How I use Ideamason - and why

Posted by Hugh Pile
Oct 19, 2006 at 02:01 PM

Graham Smith wrote:
>Hugh
> >>The use of IdeaMason for fiction writing - a use for which it’s
>>possibly the
>best product around, but for which it’s certainly not designed - must be
>>one symptom
>of this.
> >Why is IM better than Liquid Story Binder for fiction writing?
> >Graham

Ha! ;>) I like elements of both (on limited acquaintance). However…

...I’m looking for an “outline of outlines”, with some additional functions. Neither provides all of these.

LSB’s greatest strengths in my view are its saving and backup facilities. Its greatest weakness is the absence of a strongly-functioned database in which to store all the bits and pieces which a fiction writer, just as much as a factual writer, inevitably accumulates. Effectively LSB has such a database, but it’s rudimentary compared with what I’d like.

Another strength of LSB is its collection of tools for pre-composition (storyboards, outliners, timeliners and so on). But there’s a slight sense of pell-mell development in the way they’ve been produced. Perhaps this is what Franz meant in an earlier post when he said that he didn’t find LSB convincing.

I like LSB’s working aids (word counts, a timer and so on), but I do miss the ability to be able to comment properly on what I’ve written when I’m revising. Lastly, I’d like the developer to use more colour in the UI. (This may not seem important, but it becomes so for me when sitting in front of the software for long periods.)

IM’s greatest strengths in my view are balanced between its database (“portfolio”) and its composition tool. IM also has a commenting function, reminders, a to-do list and a history pane. But by comparison with LSB, it lacks word-counts and timers, and - a big gap - has no back-up/auto-save facility (though as Franz highlighted this can be remedied). IM has more colour (though some of its icons are a bit overblown) and a slightly more solid feel than LSB. Of course, unlike LSB which is more or less self-contained, IM leans heavily on MS Word; that isn’t an issue for me, but I can see that it might be for some.

So - swings and roundabouts! But decisively for me I really like the way IM enables me to to pull a block of text out of its database and slot it into my outline, as Franz described. For me this is fundamental to “the complete writing environment”. Hence my thinking that, at least as far as their current versions go, IM is possibly better for fiction writing than LSB.