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Maps e.g., etc.
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Posted by satis
Jun 17, 2022 at 02:36 PM
I personally find swimlanes essential for planning, but kanban boards are not something I’ve yet wanted to pay for. The board I’ve seen with swimlanes and free tiers include zenkit, quire, swiftkanban, jira and kanbantool. A few like kanbanize and planview used to have free tiers but no longer do.
One intriguing opton is Microsoft’s DevOps platform, which I’ve bookmarked but not played with yet, is free for indivuduals and small groups and has a seemingly nice kanban product with swimlanes.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/devops/boards/
Posted by 22111
Jun 18, 2022 at 12:37 PM
Amontillado, I have to admit my only knowledge from Aeon is from its version 1 - which I found so terrible that I never touched it again - it might have become much better in-between, perhaps one-sided, Mac-sided that is, in particular? Also, “import-export” (i.e. both) is important, and Aeon provides this with Scrivener (and perhaps other tools), so my “judgement” isn’t up-to-date.
For presentation purposes (i.e. for export only, from any other tool to timeline), what newer MS Excel versions (at least from 2016) can do, from csv data (which is easy to create, from any human-readable format), is incredibly, but technically demanding (there are several third-party instructions in the web).
Whilst my fountain pens are mostly from Parker, I’d bought the complete Cross sterling silver set then (fountain pen, felt-tip pen, ball-pen, 2 lead pencils (broad and fine line) - all these have been residing in some (not: desk) drawer for more than 20 years, untouched, and I write, when I write, with either a Staedtler 2 HB pencil (which are the original, wooden brown, not the lacquered Faber-Castell green), or a Bic (the regular ones; both the pencils and the Bics, I buy by 20) - back to the roots in a way… - and when I used fountain pens, I had to change the cartridges much too often - I would never ever buy another cartridge fountain pen again, and in my Cross fountain pen, I even have a cartridge which fills by inkpot (I always have the inkpots, too) - so much for nostalgia vs. practical use in my case - but if you’re fine with a fountain pen, that’s perfect: “perfect” in the sense of “optimized”, of having found the tool that “works” best for “you”, i.e. that’s individual; for me, it’s the audio recorder now but many of us obviously have in common that we need some OTHER tool than the screen ONLY, and that seems the core point here.
You say, “but the planning for me has to focus on meaning”.
Strike! And that’s another argument for me to prefer a generic tool like UR, and which allows for several tree (i.e. “enhanced list”) item formats: I’ve got lots of reminders of what I want to achieve, to express, incl. considerations, variants, considerations re variants, and so on: “meta data” of my own, and with specific colors / formats (italics, sometimes bold), I organize all this quite fine, with lots of information in the tree already, i.e. always visible, at least in its broader context (considerations for act II.1 in that “chapter”, those “chapters” or “acts” or whatever being just artificial divisions in order to facilitate navigation within such broader context whilst minimizing scrolling needs), whilst that “meta data” not visually overwhelming your “real data” (intended “output”).
It’s obvious that UR and some others are “ideal” for this way of working, “within your own reminders and guidelines” if I may so so, whilst Ulysses and some others lend themselves much less to this working style; as for “special writers’ software”, each of them follow their specific concept… whilst I desire to implement my own, with the least possible hindrance from the tool designer, and in general, we all should prefer that organizational tool which forces us the least possible amount to adapt to what the tool designer had in mind; thus, I think it’s a bit steep when the Devonthink developers kill one pane out of three:
Since with 3 panes, you can distribute the tree’s “depth” into 2 panes, for much more clarity, and with the “area” and “project” level in pane 1, the specifics of just ONE project then in pane 2; with just 2 panes altogether, you will have to create additional databases in case, in order to just gain a little bit of more clarity, the whole tree being “mixed up” with all the details in a single tree pane… - so they invented hoisting, which would not have been really necessary otherwise, according to me…
As for using MS Word “styles” instead of just jotting down, I’m not that much convinced, since the question of formatting could only arise with regards to (whatever) plays, and then, “Fountain” is the way to go; it’s explained in detail here, https://fountain.io/syntax but if you just remember it’s
INT or EXT = HEADING
SPEAKER
Dialog
Action
And even that is action again
you do in fact 99.5 p.c. of all your formatting with the return, and the shift, keys, i.e. manual corrections after import (it’s the standard import format and can also be used for stage plays) will be minimal, and fiddling-with-form is, whatever McKee here correctly says about the final “draft”, just another form of procrastination, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaP_j9AHdRE - how ever I might mock specific “author’s software”, good books about writing are another thing altogether, and McKee’s “Story”‘s one of the very, very best - and then Vogler and Truby (who’s very greedy though: see his site, and again with terrible software…) and some others - and then there’s a whole library full of material for procrastination again…
There’s this 1997 Patucci album, “One More Angel” (from dire background indeed: poor girl!) - I like to say
“one more angle”
(i.e. one more precise, pertinent angle) instead, and one more, and one more… I just don’t find them from the outset, e.g. from a catalog page, like my beautiful but inept Cross writing set, and thus my erratic way of writing, since even sort of,
Planning comes after subtext, in order to mould it into its ideal form.
