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186 of 188 found the following review helpful:
 Helps you create a first draft once you plot out the basics.Jul 29, 2002
By AMC
"scifiali"
I thought the ads for this program were somewhat vague, so I'll try to be specific. Writer's DreamKit will not create your characters, generate story ideas or write your novel. It won't even force you to write five pages per day. It will help you organize chapters and define conflicts in your stories. Creative but maybe poorly organized writers will benefit from the outline feature, which is pretty versatile and easy to use. The best way to use this software is to plan out the characters, situation and ending beforehand and have an idea for the outline in mind. The first step is answering a serious of multiple-choice questions and describing your characters and their situation. This section can reveal aspects of your story you may not even be aware of and I found that very interesting. (For example, you may not realize that two characters always contrast in their approach to solving problems but by answering the questions, some subtleties like that become obvious.) You can use the observations to better define your characters and expand on elements of your story. The DreamKit allows you to leave gaps and move chapters around easily but some changes, like adjusting character personality traits, require recreating from scratch. You can transfer your outline to a word processing document or fill in the chapters in DreamKit, though there are no tools to assist with editing-- it won't advise you if you're writing clichés or losing the reader's interest in exposition.
The examples taken from well-known films like Star Wars and Casablanca are very useful since the writing terms used are somewhat distracting (activity, impact character, etc.). The pictures feature is less useful. (You can select graphics to represent all your characters, but why would you?) There is a slim users manual that is mandatory reading before you can even begin the program. If you enjoy writing fiction more than reading instruction manuals you may find this frustrating. A poster-sized chart warns "Read This First", but I personally found the chart tedious. A complex story, with multiple points of view or an atypical plot structure, will be more difficult to utilize with this program with than straightforward, single dimensional one. A short story writer may not have much to gain from this program either. I didn't use the screenplay feature, so I won't comment on that. Overall, this program is much more useful than I expected and can really help a writer get his characters and situation into a cohesive and complete first draft.
121 of 124 found the following review helpful:
 Delayed GratificationMar 23, 2003
By A. Rios
"ProseFreak - Author of "A Death for Beauty""
At first I was skeptical about this product since some of the reviews I read were very negative. Several people seemed furious about what they thought they had purchased. As for myself, I was looking for a program that would help me outline and structure my story. Well, I got that and much more with this DreamKit. The "much more" is a plus, but only after you get used to it since there are many terms to learn. I must admit that my first reaction was not a good one. There's so much to learn and absorb if you're a beginning writer or if you have limited knowledge with the terminology, that it's a real daunting proposition at first. After a hard day's work, I wound up with 32 Scenes, many with full descriptions which you can shuffle however you like. This program is very flexible and intuitive once you get the hang of it. I'm still learning many things about it, but my main interest was getting help with the outline, and it delivered. The HELP Section is great and the Dramatica Terms Dictionary is very helpful as well. The bottom line: this program takes a little time to warm-up to but once you do, it's very useful and even fun to use. Beginners will find the almost scientific approach to writing somewhat intimidating, but it's all designed to make the artistic side of writing much more effortless. I suggest that all the disgruntled users take a deep breath and give it another shot. You'll be glad you did.- A. Rios Jr.
154 of 162 found the following review helpful:
Will this software tool help your fiction writing?Sep 06, 2002
By Joanna Daneman
I write plenty of non-fiction such as memoirs, real-humor stories and technical articles. I even get them published. But when it comes to pure creative writing, I can't muster more than a page or two. Plot? Character motivation? Storytelling? Plot-theme? Well, I am completely at sea when it comes to the great task of organizing my creative powers into a coherent work. Being the kind of person who does like software and computers to assist my writing, I was drawn to this product. Would such an affordably-priced piece of software offer me any help for fiction writing? Well, the answer is ultimately pending as I have NOT completed any work of fiction, but I now have a useful tool for organizing a foray into that genre. What's here:
A storyline "wizard" that takes you by the hand to create a story throughline, main character throughline, impact character (I presume they mean antagonist), the interaction of pro and antagonist (as they put it, main vs. impact.) The wizard asks you to create scenes based on the throughline. A character matrix-- you get 16 attributes to assign to your character and they are:
1.consider
2. logic
3. pursuit
4. control
5. reconsider
7.uncontrolled
8. avoidance
9. faith
10. conscience
11.support
12. help
13. temptation
14. disbelief
15. hinder
16. oppose Too many, not enough? Well, the pro version of the software reportedly has 256 of these matrix cells. Frankly, I think 16 is plenty, because I believe that the unconscious controls a lot of the character creation process; for example, I wrote a small piece with one theme and one main character. He was, when I finished, a pastiche of several people including myself, where I had simply taken the necessary attributes from life and combined them logically in a whole. I did not need to agonize over a matrix of cells. But...were I to motivate this main character through a plot-theme, I would need to track these characteristics that I imbued him with. Hence, the need for a database tracking software such as Writer's Dreamkit. Unless you are writing a highly complex work, such as a screenplay or novel of mammoth proportions and need to track the consistency of many character attributes, my opinion is that this is sufficient to at least get started and organize good character development. And this is a small investment to make to see if your writing style is amenable to adding a software tool because, for some people, such a logical device could possibly hinder the creative process, not enhance it. Conclusion: The Writer's Dreamkit (tm) V. 4.0 is a good basic tool. It is not comprehensive, but has enough features and is inexpensive enough to test whether or not you would use such a technical tool to assist your writing.
