Juiced On Writing

Labyrinth is a combination story writer software, organisation software, and almost a mindmapper, or structural application also. It’s a free download, so I thought I’d try it out to see if Labyrinth was helpful in my first attempts at planning my next novel.

Labyrinth needs Microsoft DotNet installed to work, and installs pretty quickly. It has limited help documentation, however, and no sample project to work your way around, so learning how to use the functions became quite difficult for me.

Within Labyrinth, there are several helpful functions for writers, however. You can add story elements to start off with – characters, events (plot points), locations and other types of elements. These can be added as an element within the project itself, then annotated with formatted information, or linked to external files. Elements within Labyrinth can be linked to each other also. Links can be labelled.

The annotations are a reasonably strong feature of Labyrinth. You can have a formatted annotation (perhaps setup as a template using the notes facility – see below) or a file link as an annotation or a drawing annotation. The later gives you a file with a cross-hair cursor to do some freehand drawing on it. Using all these, my main character card (or element) was augmented with textual information, a link to some graphics of her, and I could draw a smiley face if I really wanted to.

Each of these annotations appear in a list against the element – including being able to see the sketch graphic in this list also. Annotations and elements themselves can be sorted, and filtered to find them.

Once you have some elements – in my case, several general character cards, and a few key scenes – you can drag these onto the next function within the application – structures. You can have an unlimited amount of structures. In my novel’s case, I required two – there are two main plot structures. Elements can be dragged onto this structure, and arranged as you please, with labelled links between them. Structures show the relationships between your elements. With the labelled links between them, the structural tab makes for either a good mind-map type arrangement of your story elements, or even something like a family tree if you’ve got a complicated multiple-character relationship to plan out.

I found the next function – timelines – much harder to understand. The samples I went looking for, on the website, show a structural timeline with characters down the left, and chapters or acts across the top. Elements can be dragged onto a timeline also, but end up on the left hand side. I therefore ended up with a smorgasboard of characters and scenes on my left, and blank rows across from this. It took a moment for me to work out that scenes are better left as new annotations under the chapter headings. For me, this didn’t seem logical, as I’d just spent all that time doing up critical scenes as events in my story elements. Although I am yet to use the timelines function in anger, and to produce a procedure which works for me. Plot points – the chapter or act headings within timelines – can be scheduled or set with calendar dates also.

Labyrinth also has note functions, where notes sit in a separate database, in chronological order. These can be used as annotation templates also (I would suggest setting up a template for character profiles perhaps).

On the tools menu there is also a Task function. Create a to-do task, give it a low-medium-high importance, and schedule it by date if you wish. Tasks become yet another story element – which is shown at the top in a long row across the functional windows. You more easily get to your elements via the elements tab on the left navigation menu. From here you can drag and drop your elements into structures or the timeline. Or within the Elements function, view the list of annotations.

Labyrinth provides a print function and an export function on your project elements. You can also import in Labyrinth projects in total (should you find any). There is no automatic backup, so take care with this. You may also need to consider the size of your windows. I have a large width to my monitor, and at full size, the tabs and elements are stretched out. This is particularly interesting with the sketch annotations. But full-size is helpful when looking at timelines or a story structure of relationships.

As a free piece of software, there are enough functions to allow a writer to play around with their story writing projects, and the graphical nature of Labyrinth supplies something to the creative side of organising such projects.

I am not so sure I personally will be using Labyrinth further, as there are other free or commercial pieces of software available with similar functions. However, the free-form nature of the annotations, and simple drag and drop functionality to setting out elements into structures make Labyrinth a creative and simple environment for playing around with your story ideas. And for my own current novel project, Labyrinth made it fun to move forward in my limited planning and prep-work, without the confinement of some software’s structural templates or expectations.

LinkMe: Download Labyrinth from Habitual Indolence.net.

Also consider Spacejock’s yWriter, a free project organising application which offers many similar functions, plus a writing environment with statistic reporting also.

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