Books and Software

I had absolutely no idea how to even start a novel. So after lots and lots of internet searching, something I kept coming across is the Snowflake Method. I've gotten lots of ideas from Randy Ingermanson's website AdvancedFictionWriting.com. I'm not sure if Randy is the actual creator of the Snowflake Method, but he has refined it to 10 simple steps. I even decided to buy his book "Writing Fiction for Dummies" which has a lot of great information in it and has been very helpful in getting me started with this process.

Basically, the Snowflake Method is just a template for creating a novel that starts small, and expands into a complete story, filling in all the gaps along the way.  The 10 steps of the snowflake method can be found in the link to Randy's website above. Since I'm a planner, I think the Snowflake Method will work out well for me.

Next up, I wanted a program to write with that has a little more to offer than Pages for Mac. After searching around a lot for writing software, and seeing the overwhelmingly positive reviews. I decided on Scrivener. The software is fantastic and as I learn the features I'm really looking forward to using it more. This software is packed with features by the way, probably more than I'll ever need. It has some really cool stuff which I'm using already. Things like the cork board, the research section, and the novel layouts are great. So far Scrivener seems pretty user friendly and not too difficult to learn.