Add a beginner step by step guide of how to use Manuskript

[miniwark]

Hi !

This project is very promising but lack a bit of documentation. I have read the snowflake method blog entry from advancedfictionwriting.com but if it explain well the method, it's not completely helpfull wile using Manuskript. At some point during plots and world place writing i am lost in the process (i tend to jump the writing extended page summaries to after the cutting of the books in plots and sub-plots) .

For example, how did you arrive steep-by-steep to the outliner image example ? Where and when did you define books, chapters, scenes ?

Also, i do no understand clearly the difference between the "Plot" and "Outline" tabs. For me it could be the same tab, with one more sub tab to merge "basic infos" ; "resolution" and "ouline". So i do no know when is correct to jump from one to another.

Finally, about the plots. For me a sub-plot could also be qualified as a secondary or a minor one. So i am confused than a sub-plot=secondary could be defined in two ways. Sure not all secondary/minor plots are sub-plots, but in my understanding all sub-plots could be qualified as "secondary".

So in short i am a bit confused by the software and i would like to read a short steep by steep tutorial with a bunch a Lorem Ipsum from summaries to scenes with a bit of character and world tabs explanation too.

[olivierkes]

Hi,

Thanks for those feedbacks.

You're right, manuksrit lacks documentation. That's because we're not there yet: I still have some important decisions to make, and interface. When things are more stable then will we work on documentation, but right now it's not a priority, especially since everything can still evolve.

But your remarks on UI are helpful.

I understand the interface is a bit confusing: that's because I've mixed several ideas from different places. I didn't want manuskript to be "only" a snowflake tool, for example. For instance, in the Summary tab, the "situation / What if...?" comes from Stephen King: he very often writes books starting just from that.

The plot tab does not come from the snowflake method, but from Brandon Sanderson's lectures on writing. Sanderson is a plotter, he plots everything before writing. The way he does it is thus: for a given plot, he decides the resolution, then works backwards to the begining. What I call some places "subplots" (and you're right, it's a confusing name) are really resolution steps of the plots. So Branderson creates several plots, defines the steps of resolution, then he mixes those to create chapters. (A chapter would tipically be 2-3 steps from 2-3 different plots)

That's why I splitted the Plots tab, and the Outline tab. The idea was:

1. The Plot tab allow to define plots, and work them out in detail, without mixing them
2. The Outline tab allows to takes those steps and mix them together to create an outline.

But this part was quicly created, I'm not very satisfied with it. So I'm open to suggestions.

As for your question on how I arrived at the screenshot: simply from creating a new projet already populated with sections, chapters and scenes.

Is that more clear?

[miniwark]

@olivierkes Thanks for the reply.

Yes it's more clear, and most of my remarks are UI issues.

As for suggestions, i recommend you to have a look to similar projects like Bibisko; oStorybook; Organon, Plume Creator and Plotline.

From Bibisco, i really like their clean UI (look like they included Twitter Boostrap) and their questions based character tab is very detailed. Their analysis tab with character and location distribution is useful too.

From oStoryBook the mindmaping tool is useful but their main interesting feature is their timelines detailed view. Very useful when writing with characters doing stuff at different places in the same time. I think than the Manuskript Storyline is to much hidden for now (it discover wile writing this message).

Seems like you already know and have take inspiration from Plume Creator. Organon seem to be very similar in design.

I do not have tested Plotline from what i read in the description it's a storyline based software.

As for online tool, i like the tree based view of True Novelist. Compared to the actual icon based Manuscript i find it a bit more clear and more distraction free.

For manuscript this tree view could be something like this:

• Story
  • General
  • Summary
  • Outline
• Research
  • Characters
  • World (but i find the word "locations" more clear than "world")
  • Plots
  • Storyline
• Analysys / stats
• Redaction

I would also be happy with Markdown support but txt2tags is nice anyway.

[olivierkes]

Hi @miniwark,

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Can you tell me more about oStoryBook timeline? Right now, manuksript has a story line, but not a time line. In what situations would the timeline be more usefull? If you can post some screenshots, that would help as well (as I wasn't able to run oStoryBook).

I might use in the future the questions from bibisko, I find them usefull as well. What can the distribution tool do that manuskript's story line cannot do?

As for the tree view, it seems True Novellist works like Scrivener: everything is organised in "binders", some of them are the actual writing, other are research, trash or whatever. You organise yourself as you want. Actually you can use manuskript that way (except that you cannot customize icons, maybe in the future):

So I guess I won't go that way, but i'm still open to suggestions for the main UI: in the beginning, the tabs were on top and text only. Now they are on the left and with icons:

I will probably clean it though, and maybe something along the lines you propose (Story, Research, Analysis, Redaction) could be more intuitive.

As for markdown, I'm working on it :) I'm still thinking about wheter i should use only markdown, or leave the choice to use rich text as well (which is html). It will complicate the export process, and it asks one more thing of users before they start writing, but I don't know if non-educated user would find repellant the obligation to use markup if I don't leave the choice.

Amitiés,

[jimmysjolund]

I would suggest to support Markdown as well as Fountain.