wouldn’t be right: it’s not waterfall, neither in the “usual” order, nor the other way round.
It’s a mesh, and subtext and mould have got to mesh, one bearing further developments in its own field, and in the other - and yes, why shouldn’t a serious writer, writing more or less linearily, NOT then throw away 3 times the “publishing” output, if that’s the way they write best?
At the end of the day, the important thing is that they don’t stop midway, for weariness of all the “unnecessary work” on top that would imply, and which, if they go that way, will not have been unnecessary at all, from a quality pov.
Yesterday, I viewed “10 Days Without Mum(my) (“10 jours sans maman”, a piece of crap from France, with a French star of today) - in less than 10 minutes, it was obvious for me that this was to become one more “Sunday evening TV movie” (understood: for the whole family), so I knew:
- it was crap
- it would make money
And correct, 1.2m tickets in France, of which just a fraction (about 12 p.c., normally that’s about 50 p.c., for art house films up to 100 of course) in the Paris region, i.e. people who “know better” hate such fare but it’s “good enough” (according to the producers) that way for the masses in the “provinces”.
From such fare, you could then infer that “good enough” was good enough, while it isn’t.
And that’s all about it, the aforementioned vs. “Cat”; respecting the audience by working harder, which way you ever do it.
Posted by Amontillado
Jun 18, 2022 at 03:17 PM
Styles are de rigueur for presentation. Composing within styles is, to me, a small price to pay for the flexibility. A lot of what Scrivener does with its compile feature can be done with styles.
Aeon Timeline has come a long way since version one. So far, my use of version three has been for tracking some real-life events. I haven’t yet had the need for mind maps or narrative outlines within Aeon.
I haven’t played much with export, since I no longer use Scrivener or Ulysses. Both are great tools. My not using them is probably a personality disorder.
Import into Aeon is great. It’s simple to import into Aeon from spreadsheets, OmniOutliner, and Devonthink, and with a little help from Python, from Curio. There are a few mouse-clicks required in Aeon to accept the import, but it’s not bad.
For Devonthink, I added fields for start, end, participant, observer, location, and arc. In Curio, I adopted a convention of tags with two at signs like “@@start=7/20/1965 8:43” in the notes field of items destined for the timeline.
Posted by 22111
Jun 18, 2022 at 07:20 PM
Amontillado, what you say about DT clearly indicates that (even) DT (about which so many people say it would not be) is fit for writing, similar to UR where also many people pretend it wasn’t (fit for writing that is) - your doing so I would never qualify as what you suggested, but as a rational choice to “hold your stuff together”.
Above, in my little “Fountain” intro, I forget the so-called (parentheticals), like here, or then
(like here)
both within dialog (the return in case being preserved then, but with the proper formatting (indentation) in case, or after
SPEAKER (faintly smiles)
Dialog here.
whilst in “action” (passages in parentheses) will not be reformatted, obviously;
I didn’t comment on your writers’ groups, but I acknowledge that third-party input may greatly help; if the story is “complicated” enough, there will probably be no drift, but I wouldn’t discuss comedy / gags over there…
And the higher-up above applies to “serious” stuff (including thrillers and even comedy if you want), but then, if there is no “subtext”, a comedy should at least be very funny (whilst the above-mentioned negative example isn’t at all), and a thriller or slasher movie suspense-packed, etc.
And there’s the universal law of “diminishing returns”, and the Pareto principle, 80 p.c. of effort being considered “reasonable” in view of their returns for you, or for your task, any additional effort being considered “too costly” in most circumstances (“ineffective”); for your personal satisfaction, measured in “speed of work progress” vs. effort, that may be true, but the additional effort “makes the difference” in serious writing, that’s obvious.
And the question remains if perhaps my musings above, re IM (information management) for “writers”, may ultimately concern the management of “third-party data”, considering you may NOT being the author of your “work”, but just a “translator” of, a scribe for what you get “from somewhere” - with composers, nobody doubts this, whilst many pretend - delusionally then? - for writers that them be the “masters” of what them write (I speak of “observers” speaking about writers, not about writers who probably almost all know better than that?) - perhaps the less inspired they are, the more they are “masters” of their stuff, since the more “arbitrarily” they write? Does the “public” relish such writing? Probably not so much…
I have rather got the impression that for every “original” story, there is sort of an “ideal” story which then slowly emerges (and where finally “it all fits together”), and which might quite differ from the “original” (i.e. not only the original “idea”, but also the original “plan” / “design”) in the end, so a “writer” might not be from a translator in what they do as far away as they might imagine, in the end, and then, our terms of “planning”, or “construction”, and similar, appear especially inadequate.
In the end, nobody really knows, e.g. for the mythological foundations: Yes, “Casablanca” is to be considered an “ideal story”, but then, how do we explain the even much bigger success, with the audiences worldwide, of “Titanic”, considering that the hero did NOT sacrifice himself for a greater cause, but was just much more unfortunate than the heroine? And yes, young rich men are mean, young rich girls are not, especially when in love. But…
Did it occur to fellow “outliners” that the poor hero’s death arranges the situation for the “rich” (i.e. formerly rich, “high (social) class”) heroine, discharges her from marrying him, living with him, supporting him financially possibly, by working as a working-class girl, with all that’d implied for her situation with her family, her “social standing” and all?
Thus, might the message, the “myth revived” by this monster success be that “love between a boy and a girl of socially different backgrounds will not build a bridge over the abyss that separates them socially, but, while being perfect dream stuff enough for the ageing memories of the surviving, ageing girl for a whole, very long lifetime, and for a very short interlude in the girl’s life, it can’t be consumed beyond a ONS though, it cannot be “realized” (among other “things”, consecration by common children)...
and more so, and in order to avoid complications by the boy, he’d better die so she can mourn him but will not be further bothered.”?
Thus, not “love brings together” but “mate in your own social class exclusively, but not without love indeed - outside of your class though, even flirtations are dangerous for your afterlife”.
Since first, the movie shows us that the rule, “mate with your own kind”, is considered wrong (Rose & Cal) when there is no love, and it then gives a short illusion only of love, notwithstanding “class” difference (including sort of a ONS to make better belief: in those times, a sign of their love being overly serious indeed!)... and then, the below rank “lover” (he’s a poor, striving artist, so the risk of him to fail is predominant) conveniently (and together with the ship, i.e. the platform which allowed them to “meet” in the first time) sinks into the abyss that now separates them forever… since she “makes it” away from that common grave, tomb of the inappropriate deflorator AND of the faulty facilitators (vessel plus car…);
whilst Cal (sic!), the symbol of meanness and greed, also survives but is punished by the fact Rose is “finished with” him… (i.e. the defunct hero as an “eye-opener” = is functionalized, deified in the other sense of the term, i.e. rendered a “thing”, also as a crotchet to hang fond memories on) and he hasn’t got any reason, years later, to survive then his fortune’s loss: he lives FOR money, but Rose lives for the MEMORY of love.
We all agree, I suppose, that this monster success would not have been possible with hero and heroine becoming a couple, but isn’t that saddening?
Btw, the facts now, 110 years later, are as presented by this movie, after about two, two and a half decenniums (I meant decenniums, too, not decennials, somewhere “above”) of docs marrying (i.e. founding families with) nurses, ditto managers, etc with their secretaries, etc., people have been mating again within their “class”, and not even speaking of office women mating with plumbers… (Very ironically, that Tim Hardin wrote his “If I were a carpenter” in in or before 1966, when the other way round at least there existed real chances…, so this was a protest song in the end… of perfect “irrelevance” for today’s audiences indeed…)
An’thus, whilst “Casablanca” is a wonderful masterpiece, “Titanic” might be considered the most lavish, and highest-grossing girls’ porn of all time: a masterpiece in its own right (production values, construction (sic!), results), but one to tear one’s hair, considering we - I say hopefully “we”! - strive at affirming the noblest myths in our audience’s mind, not the foulest ones, and that without making our producers go bankrupt in the process.
