We all have at least one good novel in us, or so I've been told. For myself I know I have at least a few mediocre novels trying to work their way out. My ultimate dream is to one day write the next Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings over a lunch break, but until that happens all I can do is slug along with my writing exercises and meager attempts at character development. A great tool that helps me with these endeavors is a little freeware application called SLang by Ian Pegler (visit his website at ianpegler.com).

The key areas that SLang finds itself being really useful are scene planning and plot development. The tool lets you easily create "Events." These events in turn can be linked via dependencies to other events. The events can have a location and a description and the body content of the text you want to write. If you are planning a large or complex story this becomes invaluable as it is easy to adjust scenes and get an overview of the background information required before you write each section of the story.

The other really cool feature of SLang is how it controls drafting. Essentially every event has a text block in which you can write the text of your scene. Once you have a draft you can start a completely new draft with the click of a button. Create as many drafts as you like and when the text begins to jive with the overall feel of the story simply select a checkbox to mark the current draft as the one you want to use. It keeps all the other versions regardless.

SLang has been useful to me as a sort of "rapid prototyping" tool. I can setup the basic plot ark as well as quickly plop down details of each event or conversation in the story. As I get more time I flush out each event with a new draft that contains progressively more and more detail. SLang is a perfect writing tool for hopeful (yet ADHD afflicted) authors such as myself.