While I’m confident in my sequential storytelling abilities, I admit I don’t have much experience writing. I took several creative writing classes at The Art Institute of Chicago, but this will be the first time I’m writing with an aim to publish.
Two things in my favor facing this challenge is the Graphic Novel format, in which most is said in pictures and the words accompany or compliment the drawings, and the fact that I’m drawing from actual events rather than creating fiction.
Yet this is not a documentary, I’m telling a story. The challenge is to present the nonfiction material of Jorge’s experiences in a creative, engaging way. In playing with structure and plot, applying the elements of creative writing to the events, I found a great ally: Scrivener.
My friend Brian Reed, mighty writer of marvelous exploits turned me on to this fantastic piece of software. It permits you to work in a true non-linear fashion, dividing the story points into neat separate yet connected documents that can be shuffled around. An altenative view even simulates a cork board on which you arrange your story on index cards.
Another great feature is that it permits you to import all sorts of reference (audio, video, pictures, links, etc) and through a split screen access it in one pane while you are writing in the other pane.
This was extremely helpful as I imported the audio files of the 5 hour long interview I did with Jorge, and divided them by chapters. This way I could refer to and manipulate the audio file in a very direct and comfortable way while I was transcribing
Keith, the developer, calls it a Project Management Tool, which is a good description of its capabilities. Final Draft is the industry standard for writing screenplays, but I find Scrivener to be a much more organic conducive to giving structure to the chaos of ideas and elements for your story. It is non-linear, informal and intuitive. At the end, you can export to Final Draft and polish the final script there.
Check out a free 30 day demo at www.literatureandlatte.com, and if you like it, pay the developer $40 for the license. It is well worth it.
Alert: the software is mac ONLY, so get on the apple wagon if you want some.
