Ray Bradbury and Write 1 Sub 1
So Last Night I created a simple Scrivener Template.
For the last couple years I’ve suffered from depression and procrastination, and am finally beating it back. In order to try to move ahead, I decided to take part in the +Write 1 Sub 1 challenge. It’s based On Ray Bradbury‘s early writing habits – Write one story a week and send one story out for publication. Do this for a year and you’ll get better at it.
But it’s been hard to keep up, and my writing muscles ain’t what they used to be after years of neglect. It’s been hard to write and easy to procrastinate.
Enter Scrivener Templates
Towards that end, I decided to try Scrivener so I could waste more time playing around instead of drafting. Scrivener, for those of you who don’t know, is a writing program designed for writers. I don’t want to call it a word processor even the publishers say it’s designed to Compile manuscripts for publishing and editing in external processors. But it’s about the best at what it does. I’ve used yWriter, Writer’s Dreamkit, StoryBlocks and other organizing and outlining software before. And in every case, the learning curve was steep and the programs were not flexible enough to match my writing style.
But Scrivener seems to be a different beast. It’s really easy to use. Like a lot of organizers, it uses the concept of breaking up you work into small chunks easily represented by notecards. But the note card organizer ( The cork board) and the metadata editor( The Inspector) are very intuitive and pretty much invisible until you need to use them. Your project is kept in a “Binder” allowing you add, edit, reorder and change notecards to your heart’s content. Under your research folder you can add pictures, videos, sounds and webpages. When it comes time to compile your book, you choose what folders and notecards to include. there’s a simple snapshot function for version control, and simple tags to show first draft, revisions and final copy. Even the trash can is useful, allowing you to see what’s inside it and only deleting files when asked.
And one of the most useful functions I’ve found is the templates. Basically, you can save a blank project for use as a Scrivener template with these text cards already set up the way you choose to organize your projects. So, if you have a set way or organizing your front matter, text and back matter, you can save it as a Scrivener template and begin every project the same way.
Lester Dent and the Master Fiction Plot
Lester Dent was the real name of Kenneth Robeson, the creator and writer of the classic Doc Savage stories. His Master fiction plot article is a short essay outlining a good 6,000 word pulp story. Sure, it’s a simple 3 act structure ( One 1,500 word set up, 2 1,500 word sections of rising action, and one 1,500 word climaxand denoument.) but it’s entertaining and easy to understand.
And therefore, pretty useful to the aspiring writer.
So last night I imported my novel, a couple of stories, and created this Template version of the Lester Dent Master Fiction Plot.
And the Scrivener Template for your use:
Now, this was pretty easy. I took a short story template, and copied in the complete test of Dent’s article for review. Then, I split the article up into cards. simple, no? What you end up with is a simple Scrivener Template that helps you plot out a 6,000 adventure story.
Here’s the Link to the Lester Dent Master Fiction Plot Scrivener Template on Drive.
Enjoy, and let me know what you think.
