Hi all, I'm a Tinderbox newbie. I'd like to use Tinderbox to organize detailed notes for a novel. I've written ten suspense novels (published in fifteen languages), and have also written film treatments for studios. I've done most of my work with analog methods and the Inspiration outliner. Tinderbox represents a new way for me to work and I wondered if I might get some advice.

Normally I've kept a notebook for each book I write, filled with thoughts and ideas on characters, plots, twists, and sketches of scenes. These usually ran about 200+ pages and were not highly organized. I would fill up these notebooks, outline my plot on index cards, and use that stack of cards as a guide for a more detailed outline in Inspiration, then write the novel in Word. I also used Inspiration a lot for brainstorming. But I discovered there were lots of detail in the notebooks that weren't making it into the index cards and thus into my early drafts, which led me to Tinderbox as a way to preserve the visual outlining of index cards/Inspiration with the meat of the notebook's details inside the notes: linked, organized, searchable and at immediate hand. I'd also like to use Tinderbox to keep ideas that aren't quite ready for a book or film or story, but could be mined for later projects.

But for my first project, I'm feeling a bit lost. I want to be able to create scenes, identify those that share the same point-of-view character, identify those that are either part of the main plot or one of two subplots, AND identify a particularly important subset of scenes called "pivotal" scenes, and group all scenes into a three-act structure.

So here was my take on how I might organize this and I'd like thoughts from more experienced users:
--create a "scene" prototype note that carries three attributes I'd like to track as I shape the book: point-of-view character; plotline; and whether or not the scene is a pivotal scene (I have about thirteen of these in the book)
--create a note for each scene, entering in the three attributes
--group scenes into three acts using adornments (Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3)

I think color would be best to identify the plot attribute. But I'm wondering how best to ID pivotal scenes or those told from a certain character's POV. I know I could just show notes that match the attribute's value, but I'd still like to easily pick those out when looking at the whole structure. I suppose I could do it so that if a note's attributes were hero+main plot, the color would be green, but hero+subplot the color would be brown, but I REALLY did not want to overcomplicate. If this is the simple way to do it, that's fine, I didn't know if there was a simpler way.

Thanks for reading all this and any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Jeff Abbott

I don't mind sharing what works and what doesn't--even if it makes me look not very bright--as I try to use Tinderbox to structure notes/scenes for a novel.

Using Adornments for Act One and Act Two (just to visually group scenes) sounded fine, but when I switch to Outline View the Act Two scenes are not in the expected order. (I know Adornments don't show in Outline--but going to Outline view changed the order of the scenes as laid out in Act Two, and I'm not sure why). Major setback #1. I don't want to make Act One a container because I'd very much like to be able to see the entire book in one view. So I have to make a call here: Outline view or Map View to finish the rest of the scenes. I think I am going to stick with Map View because that's the view I was picturing analyzing the book in much more than Outline view. So I'll press ahead and hope I can figure out a way to not have to reorder everything in Outline view when I want to switch to Outline. I keep thinking of Tinderbox as index cards on steroids, so I'll stick with what's closest to index cards for now.

I've only created two prototypes so far:
POV, with three attributes: Pivotal (yes or no), Point of View, and Subplot.
Character (with all the notes for every character in the book kept inside a container called Characters). Very helpful.

And I've set up one agent, to capture Pivotal Scenes and highlight them as red so I can be sure the structure looks solid. I'd like to set up other agents for subplots but haven't gotten there yet.

I did set up a separate Ideas document, for things I've thought of and want to develop later. The only prototype I've created there so far is an Idea prototype. Just very basic. But I created containers for book ideas, film ideas, story ideas, essay ideas, etc. Again, I'm not a techie, so I'm trying to keep things basic so I don't get in over my head.

Speaking as a Tinderbox oldie -- I've written three non- (or almost non-)fiction books relying heavily on Tbx for the purposes Jeff mentions, and countless other stuff (articles, papers, conference talks etc) -- my first thought is that the key to using Tbx for this purpose is incremental organisation.

