Drawing from the Well
Queries Sent: 1
Total Queries: 19
Rejections: 2
Scenes Mapped: 0
Total Scenes: 252
I got a query out, though nothing else. Yesterday felt like a strange and very busy day. Here’s hoping things go back to normal and I’ll have more to celebrate tomorrow.
Filling the Well
1984: 59%
Bloodwitch: 4%
Still nothing new here, but it’s Wednesday so I’m going to definitely get some reading time in today.
Polishing the Well
There’s a new-ish burger joint in town called Burgerim and it’s delicious. Yesterday was the third or fourth time we’ve gone and it never disappoints. We also started rewatching Full House last night…not sure how it happened, but there it is.
Well Chat
The Underpinnings of yWriter
Yeah, it’s a tiny picture. It’s a tiny-looking piece of yWriter, but it’s so critical and helpful to how the program operates. Today we’re going to explore the utilities within the Characters, Locations, and Items portions of yWriter.
Plot is characters and characters are plot. The two are inextricable from each other. You can have a thing happen without someone doing it. The Characters utility in yWriter helps you keep track of all the someones. You can see in the image above the main Character creation window. You can enter a nickname for your character as well as their full name and any alternates (I use that for titles), you can tag them as a major or minor character, and add a description. The other tabs of Bio, Notes, and Goals are all blank text boxes for the purpose indicated by their title. You can even upload a picture for your character for reference (whether that is inspirational from the internet or a sketch is up to you).
Now, backtracking to the major and minor tag, in some novels, especially fantasy, you get a lot of characters (I’m up to 36 for Book Two so far). If you click on Characters in the toolbar and go to View/Edit you can bulk add or edit character entries and you can also sort them alphabetically. yWriter is smart enough, though, to keep your major characters together and apart from the minors. Both groups are sorted alphabetically, but all the major characters are at the top of the list.
As for Locations, this is handled much the same way as Characters. There’s a creation window, seen above, with a few options. Obviously, there are fewer options here than with characters because settings don’t do as much as characters do (unless your Stephen King at which point you might as well make a Character page for the hotel already). You can be as detailed or as cursory as you like here. You can also go into View/Edit and sort alphabetically like you could with Characters.
What was true for Locations is also true for Items. There are no exceptions here. Same fields, same handling.
Where this all comes into play is when you’re writing your scene. In the different tabs for the scene that match what we’ve discussed, the list of all the characters, settings, and items will be displayed in a list to the left of the window. You can then drag and drop relevant entries on the right to attach them to the scene. This is used later in some of the analytical features of yWriter, if you choose to use them, but are most helpful in busy scenes. Lots of characters and lots of items can become difficult to keep track of. If you plan like me and know in advance which characters are supposed to be active in a scene, using the Characters list to tag them before hand allows you to check back when you’re writing on the Content tab so that you can ensure that you haven’t missed anything.
That was a lot again. We’re going to spend one more day in yWriter just to sew things up, but I just found out about a new free tool yesterday. I’m going to check it out today and may use it to cap off the series. Have a great Hump Day!
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG