TT reader clem emailed me about a free program he just discovered: SLang, a screenwriting tool that looks like it’d be useful for GMs, too.
According to the site blurb, “SLang is story-development software. It allows you to write events for your story as ‘virtual index cards’ and print them out.” The Features page also mentions that SLang is useful for crafting stories with multiple “routes” — which sounds a lot like adventures to me.
Whether you’re taking part in Worldwide Adventure Writing Month or writing scenarios for your home group, SLang sounds like it might come in handy. Thanks, clem!
If you have a Mac, Scrivener is the absolute best piece of creative writing software I have ever seen or used.
It’s like you’re looking into the future, robustyoungsoul — I’ve got a post cued up about Scrivener and another Mac-only writing tool for this weekend. 😉
Perhaps someone could explain how this is useful? What does this application do that supports crafting stories with multiple ‘routes’ that is unique?
The ‘features’ page is light on features and heavy on marketing. For example: “Ideal for brainstorming story ideas.” – The feature that should be listed on this page is what makes it ideal for this.
Has anyone used this application? Thoughts? Thanks for the guidance!
Later.
I wanted to give it a try, but can’t download it. The domain is out of bandwidth, according to the error message when you go to the main page of the domain where the download is hosted.
Anyway, the feature that’s probably of most use in SLang would be “It allows you to write events for your story as “virtual index cards” and print them out.”
How is this useful?
It allows you to write up each individual aspect of a story idea, or specific plot points that need to be met for a story on an “index card”. You can then sort them out, rearranging them as needed, printing up as many copies of the card as you need to.
Since I haven’t been able to get the program to try it out, I can’t say for sure how unique the program is, because the whole index card method isn’t a new one. I learned about one way of using them in “You Can Write A Novel” and “The Fiction Writer’s Brainstormer” by James V. Smith Jr. You can find both of those books available for sale at Amazon and in your local brick and mortar bookstores.
I use the index cards to keep track of everything for the stories: one set of cards with info for each scene, another set of cards for all the different characters, a third set to keep track of things for the editing process (like “make sure Barrett’s eyes are described as blue”), and then a fourth set of cards I set up to keep track of information I need (and things I created on the fly) for the story. It’s an easy way to keep track of everything so as to be consistant, and doesn’t take up a lot of space in my laptop bag.
I’ve started using the index card method for adventure planning, starting out creating one card for each major event, then creating cards for events that link them, and so on.
Lisa
I guess I am discounting the index card feature because I have whipped up index card notes in my word processor. Why use this application instead of one we already have? Hopefully, this application does do something you cannot do with a word processor! It’s just hard to know because of the poorly presented features list. (I am sure it does do something unique…it has to!)
🙂
Later.
Is Scrivener like omni outliner?
I went to the site for SLang and I was unable to download the program. Are others having issues?
Poop. It looks like the link is borked. Hopefully they’ll get it sorted out soon.
Hello
I am the author of SLang. Recently it got a favourable review on a popular downloads website and this increased my traffic to the extent that my website bandwidth (on the site where I store the ZIP file) has gone through the roof. Because of this, the link occassionally fails.
Regarding the list of features, I don’t regard it as “marketing hype” (an odd choice of words for a piece of free software) but an attempt to explain what the program is all about in a SUCCINCT way, without going into the nitty gritty details.
SLang was originally written as a general purpose story-writing tool, but it seems to have become popular with Adventure writers. This was something I had not anticipated!
Basically this is what it does, since you obviously want the detailed version:
Each “index card” is an “event” in your story.
Using logical expressions you can specify rules which specify how an event depends on other events. So for example, you can say something like “for event A to happen, events B and C must already have happened”.
You would write this as:
B AND C
in the dependency rule-box for event A.
this means that at some point prior to event A, event B and event C must occur, otherwise event A won’t happen.
You can also specify rules which prevent an event from happening, e.g. “if B and C happen, A will NOT happen”.
You can also specify subtly different versions of the same event. When refering to these in the dependency rules you can refer to any version of event A, or a specific version of event A. So you can say A or A.1 or A.2 etc.
Slang stores all your events and all versions of each event as a single project. The program can utilise the dependency rules to put your events in a workable order that conforms to the dependency rules that you specify.
Your ordered list of events can then be used to generate a completed story which you can save as an RTF file.
By “excluding” an event (rather than deleting it) you can see how this affects your ordered list of events.
SLang can also use the dependency rules to figure out what events need to happen in order to get so a specified event.
It can also store a separate type of index card called a “theme”. This is a completely separate system from the events cards which just lets you jot down ideas.
By giving an event a “scene heading” or “slug-line” if you prefer, you can export your project to an OOS file. This is the file format used by my screenplay-writing software called ScriptMaker, available from the same site.
etc. etc.
Personally I prefer a shorter version which tells you what the program’s about rather than how it does it!
Any questions, please feel free to contact me.
P.S. The traditional method used by story-writers was to have a very large cork-board, on which small index cards are pinned, on which they manually wrote down their ideas. Hence my use of the term.
Ian
Thanks for stopping by, Ian — and I’m glad to hear that the SLang link isn’t fubared for good.