I promise I’m not going to try to multiply movie interpretations here,
but I thought it important to demonstrate it’s not only our own relative lack of inspiration, we have to cope with, and with trying to put that inspiration into some “optimized” order, but also with the fact that the audience, whilst craving for being “satisfied” and reassured in their self-definitions of the day and beyond, does not necessarily crave for nobility, other than on their future calling card if possible, of course.
(And ironically, Towne got his “Chinatown” Oscar probably for Polanski’s ending change: the “girl” being quite disturbed, after all, not even mentioning the “girl”‘s daughter… and then, living together: the big love? Better, the audience’s got somebody to mourn - here again: the inappropriate mate - when the lights go on, than to meditate, “they’ll surely make a-lots-of-trouble!”...)
Posted by 22111
Jul 17, 2022 at 11:11 AM
Seems that some (more or less) contributors to this forum are unhappy with my recent drift to literary writing, and they’ve got very unhappy indeed when I said, ultra, if you don’t meet your expectations in yourself in that field, just be a good family person (i.e. man, for about 98 p.c. of the readers here, cf. infra), and you’ll be tenderly remembered by offspring generations: no need to try to fight luring death with means beyond your means. - So be it.
While some co-contributor here, in his wordpress blog welcometosherwood, continues to inform you about almost everything appearing as (mostly online?) “outliners” and the like, even those more-or-less me-too- fleeting stars for which there doesn’t seem to be so much room indeed, mid-and-long-term in the - quite crowded - market, another co-contributor here, in his wordpress blog drandus, seems to have ceased to inform the public re his “toolbox”, the last post, one more re “Chromebook” - what else? - having being posted over there more than 4 years ago.
But then, in his more-than-6-years-old post, “Solving writing problems by physically pushing through and letting yourself go”, he wrote, “I feel this is a process of “letting go” of some things and liberating my mind to be open to some other things.”, and that’s spot-on re what I’ve tried to express above:
You cherish something (i.e. some “scene” (o.k., I’ll stop! Scrivener is it, for the “writing” guys, end of discussion…), some idea(l??), some e.g. commercial concept), and you’ll have to let go… but before mourning and sorrow’s got a chance to overwhelm you, paralyzing your further, alternative inspiration (for your marketing strategy or whatever, mind you), be aware that you don’t throw away your “ideal”, your real “thru-line” (oops! I seemed to do it again… but then no, I’m speaking of a real thru-line here, applicable to any field), you remain loyal to your spirit…
you just open your mind to pursue your objective differently now… ideally even better than before, but at the very least, more stringently, with obviously better chances to attain it - more “suitable” (analyze the term: “suitable” > “suite”...) -; in other words, the journey’s NOT the reward: You might get smitten by some phenomena on your way, and when you cling to them, your way will mislead you: is it worth it? obviously not.
What I named “writing” above, you easily can rename it “planning”, be it your marketing strategy, your career, your life, whatever: Don’t cling to details, even if you might be besotted with them, and it’s not by accident that many a fairy tale - ain’t they considered to keep alive collective wisdom? - warns you about clinging to ideas that should better be done away with, in order to save the spirit.
Thus, at the end of the day, you have to discern, about real mourning (re deaths in your immediate family), and that very harmful, false “mourning” (for people stepping out of your life, for ideas, for “elements”) just holds you back within unnecessary inertia (and what drandus calls “writer’s block” in his post)...
and (i.e. the “at the end of the day” continued), “outlining” is not only about finding the elements that “logically” will follow, but also, and ideally - but you have to pay attention to do so, and that’s the secret in that -, about identifying those elements which would harm the ideal suite… which’s a mean to the guiding idea… and you can even outline and hopefully perfect that one.
Outlining’s about the spirit then, and elements are means.
Even in your possible campaign to sell some crap, but perhaps, while thinking about it, you get even some idea for product quality? O.k., the latter just applies to individuals, or to pop-n-mom ventures; for corporations, our now-traditional division of labor and “competence” is opposed to that resort. On the other hand, the “creative writing” individual has no such excuse. And yes, erratic - physical - outlining might become largely dispensable when your (e.g. commercial) intuition already will have discarded any dead-ends or moribund-ends, subconsciously, when you start writing out (your business plan or whatever). ;)