91 of 95 found the following review helpful:
 Restrictive and time-consumingOct 12, 2004
By TheCafeWriter
The problem with most novel-writing software I've been testing is that they involve a lot of "writing before the writing." While some planning is good, the amount of data entry these programs require detract from getting actual pages written, and the reality is that all those plans will likely change as you write anyway.
This program is no exception. I find all the initial set-up to be cumbersome without yielding benefits that might ultimately actually streamline my process in the weeks or months ahead. (By contrast, for example, Final Draft - a screenwriting program - stores your characters' names so that you only need to type the first few letters and press Enter. You can also toggle your scenes from script to outline and back again without re-entering the information.)
As for the more theoretic stuff, the story prompts are clearly taken from screenwriting which is formulaic due to the time contraints of a film. (For example, the lengths of scenes, act breaks, and total number of pages are far more restrictive to fit a 120-minute film than the scenes, chapters, and total pages of a novel.)
Because a novel can be far longer than a 120-page screenplay, there's little here for creating stories with complex plots, for tracking subplots, or for creating backstory for characters. Instead you get a generic list of 'themes,' some of which are surprising vague.
If you have little or no idea where your story is going yet, or if you're a writer whose work evolves, this program will be more hindrance than help. If you're the meticulous type who likes details of the minutae and rarely deviate from your outline once it's set, this may help you.
78 of 81 found the following review helpful:
Extremely useful if plotting a long fiction is your problem.Oct 30, 2005
By ophelia99
First for Mac users: I installed this on a Mac running OS X 10.3. It asked me which version of OS X I was running and offered 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 as options. I selected 10.3 and it went through a preliminary install. Then it asked for the serial number on the card which came with the software. (If you are as compulsive about throwing away clutter as I am, try to restrain yourself and save that card! Otherwise, I don't think the program will turn on.) After I did this and provided the usual registration stuff, it got online (I should mention I was installing in an administrator mode)and had a chat with the company. Everything went very well. This program is native for the Mac OS X and doesn't require Mac Classic or anything like that. Thanks, guys, for making such a neat piece of software that also runs on Macs!
OK, now about using the program. I am the sort of person who gets a great idea and sits down at her computer and just starts going. Things go wonderfully for about five chapters, and then I run out of steam because I just haven't thought enough about where things are going, and it's getting hard to keep everything straight.
This program is like sitting down with a no-nonsense writing teacher who asks detailed questions about characters, motivations, goals, and so on and gives you feedback on whether or not you have enough information for a workable plot stucture and what's missing. (You are free, of course, to ignore its advice.)
The most difficult part about using this program is that the designers have invented a lot of terminology that you have to understand to use the program properly. (There is a PDF file on the disk containing a 300-plus page book that explains the theory and vocabulary in detail. I strongly recommend you read it first! Once you have that, the software is quite user-friendly.)
What I found especially helpful in the software were the dozens of examples of well-known stories that the authors had analyzed in terms of their model of plot design. That model(this is oversimplified) is the idea that a story is like a mind trying to solve a problem and that different characters are like aspects of that mind at work.
If you put in the work -- and it is a LOT of work -- at the end you will have a detailed plot outline which can be printed out.
If you can write novel-length fiction on pure inspiration, you will probably hate this. If you have good ideas, but find yourself lost in the woods and hoping for a rescue party after about fifty pages, this can be a lifesaver. You get out of it as much as you put into it.
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