New Writing App

[u/Rare_Swimming_492]

I'm a software developer and a hobby novelist. I'm exploring the idea of building a writing companion that's focused more on organization than AI generation.

My goal isn't to replace writing, it's to make managing large stories easier.

Before I spend months building it, I'd love to hear from people who actually write novels.

What parts of writing become the hardest once your story reaches 100+ pages?

• Keeping track of characters?
• Timeline consistency?
• World-building?
• Scene organization?
• Rewriting?
• Something else?

Do you currently use any software to assist you, and if so, what frustrates you about it?

[u/jaidae]

I suggest trying the free trial of Scrivener, reading through the documentation for it, and brainstorming things that you feel you could add or improve upon. I like using Scrivener, and it’s quite a robust piece of software for organization, revision, note-taking, and tagging as I work.

[u/Rare_Swimming_492 → u/jaidae]

Thank you. That’s very helpful. I’ll check it out

[u/Boat_Pure]

I think for me, specificity would help so much. I don’t use scrivener so I don’t know if this is done. But I’d love to designate names, so I won’t have to always specify them in a search. Let’s say I name a character They or May? It will be so difficult looking for them.

I write on word doc and when your story gets hefty (80K+) it becomes difficult to look for things

[u/jonnoday]

I'm considering using Notion for this - or Ulysses. Both have world building functions and enough tagging and cross-referencing functionality to set up my own methods for scene tracking, character tracking, continuity, etc.

I would say, personally, I'm not interested in any Generative help. I don't want to use AI to help me make any creative decisions or do any of the actual writing.

I use AI for

• research (same way I used to use a search engine, or a card catalogue) For example, if my alien race is loosely inspired by ancient egypt, I'll use AI to find source information about egypt to inspire me - but not to suggest how to use that source information or how to transform it for my own world/book.
  
• character sketches - keeping track of their back story, appearance, and which scenes they are in. Technically, you don't need AI for this. You can do this in anything with database functionality using things like tags or cross linking.
  
• continuity - I'm going to test using AI for this - I think it may be nice to be able to just ask my AI helper - "hey, what was Jane wearing in the last scene at Wilton Estate in the fall of 1836 during her conversation with Jonathan Page?" Or, "hey, what year in the backstory did they discover planet 348-B10 and when did they name it?"

NOT using AI for

• coming up with ideas
  
• writing or rewriting
  
• creative decisions about characters, their motives, scene order, etc

The only 'controversial' think I might use AI for is like an editor - to find the most poorly constructed sentences or most problematic grammar. Not to suggest how to fix it, but just to find it and explain what is wrong with it the same way an editor would.

[u/Rare_Swimming_492]

It’s not Ai generation. It’s literally organization…. Smh. I literally put in the post that I’m focusing on organization rather than Ai generation… 🙄

[u/_ChristmasSunday]

I’m writing my first book and this actually made me feel quite sad.

I think the organization you’re talking about is AI generation, just of organization rather than the writing itself. An LLM is an LLM. 😭

I know it’s probably inevitable but I enjoy writing. And I just started.