Writer’s Café…

Perhaps, dear reader, you are disappointed to learn that Writer’s Café is not an actual pub. My
apologies if this is the fact.

Writer’s Café is the software I use to write. I don’t only use it to write my stories, I also use it for
my private journal, to collect ideas, names, plots, and pictures that sparked an interest in me.
Pictures can help bring a story to life – but that is a tangent that does not belong here.

When I began writing, I used OpenOffice writer. OpenOffice is a free Office suite that runs on
many platforms (and by now is overtaken by LibreOffice). This went well for a while, but at a
certain point it was becoming hard to keep track of parts of stories, locations, character descriptions
and more things that I discovered an author needs and does.

Friends in writing mentioned that there were specific programs to make writing easier, so I went out
to look. Now my particular issue is that I want software that runs on Linux. I am quite a technical
person (work related as well as out of sheer interest) and I use Linux since many years.  After
several searches I discovered Writer’s Café.

Writer's Café - main screen

Storylines (1)
Welcome to another exploration into Writer’s Café. This post covers a very basic item, one that is
the essence of the program: setting up a new story and starting a first scene or chapter. (Please note
that I do not possess a Mac computer, so I can only detail PC-keyboard shortcuts.)

To start a new storyline in Writer’s Cafe, you either click File in the menu bar and then select New
Project, or you click the “New” button in the toolbar:

"New" button

After that, you select the kind of project you want to start, in this case: Storylines. Follow the
wizard to enter the details you care to enter at this point (everything can be changed afterwards).
Note that you need to enter at least 1 Storyline name when going through the wizard.

After going through the wizard you will see similar things on your screen:
at the top there is the Outline window on the left and the actual writing area on the right.

Outline and write area

(Click the image for a large version in a new window)

And at the left hand bottom you find something like this:

Story overview
 

1 storyline called “Storyline” (or what you called it), and a block showing the first scene or chapter.

(Again, click the image for a large version)

At this point things can become a bit confusing for first-time users: before you can write in the
summary pane, you need to click the white block in this area, to select the scene you intend to write.
Otherwise writing will not be possible. Try it. After clicking the block (be it chapter or scene), you
can use the pane in the second image to can write your summary of the chapter or scene. In this
example it is coloured grey (for easier reference). The first words of what you write in the summary
will show in the white block of the last image, which makes navigating through the lower area
easier.

To write your actual story content, you click the “Content” tab (second image, over the grey area).

If you do not want to grab the mouse all the time to switch between all the tabs, you can use F2
(switch to summary) and F3 (switch to content). F4 takes you to the annotations tab and F6 takes
you to the report tab. And indeed, F5 does not take you to the properties-tab.

More clever things to know: double-click the column to the right of the chapter/scene you created
and a new one will be made there. You can also right-click there and select “New Card” from the
popup menu. Through the Storylines menu you can accomplish the same, as with the Ctrl-Shift-C
keyboard combination.

the scrapbook
One of the tools in Writer’s Café is the scrapbook feature. It allows the user to create compositions
of pictures, bits of text, and links to webplaces of interest. Because of its free format and handy
options, I use it more and more.

For instance, I use it to keep track of how characters in specific stories tend to relate to each other,
how they know each other, how they share acquaintances, and also I have notes in them how I want
to keep certain things hidden (at least for now) from characters.

Such a scrapbook can look like this (you can click the image to see a larger version):
Scrapbook example in Writer's Café

As you see, it is very easy to create lines (relationships in this case), rectangles or other shapes, add
pictures, and write comments and other necessary trivia in a scrapbook.

Moving elements around is as simple as dragging and dropping them, and adding elements is
child’s play using the extensive toolbar over the workspace.

Creating a picture scrap, or a complete picture scrapbook, is just as simple. Create a new picture-
scrap:

New Scrap window

Name it whatever means something and then assign a picture to it. Here is an example of how part
of my picture scraps for my Nanowrimo project of 2011 looked:
Picture scrapbook

Clicking a thumbnail or a caption-link will show the larger version of the image.

Explore the scrapbook. Look at it as your shoebox with pictures and notes and letters. It’s just more
organised.

keeping track of your characters

Welcome, dear reader, to another venture into Writer’s Café.

This time a look behind the scenes, where the characters of a story live. It is very easy to keep track
of who lives inside a story, when you make use of the characters-table built into Writer’s Café.
Likewise, in the location-table, it is convenient to describe how the places look where your
characters like to go to.

You can find these places over the left top window, where you usually find the outline:
Character tab

In the shaky circle you see the Characters tab, and to its right is the Locations tab.

Clicking the Characters tab shows you an image like this:

Character definition

In this window (there are many more fields you can use), you can define your character as
elaborately as you like. Now suppose there is a type of information you miss, or a field you want
faster access to. You can then right-click in a space in this window that is not an input field, and
select “Edit schema” from the popup menu.

