Getting Started writing with wavemaker novel writing software

Where to begin?

On your first look at the software you’re probably wondering what’s a good starting point. It’s designed to be used how YOU want to use it, so send feedback if you’d like to see something in there.

My personal place to start is the timeline tool, especially when hammering out an basic idea.

The Timeline Tool

I find it really useful to cobble together a simple timeline of the events in the story. This is a standalone tool that I added purely so that when you start a project you can quickly put something together that outlines your story. You can of course completely ignore it if you want 🙂

The Snowflake Tool

I do most of my plotting in the snowflake tool. It’s great for expanding out your story,  breaking it down into manageable chunks that allow me to focus on that part specifically. 

The Cards Tool

The main editor allows you to fill out the cards from the snowflake tool in more detail, although it’s handy to use the Cards tool by adding scene and character notes in the editor.  You can build up a pretty extensive todo list of things to write about

The Editor

The main editor window is where you can get right down to the real work. You can see the scenes you’ve planned to write, the structure should all be there. Now comes the grind of turning all your best laid plans into a rich detailed novel. 

13 Replies to “Getting Started writing with wavemaker novel writing software”

  1. I have just found your app and have started to learn the basics.
    Will I be able to import my current project written in word?
    Looking forward to using your software.

    Regards

    David

      1. I tried copy paste to ‘import’ from google doc:
        I lost all the italics (which are supported in Wavemaker)
        How could I keep italics while copy/pasting?

  2. Suggestion…

    Allow for the timeline tool to be collapsed to show just the headers. This would make moving things around much easier. You would be able to see much more of the timeline. You could provide a button to expand certain headers and collapse others. It would just make it much easier to work with a larger, fleshed-out novel.

    Thanks!

  3. Hi. Very cool. But I’m so lost. So my stuff lives where? In the cloud? In Chrome? I made some story cards and then tried dragging them into the writer place – Scene 1 came over but none of the other ones would. And now I can’t find them at all. And you know that template you made with chapter numbers? How do I do that? I don’t see how to make chapter names to drag note cards into. I’ve spent 90 minutes with this and I can’t figure it out even looking at your tutorials a lot of times. I mean, I’m not as stupid as I think I am.

  4. Is there a way to indent paragraphs and to get rid of spacing between them? So far, these are the only problems I’m finding.

  5. This is seriously cool and I want to start using it but having some technical difficulties. For some reason when I try to cut and paste from google docs it messes with the formatting, such that I have incredibly long lines of horizontal text that go off the page and I have to scroll sideways to see. Not sure if/what I’m doing wrong or what is going on. Thank you.

    1. You are formatting your paragraphs with spaces …. don’t do that. (in markdown 5 spaces indicate you are in code mode)

      Wavemaker will add indents automatically – if you are copying in spaces you will get the same problem

  6. Where can I turn off the spell checker? Any language input that isn’t English automatically gets underlined in red, it’s very distracting.

    1. The spell checker is the one from your system- it’s built into your web browser so it uses the default system language

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