yWriter - 2.3.32

When designing a software program you break big problems (tasks) into little ones. Then you break those down into smaller and smaller problems until each can be tackled easily. Of course, you don't want to lose sight of the overall project, so you give yourself explicit outlines for each piece of code. Then it's just a case of coding each of the little pieces and hooking them together into the finished application.

Despite the mystical arty aura surrounding the process of fiction writing, at the end of the day most books can be written in a similar fashion: Break each novel into chapters, break each chapter into one or more scenes, and give each scene a goal, some conflict and an outcome.

A scene is a pleasant chunk to work on - small and well-defined, you can slot them into your novel, dragging and dropping them from one chapter to another as you interleave strands from different viewpoint characters and work out the overall flow of your book. You can also drop a scene completely if you've written yourself into a dead end, without feeling you've ground to a complete halt.