I’ve been plugging away at a few writing projects using the iPad application Manuscript as my main tool lately. For many writers, the first of November marks the beginning of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, the quest for 50,000 (potentially) coherent words strung together in thirty short days. I’m participating in this challenge by fitting my writing time during lunch breaks and nap time at my full-time job, during my commute back and forth from college in the evenings, and between playing with my adorable kittens. (I mean, how could anyone resist playing with kittens?)
I’ve attempted NaNoWriMo in the past, unsuccessfully, and my main problem comes down to two substantial factors: poor time management and poor planning. I’m planning this year’s novel using a modified version of the Snowflake Method. Manuscript includes a notecard function, which I used to create index cards with the following headings and purposes:
- One Sentence Summary
As the heading suggests, a simple sentence stating the purpose of the entire novel. Harder than it seems, that’s for sure. - Three Disasters and Wrap Up
I listed my main conflicts, then wrote a long paragraph summary of the novel from the main character’s point of view. - One Card for Each Character
I combined several character-building templates together online, taking the parts I liked for my story’s purposes. I included a summary of the entire plot from each character’s point of view. This personalized summary really helped with my plot’s development: I really had to think of each character’s motivations and purpose, and flesh them out. They don’t merely exist to supplement the main character’s story. They have their own issues going on. - Outline
Here, I made a list of scenes using the Three Disasters and Wrap Up card as a guide. I then went through each character’s card and wove their individual plots into the main plot, making sure that all aspects of the plot weave nicely and support the main plot.
My original intention was to use Manuscript fully for this process, but this did not end up happening. For one, using notecards on physical paper is very different from using notecards on Manuscript. Flipping back and forth between notecards was a hassle; I wish there was a way to show two notecards side-by-side on the iPad’s screen.
Another downfall of using Manuscript for this purpose is the lack of formatting options. I understand the lack of bold and italics for the main document. We’re supposed to be focusing on the words, not the format, at the manuscript level, but when planning…I don’t know about my fellow writers, but my notecards involve a lot of bullets and headings to categorise information. This is especially true when it comes to the character profiles, because there are a lot of subheadings to compare across the notecards.
My main issue involved my personal desire for my notes to be in front of me, spread out so I can see the big picture. I wanted to print out my cards out, but there’s no easy way to print the cards. For the document itself, you can export it, but I don’t see an obvious way to work with the cards outside the application’s environment.
I ended up copying and pasting my Manuscript notecards into one document in the Pages iPad app, creating a page break for each card. This allowed me to create a document hierarchy with bullets and bold headings to my heart’s content. With the AirPrint feature of Pages, I was easily able to create a physical copy of my novel’s notes.
I love Manuscript for organising my document at the chapter level, but for now, I will be sticking with Pages for my note-making endeavours.
Are you using an iPad to work on your Nano novel project? Are you using Manuscript, Storyist, Pages, or many of the other iPad writing applications to help organise your story? I’d love to hear about it!