Tinderbox shares with my other two favourite apps, DevonTHINK and Scrivener, the ability to watch your structure emerge as you work, which, I'd gamble, is at the root of any "creative" writing. Whatever they teach in school, if you're a writer, outlines just don't work. I think it's common to 90% of us (based on other writers I've talked to) that once we start writing, the words call the tune. This sentence prompts the next sentence; this paragraph, the next; and so it goes until we're done and it's time to rewrite.

The great strength of Tinderbox for me is that I can start with a fairly simple outline. I know things are going to need research notes, vague ideas, structural notions, snippets of stuff that strike me as particularly finely written (and which will therefore never make it into the final draft; murder your darlings) and so on.  I also know that I can make sense of this stuff in Tinderbox as it begins to make sense to me. For example

-- Hey, this thing is linked to that thing!
-- I need to make sure this bit goes in chapter 3
-- I ought to be collecting everything I know about sworn-brotherhood.
-- Maybe I should formalise my notes on source material now.
-- I want an easy way to see the stuff that I've already allocated to a chapter.
-- I've lost track of what my researcher is doing; I'd better have a system for that.
-- I've got too much material on this subject; I want to see instantly which of my notes has the most links to other notes, as good a measure of importance as any.
-- I need to lay this bit out visually, in Map view.

. . . and so on.

Tinderbox lets me do this, and I know the ideal is that we "grok" something but, to be honest, I've never "grokked" Tinderbox; just found that, whatever it is i want to do, 95% of the time I can (with a little bit of fiddling sometimes) do it, and, most of the time, do it on the fly.  The underlying stuff remains intact.

One of the beauties of this is, as Jeff mentioned, that I don't get to the end of the thing and hand it in and then think "darn, I never included that bit about X".  In fact, I'm going to go to my Tinderbox file for the current book, just nearing completion, and set up something to find all the things I said I'd use but haven't. A little Agent will do it; look for "Crucial=yes" and "Used=no", and gather them all together. Less than five minutes' work.

I've a gripe, though. A major gripe. Mark Bernstein knows all about it, because I've been whining to him for a few years now. It's this: semantic links.  Tinderbox shows its genealogy, its interactive/hypertext DNA if you like, in its links and specifically in the Nakakoji view.  Link-sets are called "Paths" and it was only when I realised this was a hypertext narrative idea (you could have a "ends in disaster" path and a "gets the girl in the end" path and so on) that it made any sense.

Unfortunately it doesn't make sense to narrative writers, certainly not at my end of the game. What I want is to take a given item and see what's linked to it, and how.  I want to see all the stuff that supports it; all the stuff that refutes it; all the "see also" stuff; all the things that reference it.  Instead, I can only look at it by links across the board. So I can see everything that refutes other stuff, everything that cites other stuff and so on, with no idea really of the underlying semantics at all.

Minor gripe. But one that must be made.

I've said more than I intended to. I was going to say "Fascinating topic, let me have a think about it and I'll post some hopefully useful stuff in the next few days" but as usual -- as always, with a deadline looming -- I've banged on too long. Forgive me. I'll be back with something sensible. As for "suzjet" -- this must be the only software forum where one's not surprised to see Interventional Narratology rearing its pretty little head...

I'm currently using Tinderbox for two novel projects.  

One of them is about survivors of the Titanic in 1912 New York.  The other is a projected probably-5-book series that includes a lot of worldbuilding.  

What Michael says about incremental organization.  When I start out, any information database I have is a dumping ground.  Source notes, ideas for scenes I think are going to be there, bits of dialogue, background stuff, thematic notes.  My other favorite PIM is Lotus Agenda; Tinderbox's advantage over Agenda is multimedia, pictures and music and maps.  Map views let me create a city or a family tree.  With Outline views I can just keep dumping and sorting and playing until things start making sense.  As Mark suggests, I'll often have several different views, organized differently.

Essentially my Tinderbox outline serves as the first draft, when the presentational problems get worked out, before the characters and the writing take over.

I have Characters prototypes and Scenes prototypes.  For the set of books, there's a prototype for each character, which in turn serves as a prototype for the state of the character in each book.  I have several others (Source, Book, Location).

I love Jeff's idea of coloring pivotal scenes in red.  (Hi, Jeff!  We've seen each other at Bouchercons.)  

