with any of that conversion stuff.

Why is SciFi/fantasy viewed differently than other genres?

Submitted by camidon on Sat, 09/06/2003 - 3:18pm

Herbie brought up a good point about mentioning to someone you write science fiction or fantasty. So often this genre is deemed as adolescent fiction, or adventure fiction, and therefore not worthy of literary statis.
Why do people think this. I have my own thoughts whch I'll toss out eventually.

One thing I don't tell people is that I'm a science fiction writer. I ONLY tell them I'm a writer, and then if they ask, I get more specific. I tell them the different things I have written or do write: newspaper articles, young adult/ childrens books, fiction, science fiction, etc. I'm a writer first, and then I let my ideas take me where they will, no matter what genre they may be.

I've never been one to focus on classifications, and I think the classification of science fiction has only served to dilute its literary value. Why is Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" worthy of the title "fiction" but Dick's "Do Android's Dream" or Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" get classified as scifi? They're all fiction. There's good fiction and bad fiction. There's good science fiction and bad science fiction. It's far too easy to classify all science fiction as unliterary.

I'll leave it at that for now, and jump in with more shortly

suggesting some category changes

Submitted by EmptyKube on Fri, 08/22/2003 - 8:47pm

Thought I'd repost this since I don't think anyone saw it before.
Anythoughts? Other suggestions?
Mike

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2003 6:06 pm Post subject: suggestion

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well...not that anyone has used these boards much since they went up, but I was thinking, which is always dangerous. How about a board where Elizabeth and Anneliese can post the transcripts of chats, so anyone who doesn't get to go can can come and read, and feel enlightened. Long ago, the chat transcripts used to be mailed out to everyone, so this is just a variation on that. Also, how about someplace where the que/schedule is posted for easy reference?
Just food for thought.
Mike

My hallucinations....

Submitted by EmptyKube on Sat, 08/09/2003 - 6:08pm

Interesting heading, right? :D
So anyway, I mentioned in an email I've been devouring alot of Phillip K. Dick lately. You might say I'm addicted, which is ironic given his many psyche elevating injestions. I was watching a DVD about him called the Gospel According to Phillip K. Dick in which friends and collegues were discussing his mystic awakening and a thing he called "the pink beam"
(which was, according to Dick himself, either a Soviet telepathy beam which he happened to be in the right state of mind to recieve, alien transmissions into his brain, or his personal hallucination) when I dozed off. Startled awake, I crawled to bed, fell promptly asleep, only to awaken a short time later feeling like a thousand bugs were crawling on me. I pulled myself together, fell back to sleep, only to start dreaming of
androids programmed to think they were people, oppressive government agencies, and some really amazing Greatful Dead music.
My wife tried to shake me awake, but apparently I muttered something about "not now I'm tripping" and fell back to sleep. Mind you I've never done a serious drug in my life. Hmmm...maybe I was channeling PKD :wink:
Anyway, I think its time to move on to less disturbing literature. Maybe
something ligh like Lovecraft...

Why is writing viewed differently than other hobbies?

Submitted by eddycurrents on Fri, 08/08/2003 - 10:38am

Say you play guitar, or piano. You practice daily, and even though you aren't very good, people will still ask you to play something. They (probably) won't laugh, and they will say things like "that's pretty good" or "we should play together sometime". At a party, you can say you play the piano, and people won't immediately ask, "Oh, have you recorded anything?"

Say you paint, or sculpt. You practice daily, and even though you aren't very good, people will still ask to see your paintings or sculptures. They (probably) won't laugh, and they will say things like "that's pretty good" or "can I have that one?" At a party, you can happily say you paint, and people won't immediately ask, "Oh, have you sold anything?"

Say you write. You practice daily, and even though you are pretty good, people won't ask to see your writing. They (probably) won't laugh, but sometimes they do, so generally you don't tell anyone. At a party, if you reluctantly say you write, people will immediately ask, "Oh, have you published anything?"

Writing is a creative pursuit like any other. Why is it less legitimate if you aren't getting paid for it? How come you aren't a "real writer" until you get something published?

The above thoughts came to me a couple of years ago, in my first writing class. They were most liberating!

Consider this analogy:

I play guitar, and play for and with people sometimes, but I don't ever expect to record anything. That doesn't stop me from playing.

When I learn a new song on my guitar, I don't consider the time spent learning it wasted.

As I learn new songs on my guitar, I tend to forget old ones. Sometimes I start working on a new song, but then I lose interest. But the ones that suit me and I really like, I will learn well and will keep playing.

This means:

(1) I can write purely for the fun of it. I don't have to get anything published, ever, if I don't want to. There is nothing wrong with this.

However, it's the nature of writers that we eventually want people to read what we write, so I will probably want to get something published eventually. But even if I never do, the joy of writing is enough to make the pursuit worthwhile.

(2) there is nothing wrong with piles of discarded writing and rejected manuscripts. It's not wasted time! It's all practice, like learning to paint or play an instrument.

It's better, really, because you can always salvage something from old bits of writing. You can't do that with used paint or musical notes.

(3) I must not expect everything I write will be good enough for other people to read. Some of it will languish on my hard drive until doomsday.

I may look at it, play with it, salvage bits of it for other stories, but some of my stories will never become more than explored ideas.

Thinking this way has made my writing obsession easier to live with. :roll: