
Bashers and Swoopers – How the tools we use for writing are letting us down - oliebol
https://medium.com/@oliebol/bashers-swoopers-257e9f27fb33
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yoo1I
To sum up this "article":

Some fluffy paragraphs about linear writing.

Fewer fluffy paragraphs about non-linear writing.

Leading question: __Can you relate to this? __

Convenient link to the author 's product, which is, you guessed it, a non-
linear writing application.

This is just an advertisement.

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ivan_ah
A good "outliner" can take you very far. You can start with a good, logical
outline for what you want to write, then just fill in what you need.

There are also tools like [https://gingkoapp.com](https://gingkoapp.com) which
helps with structured writing and allow to move or "reattach" entire subtrees
of a document.

My personal favourite is to use lots of separate text files (.md or .tex) and
a top level "main file" which includes the desired sections. I find a single
level of includes works best since you can see exactly what is going on in the
main file, whereas if you include files that include other files, things get
complicated real quick!

Pro tip for working with multiple .tex files: if you start each of the
included .tex files with

    
    
        %!TEX root = mainfile.tex
    

the multi-file authoring experience becomes much better ;)

~~~
AstralStorm
An outline forces a high level sequential structure. You just moved the
problem one level up.

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eximius
This seems like a forced false dichotomy (perhaps for rhetorical purposes, but
then it isn't as important as it claims to be).

What I mean is that I somewhat doubt most people fall into either of these two
camps. I would bet most work linearly, keeping in mind vague parts and ideas
for elsewhere - maybe keeping notes in AN extra document, but also not
limiting themselves to working strictly forwards.

Until there is a medium of non-linear consumption, I am skeptical of the need
for serious tooling around non-linear documents besides what we already have
(mind maps, graphs, etc - all things with products for them but ultimately the
biggest thing keeping this from translating well to the computer is the mouse
and keyboard, not the software)

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egjerlow
I'm a bit confused by this - I cannot even imagine how you would think in a
way that is not linear when thinking about a story. Sure you might be thinking
of various aspects that you want to include and you don't know where in the
overarching story they will fit in, but still these aspects can be expressed
in an order that is either linear or able to be broken down into smaller
chunks that are also linear. Seems this article is talking about something
different than this again..

Could someone enlighten me?

~~~
AstralStorm
Let's start with an episodic structure. You can think of a few cool episodes
or themes right? Then you expand on the episodes or themes while thinking on
an overarching story. Afterwards you could fix continuity mistakes, fill in
the blanks, expand or condense it.

This is bottom up design instead of top down. An episode is good if it can
stand on its own, but there is no need to work on them in any particular
order.

Think about it like a process of discovery. You can get an idea for a
different part of the whole while working on something completely unrelated.
Current note taking tools do not help with this - dumb post it notes are
better.

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mpbm
Aw yeah, this is the stuff I'm working on.

Did you know writing is literally stone age technology? True story.

The serialized list of symbols we use to exchange thoughts doesn't have enough
features for the modern world. It takes too much effort to serialize (write)
and deserialize (read) information. The knowledge should be separated from the
way it happens to be displayed to each individual person.

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AstralStorm
The example shown in the photo with the writer of a detective model is a crude
version of mind map. There are a few tools to handle those well, but none
integrated with a good word processor.