To see pivotal scenes all together, you can create an agent.  To see pivotal scenes per POV, you can create a few agents.  (Unless there's a way to show them all together.  Mark?)

My principal pregnant dog against Tinderbox, which I've mentioned to Mark, is that Tinderbox agents aren't as strong as Lotus Agenda views.  In Agenda, you can create any number of views, and set up the views to show information pretty much as you like.  You can then add new notes to any view, giving them attributes like a Tinderbox note.  But the views are entirely independent of one another, so any playing around with organization in one view won't affect the others.   You can also display information about notes in views, without sorting by that information.  For example, you can set up a view showing only your pivotal scenes, display the point of view from which they're told, and sort them in the order that you'd like them for this view--without affecting any other view.  To that degree Tinderbox shows its roots in hypertext and Agenda, its basis as a relational database.

Not complaining, just making a suggestion (again)  

Hello, Brian!

JeffAbbott wrote on Jan 13^th, 2008, 11:18am:


Yes... the great think being that my head isn't as good at keeping track of stuff (or indeed just *keeping* stuff; a lot seems to just trickle away somewhere) as Tinderbox.

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I agree. I don't know why, though. Perhaps because Tinderbox's multiplicity of views means -- for me, anyway -- I seldom if ever find myself thinking "I wonder what the hell I was thinking of when I made that note."

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+1.  And while the compliments are flying around, I loved Panic, Jeff. I shouted "Aha! Gotcha, Mister Mysterio So-Called Big Shot Suspense Author! I see through your little game!" at least half a dozen times. And each time I was wrong. That's the way I like 'em.

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I may be missing the point, but if you had an attribute for each subplot you could set up agents to capture each scene in that subplot, surely?  The agent would look for e.g. <NorbertRealisesHeIsAnIdiot = true> and then do whatever you want with it.  (Including, of course, see where each scene fits in the main structure).  It took me a long time to realize that I could have as many attributes as I want, which was sort of foolish, but once I realized it, things became a lot simpler. Want scenes where Eunice Wrestles Yet Again With Erotic Desire Versus Her Religious Beliefs?  Just set up a Boolean attribute called that, and an agent to look for it. Or use keywords as ad hoc tags. One of the problems with Tinderbox initially is that very often it can do whatever you want but in several different ways... in one case, involving such a lot of fooling around (and the renaming of every single note in my huge book file as "YetAnotherBloodyNote" ) that Dr Bernstein surrendered and introduced the new NameExpression.  (Attrition sometimes works...)

I may have misunderstood what you're trying to do.  But the thing about forums is of course everyone's eager to help everyone else, so if I have misunderstood, throw it back & I'm sure someone will come up with an answer.

[quote author=Michael Bywater link=1199812821/0#8 date=1200244435][quote author=JeffAbbott link=1199812821/0#7 date=1200241122]

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How are you using DevonThink and does it seem to bog down your memory (RAM)? Thanks. I also have Notetaker and am hedging between the two for notes.

Mark Bernstein wrote on Jan 12^th, 2008, 8:55am:


I wanted to comment on Mark's suggestion here. At first, I resisted it--because I wanted to work in Map view solely as I laid out the scenes. Because Map view is one of the reasons I bought Tinderbox. But I figured, okay, he knows what he's talking about. And he's right. It is much easier to start in Outline View when you've got lots of notes to create. I moved to Outline View, using separators to divide the book up into acts (and days) and it's been much easier than trying to create and order and frankly absorb everything in Map view.

I still might want to have the map position follow the outline order at some point (and so may venture toward my first rule or add-on thingamabob), but I wanted to thank Mark for this basic albeit helpful suggestion. Anyone else trying this at home might take it to heart.

Hello,

I am a Tinderbox neophyte and have been enjoying this thread on novel writing.  I have a question for those more experienced.  The answer may be right under my nose, but here goes:  I noticed some of you do your planning in Tinderbox and then export to Scrivener to do the writing.  Can you please give me some ideas as how to most effectively export to Scrivener and if there is a way to break the Tinderbox file into divisions that Scrivener will recognise as the "note cards"?  

I am currently planning a non-fiction book.

Thanks for your time.

Colin