This will take you to a screen like this one:

Character schema

Here you can add fields, move fields up or down, and remove fields, for this specific project. For
instance. you can move the notes-field up so you immediately see it when you open a character:

Character schema altered

Or you can add a field to describe, for instance, pets, if that is important in your story. In the same
manner you can use and influence the Locations table in your Storylines project.
your pinboard.
Dear reader, fellow Writer’s Café user, curious visitor,

Today I am going to let you have a look at the possibilities of the pinboard in my favourite author
software.

The pinboard is a very nifty place where you can stick notes and pictures, shuffle them, colour
them, and stare at them.

Getting started with the pinboard.

After opening Writer’s Café, you can press Ctrl-6 to go to the pinboard pane. You can also click the
shortcut on the W.C. desktop:

Either of these actions will show you a screen like this:

New pinboard

Note that you have to click the “New” button or press Ctrl-N to prepare a new pinboard-file. After
you did that, you can add your first note. Right-click anywhere in the screen. You will see a menu
with several options, the first one being “New text note”. Let’s click that:
New text note

As you see in the image, the toolbar for formatting your note is available. You can start typing your
note right away. You can add as much text as you want, and with the little black control at the right
hand bottom you can resize the note to your liking. If you desire to add a caption to the note, simply
click the titlebar of the note. There a typing cursor will appear and you enter your caption text.
Pressing ‘enter’ or clicking outside the title-area will store your entered text:

Note with title and text

Of course we are not limited to white notes. Writer’s Café allows colours and changes in font, so
you can make things as clear and pretty as you like:
Coloured note

But the possibilities of the pinboard do not end here. You can also add pictures and even complete
slideshows. Once you added a picture, you can also edit the properties (for instance size):

Picture-note with properties-window

You can group notes by simply stacking them on top of each other. If you then select the set
(dragging the mouse over the area they are in while holding the mouse button) you can move the
entire group to another place.
To give you an idea how I use the pinboard in practice, here is an image from one of the projects I
still am working on:

Live pinboard

In this schema there are a few storyline plots running next to each other. There is a large main one
in the left hand top. A small one with some scribbled ideas that might fit in the large one. A second
line with three main parts, they belong together so I stacked them in a way they are all still legible,
and so on. And then there is the big one with the red background. This contains crucial questions
that still require an answer. Feel free to click the image for a bigger version. The text is in Dutch, so
that might be a bit disappointing.

I hope this little tour has given you an impression on how you can employ the pinboard as a
valuable tool in your writing. It is a wonderful way to organise thoughts, move characters and keep
plot-lines in sight.
auto-replace
Dear reader, or should I say writer, user of Writer’s Café.

Writer’s Café can do auto-replace for you, since its latest release (version 2.30). Some people want
it, some have no need for it, but the auto-replace in Writer’s Café is quite versatile and
customisable.

To see the auto-replace options, open the View menu and select “Auto-Replace Preferences…” This
shows you the auto-replace window:

Auto-replace window

Here you can enable and disable autoreplace, and when you enable it, you can specify exactly
which symbols and/or characters should be substituted when you use them.

You have the option to add new combinations, and delete them as well. Clicking the ‘add’ button
allows you to enter a character, symbol or word, and the ( … ) button there pops up an extra
window with symbols, so you can easily select, for instance, the Yen symbol and have that show
when you type (yen) .

You can use auto-replace also as a comfortable tool to quickly type complicated words, for instance
when you have to type “5-¢1-Hydroxy-2-(heterocyclic-amino)!alkyl-8-hydroxy-3,4-
dihydrocarbostyril derivatives” very often. Generate a shortcut through auto-replace, e.g. “(5hh)”
and let Writer’s Café do the hard work for you.

The second tab in the window allows you to switch between the ‘straight quotes’ and ‘curly quotes’:
Quotes, straight or curly

The Floating Card Editor

Dear reader, fellow-user of Writer’s Café or person who is looking for good software for writers,

Today I want to give you a look at a nice feature of Writer’s Café called the Floating Card Editor.
It is, in short, known as the FCE in Writer’s Café.

The Floating Card Editor is a separate window which shows only the basics for the part you are
writing. Use F8 (Windows, Linux), or Storylines → Floating Card Editor from the menu to show
the window. Use one of the same methods to make the window disappear again. You can of course
also click the ‘close’ button on the right-hand top.
Floating Card Editor

(Feel free to click the above picture for a more mature version.)

When you bring up the window, the content of your story will disappear from the content pane in
Writer’s Café, and show up in the separate window of the FCE. Using the ‘View’ menu of the FCE,
you can customise its appearance to your preference.

You can show or omit the summary-text, you can remove the properties-pane, and resize the
window-parts to how you like them best. A nice feature is that Writer’s Café will remember your
settings, so next time you open the FCE, your preferences are restored, and you are good to go.

Another nice thing about the FCE is that you can remove all excess information and maximise the
window to use the entire screen. This is especially convenient for people who want their desktop or
screen free of distractions, with only their writing project to focus on.

