path: root/2020/subtitles/emacsconf-2020--03-idea-to-novel-superstructure-emacs-for-writing--bala-ramadurai-autogen.sbv

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there's nothing wrong

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with your mobile device or computer just

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that my world

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was upside down when my son was born 11

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years ago

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hi I'm bala ramazaray author professor

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and consultant I'm going to tell you my

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story about

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how I ended up using Emacs for writing

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11 years ago in bangalore my son was

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born

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my wife and I had hardly slept through

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those days

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that's when my grandma decided

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according to such a famous search engine

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visited us to take a look at her great

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grandson

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as joyous as it sounded it came with a

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peril

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my grandma is a scrabble addict

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she hardly spent any time at all with

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her great grandson

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but she spent most of her time playing

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scrabble

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she insisted that my wife and I joined

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her

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that's when an idea dawned on me to

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write about my scrabble obsessed grandma

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what if I could make it into a novel not

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many people have

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scrabble obsessed grandmothers after all

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I wanted to expand this to a novel but

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did not know how

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I bumped into dan wells's video on seven

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point story structure which is based on

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a construct called hero's journey I was

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now convinced that a seed idea

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would indeed be converted into a novel

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I tried out many tools at the time

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million dollar tools like ms word

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excel scrivener but none of them really

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worked

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so when I remembered about this old

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editor called emacs

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thanks to the Emacs community and

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particularly the augment community

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I had what I wanted I combined

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danville's method

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with another method called snowflake and

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also

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tony valentine's Emacs writing template

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some of the key features of arg mode

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that I used

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were fold on unfold outline

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column view tags distraction free

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writing experience

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using many packages clocking project

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tracking

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and export which is what you will see in

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my demo

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now to get into some action okay

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so here we are the superstructure of the

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novel itself how do we build it

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first is the plot this comes from the

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snowflake method

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you write a one line summary of your

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plot

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character design you can write the

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entire description of the characters the

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physical descriptors motivators the

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whole thing you can write all the

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characters

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in the novel including the antagonists

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I researched about the places that I'm

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going to be using in the novel

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this is the most important part the

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story arcs

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for this I used the very convenient

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notion of using a column view

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where when I open it you can see how

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I've used

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column view each plot point

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and who the character is what is their

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plot point itself so okay and you can do

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this for

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each and every uh story arc romance

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uh each and every character sub

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character okay I haven't

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uh labeled them so next is the story

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design so now we have the character

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independent character arcs

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uh here again column view comes in handy

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this is a different set of columns now

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you can use

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not only the main the main character arc

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is the

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backbone but in the middle of it

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supporting characters augment the

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main character and their own plot points

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are also

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can be filled up using the column view

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and you can find out where which act we

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are talking about

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and for the main character what what is

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it that we're doing

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okay next is the specifics which is the

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scene design

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uh this is going to be look like a mess

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but

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it's actually very very convenient can

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be as exhaustive as you can you can do

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the title of the scene

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the act the point of view as it's called

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point of views

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which characters point of view are we

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looking at in this scene

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is it outdoor indoor we can mix it up

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match

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and then where is the location and

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finally the city in which

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this scene is taking place now let's uh

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look at the novel itself I use this

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novel the distraction free experience

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for writing the novel 60 000 word novel

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this

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first manuscript you can even write

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comments based on

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I read this out to a writer's community

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locally

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and they give me feedback on what could

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be improved what could be something that

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they should be looking at

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you can write it as comments so it

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doesn't go into your final export

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as well I'm using pandora to export it

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to

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epub or pdf or word or whatever format

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you want to

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use it with the cover image that's how I

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wrote my novel

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I used a similar structure for my

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non-fiction book

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using Emacs and arc mode which I

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published recently

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all written and edited in Emacs or mod

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thank you guys at the community and now

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a published author

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and I plan to publish and help other

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authors publish using this wonderful

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tool called Emacs or more thank you