[olivierkes]

I thought of that, and it will be possible: simply adding several syntax highlighter, and then exporting to plain text. Cf. #32.

[therahedwig]

I've been poking at this project today.

Timeline is a bit of an interesting one: If you have a significantly complicated story, figuring out what happened on what date and how old characters are at any given event can become really tricky, even when you're good at maths.

So, the simple solution would be to add time/dates to objects and then have a view that shows the chronology or allow the cheatsheet to tell the age of the character in regards to the currently opened page.

However, it becomes complicated when you get fantasy-calenders (or perhaps that one person who decides to use the lunar calender instead), and perhaps even worse when dealing with time-ranges. Like, storage and editing of such isn't too complicated, but parsing and displaying might be tricky.

But basically, people sometimes need to know whether is going on at the time of the snippet they're writing, or what the age of is.

Getting back to the topic. I didn't have too much of trouble figuring out the separated bits. The one thing I did find difficult was to find the text-editor. And I am not sure how this would be solved. I found it in the end, and it's location makes sense within the logic of the project, but I imagine, this being a project that should get you to write a story, it's kind of strange how difficult it is to get to the story writing part. I think the first manual page should probably address how to get to the text-writing bits as quickly as possible, especially when migrating projects.

[olivierkes]

Yes thanks !

[ramonskovitch]

This is fantastic. I have played with most of the others listed above, all have these advantages and disadvantages. I like the simplicity but depth of your Manuskript offer. Please continue development its so great to have something so useful for writing on Linux (I am using Opensuse leap 42.2 and compiled directly from your source.)

I write on several platforms using Dropbox or Nextcloud for sync. I use manuskript in its folder mode so I can access the individual files. One question arises though; if I add a new file to the folder tree (start a new chapter while NOT using Manuskript, while on the train on my mobile. How can I get manuskript to recognise it when I get back to my laptop and open manuskript?

Dan

[olivierkes]

One question arises though; if I add a new file to the folder tree (start a new chapter while NOT using Manuskript, while on the train on my mobile. How can I get manuskript to recognise it when I get back to my laptop and open manuskript?

Sorry @ramonskovitch , forgot to answer. This behavior is not safe. You could technically do it, but you have to include metadata. That means a folder.txt file in each folder, and if you create new scenes you also have to start with a metadata block:

title: Introduction ID: 1 type: txt compile: 2

Your text

I haven't tested and proofed manuskript's behavior if those metadata aren't there, or if they are wrong Most importantly the ID has to be unique. I think there is a check of some sort when loading a project, but not sure. If this is important for you can experiment and tell me :)

In my mind, the best way to do that would be to create folders and scenes in manuskript, and then only edit those existing scenes while on your mobile.

Hope that help, though it's not fully satisfying.

[gedakc]

In an effort to help new Manusrkipt users I wrote a tutorial that covers several (but not all) features of Manuskript. See:

Using Manuskript to Write a Fiction Novel

[jimmysjolund]

Nice work, gedakc!

[olivierkes]

Awesome, thanks @gedakc!

[vithiri]

Agreed, amazing work, @gedakc! :smile:

[miniwark]

Thanks @gedakc! Exactly what I was looking for.

[olivierkes]

Had a comment exchange with two fellows on http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/scrivener-novel-writing-apps-linux/ yesterday. (We'll keep in touch and I hope they'll have useful comments on manuskript's interface.)

I think following comment from Danny Knestaut is interresting:

First of all, let me say that I've been using Manuskript to outline my NaNoWriMo project, and yesterday I discovered that I could drag and drop items from the the plot lines page to the outline page. My jaw dropped when I discovered that. I was so impressed! Being able to turn resolution steps into scene cards made things so much easier for me. It's brilliant, and it's the kind of thing I probably never would have thought of. It was one of those moments where software solved a problem I didn't know I had.

When I played with Manuskript in the past, I just imported a project and kicked the tires some. This NaNoWriMo is my first attempt to use Manuskript from start to finish on the first book in a new series. So far, even if I decide to stick with FocusWriter after November, I will definitely be coming back to Manuskript for my outlines. Again, I'm just amazed at how easy this program makes outlining.

Since this feature is not very explicit, when #134 is fixed, it could be worth to write a tutorial on using Plots. :)

[watercolorhearts]

Is there a long-form documentation of each tab yet?

[gedakc]

@watercolorhearts there is no long-form documentation yet. This is a volunteer opportunity.

So far we have Using Manuskript to Create a Fiction Novel and News and Features on the Manuskript Website and various posts in the Manuskript Wiki.

[ghost]

@watercolorhearts, this is a bit late, but there is now:

• Overview of Manuskript Panes
• Overview of Manuskript Right Sidebar
• Overview of Manuskript Menu
• Overview of Manuskript Settings

In the Manuskript Wiki.

[castrotavares]

I have used some writer tools, but what I love so much on Manuskript is the fact that all my text files are available as markdown. So I'm sure that even in case of no continuation with the project my files are saved. I don't know what changes you have in mind for the future, but please, continue with this approach: all files available as markdown and so also standalone. Thank you very much for this great software