Using Excel for Your Scene Summaries

I use an Excel spreadsheet while writing for a simple scene summary worksheet. The fields included are:

·         Chapter number

·         Scene number (computed after scene 1)

·         Number of pages in chapter

·         Number of words in scene

·         Total number of words (computed)

·         Day

·         Date (computed after scene 1)

·         Day of week (computed)

·         POV

·         Location

·         Scene Goal

·         Conflict

To simplify change, I only enter the date of scene 1. The rest are computed. That way, I can modify the starting date until all the scenes fall into place. So, I've added a new field before Date called Days. It is the number of days from scene 1 to the current scene. With this information I can easily compute the date and day of week of the scene.

While writing The Vengeance Squad, I wanted Chris and Tex to go to Massachusetts while it was snowing, so all I had to do was play with the starting date until the date for the scene in Massachusetts was at the right time of year for snow.

At the beginning a new book, I often want to insert additional scenes and sometimes delete scenes. Using the spreadsheet makes it easier. With Excel, you can use conditional formatting if needed. I use it to highlight chapters that are too long or too short.

It's not easy to explain worksheets in text, so if you're interested, I'll be glad to send you a copy of what I ended up which includes the formulas and conditional formatting.

Carbonite is Great for Multiple Computers

I probably should be getting a kickback from Carbonite since I talk about it so much, but I pay for it just like everyone should.

Because I teach computer science classes at Austin Community College, I get a ton of computer-related questions from friends as well as people I barely know. Today, it happened on the trail where I walk. I ran into my friend Ron who I hadn't seen in about a year. He's a retired chaplain with homes in Hawaii, Colorado, and Texas. He'd just arrived here in Texas from Hawaii last week and was having problems reading a flash disk he brought with him. He said he had all his data on the flash disk, including documents and photos. He was especially concerned about a tax form he needs before he goes back to Hawaii where his desktop computer is.

The problem is his laptop says the flash disk is bad and must be reformatted. He knows that a reformat will cause all the data to be lost. He said he'd talked to the computer club here and tried the flash disk on other computers, but nothing has worked. Some there was some talk about a recovery software package, but it didn't sound hopeful.

I suggested he find someone in Hawaii to access his desktop computer and send the files to him here, but he'd already thought of that. The only friend there who could do that for him is in the hospital.

Since I couldn't think of anything else to do, I told him about my experience with Carbonite in hopes that he could prevent this from happening again. I tried to do it in a non-critical way.

I have three computers with the online backup system Carbonite. It is so easy to use I sometimes forget it is there. The other day I wanted to move a file from my laptop computer to my desktop computer. Often, I use a flash disk to do this. Sometimes, I'll email it to myself. But on this day, the laptop was turned off, so, while sitting at my desktop computer, I logged into Carbonite.com, opened the file from my laptop and saved it on my desktop computer. Simple, huh?

When I told Ron about that, he said he'd check it out. I know it's too late for the problem he's having now and perhaps we'll find a solution for that yet, but using Carbonite is an ideal solution for transferring data from computer to another, across the country or within the same home.

For more information, click: Carbonite.

I Love Carbonite

I hope everyone noticed I was missing from the blogosphere last week. My hard drive finally quit. I thought the freezing up problems I’d had were due to the Texas heat, but changes to the environment didn’t help. The drive had to be replaced.
With three computers in a house of two people, one computer being in the shop shouldn’t have been cause to cancel a week of blog posts. But, it was. My notebook computer is old and slow. Besides the screen is too small for my aging eyes.
Being a computer short and having to rely on my old notebook was just the excuse I’d been looking for to buy a new notebook. Or, should I say netbook. I’m not sure what all the names are and I teach computers at Austin Community College.
While my desktop was in the shop getting a new disk drive, I bought another very small system with the CD drive separate since I only use it to load new software occasionally. It’s small, but the screen is more readable than my old one. And, it is fast. I don’t have to start Microsoft Word and go get a cup of coffee while it loads.
Laptops, notebooks, netbooks, that’s a story for another day. What I wanted to tell you today was about my experience with restoring my files. Since I have been using Carbonite for several years, everything I had on the desktop was backed up online.
When I brought the computer home from the shop, all I had to do was log in to Carbonite and tell it to restore. Thirty-six hours later my 79,000 plus files were all back into place.
Let me know if you've had experience with other online backup systems and we'll spread the word.

Let Your Computer Help Your Writing

In a recent post in The Writer's Alley, Krista Phillips talked about using software such as Microsoft's Outlook and Excel to keep track of the timeline in your novel. Her reason was to make sure you don't overlook an important event such as Independence Day as you are writing.

I used an Excel spreadsheet while writing Where Love Once Lived for a simple scene summary worksheet. The fields included:

• Chapter number

• Scene number (computed after scene 1)

• Number of pages in chapter

• Number of words in scene

• Total number of words (computed)

• Date

• Day of week (computed)

• Location

• Scene Goal

• Conflict

This worked fine for Where Love Once Lived, but when I started working on Vengeance Is Mine, I ran into trouble trying to line up events with the calendar. I had my amateur detectives finding clues hidden in a field in Massachusetts that was more than likely under five or six feet of snow at the time. As it is, they spend Christmas day in the Galveston jail. I decided I liked that and made use of it in a later scene.

To simplify change, I only enter the date of scene 1. The rest are computed. That way, I can modify the starting date until all the scenes fall into place. So, I've added a new field before Date called Days. It is the number of days from scene 1 to the current scene. With this information I can easily compute the date and day of week of the scene.

It's not easy to explain worksheets in text, so if you're interested, I'll be glad to send you a copy of what I ended up which includes the formulas.