This mode of working is also very good when you use Writer’s Café on a device with limited
screen-space. This would be for instance with use on a netbook or a tablet. Opening the FCE full-
screen with only the story content will still give you ample overview of your story.

reports
Dear reader and user of Writer’s Café,
This post I want to address the reporting function of Writer’s Café. A report is a quick way to see
how your work would look when it is displayed in a word processor or in print.

The report tab

Accessible by mouse or on the press of F6 (Linux, Windows), a report will be generated and shown
inside the report window. The report default, as chosen in your preferences, will be shown initially.
This can be altered by using the dropdown box on the left over the report:

Type of report

If you select another type of report, the display will update itself according to your wish. The other
dropdown box will allow you to control what part of your work will be displayed as a report:

Limiting the report

If your entire report is far too large to examine for the forty-seventh time, you can restrict the report
to the current sheet you are working on, or even just the storyline level you are one.

If you want to alter the defaults of the report, and influence other settings, you click the wrench-
symbol on the far right, next to the dropdown boxes:
This in turn will reward you with a dialogue window in which you can set and unset everything to
your heart’s content, until you are satisfied with the outcome.

Report preference dialogue

(You can click this image for a larger version if you want.)

The report is valuable if you are working on setting the proper styles and formats for parts of your
work. Once you see how powerful and fast it is, you will learn to love it, if you do your formatting
inside Writer’s Café.

And now what?

Dear reader, and (hopefully) user of Writer’s Café.

Let us look at the stage where you have (sort of) finished your writing, and you are ready to take the
next step. After all, you did not write your masterpiece to let it sit in Writer’s Café, did you?

Writer’s Café saves all its information in a specific file format which is of no use to any program
except Writer’s Café, so sending such a file off to a proofreader is not a smart thing, unless that
person also owns the software. For this you can export your work. The export function is available
in the file menu, it’s called “Export”:
To access it you can also press Ctrl-E (Windows, Linux). Mac users will not have problems finding
it on their system, I am sure. Selecting this option presents you with a window that offers a selection
of export formats:
Exporting to HTML will generate a page that someone can view in any decent web-browser.
Formatting of the text, for example italics, bold text and underlined words, will show exactly that
way. This is also true for exporting in OpenDocument format (more on this later).

Plain text will not preserve formatting effects you have made, but it will be readable on any
computer. It is up to you to decide what you need. The last 2 options, HelpView and MS HTML
Help, will not be covered here for now. After clicking “next”, you will see a similar screen:

Here you select the kind of output you want to generate. The default for this can be set in the
preferences, the drop-down list shows you the available options. Pressing the “Edit…” button
allows you to influence the elements and styles that are used in the reports. I leave it up to you to
experiment with the different types of output, that is much more fun than reading it here, don’t you
agree?

After selecting an output template you press “Next” and then you see
This step in the export wizard allows you to select the parts of your work that you want included in,
or excluded from the export-file you are generating. Make your selections. Another “Next”-click
later, you are presented with

This is where things become serious. We are about to generate our output. Now you get to decide
where the output file is going to be written, and how it will be named. Click ‘Next’ to invoke the
magic…
Voilá. The export-file is created. You can view the file (this button will attempt to locate and open
the appropriate program) or browse the folder in which the output file is placed. That is all there is
to exporting a file. But… I did promise you some more information about OpenDocument.

OpenDocument is a file format that is usable in most modern word processors. Microsoft Office
2010 is able to read these files. Microsoft Office 2007 is also capable of this, provided you have
installed Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007. For older versions of MS Office, you will have
to do some exploring yourself, or turn to one of the following.

Free office suites like OpenOffice and LibreOffice use OpenDocument natively, these contain
excellent word processors. Using any of these programs, you can create a Word Document if you
need to (Save As…). This can come in handy as not everyone is aware of the OpenDocument
format.

screenplay
Dear reader and perhaps user of Writer’s Café,

So far I have only displayed the magic of Writer’s Café for writing stories, books, novels and so
forth. The software however is not limited to that. It is also designed to be a great help for writing
plays and other scenarios. For this, there are several tools; the easiest of those being the special
play-writing styles that are predefined. A tiny example of this is:

Click image for a larger view

Using these styles, which you can of course copy and customise to your heart’s content, it is very
easy to create a smoothly running dialogue, insert scene-changes and descriptions that you feel
should be noted.

After the writing, there is of course the aspect of time. How long does a scene take? How long are
people talking? Is there something that needs to be done here, and how do we decide on that? For
this purpose, Writer’s Café has a great tool. It is a timer. You can find the timer in the View menu,
just click “Timer…” there, and you will see:
Click image for larger view

You can use this handy little tool to time how long it takes for a particular part of dialogue to be
spoken, and perhaps decide there is too much text, or too little, or that the actors need to speak at a
certain speed to put everything in the given time.

As I am not a playwright, I am probably not even touching half the options that Writer’s Café offers
for writing plays, but at least you have now seen that the software is also capable of handling this.