The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing Software

I've finished plotting my novel using The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing. I plotted it out by hand, and then entered it into the templates in the software created to compliment the plan.

It is by far the best plot I've ever come up with. It's exciting and the characters are great. And best of all, it flows--there isn't a single unnecessary, or boring scene. All of the scenes push the story forward.

The software is great and has a lot of nifty features--such as the huge name database, complete with name meanings. It's easy to navigate and, for the most part, is user friendly. I only have a few gripes.

The first is that there doesn't seem to be anywhere to write the actual narrative. This isn't a huge problem, since I'm rather attached to Ywriter for writing. I just think it would have been cool to be able to write the story in the same program as I'd entered all of the character, and plot information.

Second, there is only room in the program to flesh out the protagonist, the romantic interest, the confidant, and the opposition. One of my viewpoint characters doesn't fall into any of these categories, so her information couldn't be entered into the program. Nor could any of the minor characters--not all of whom made it into the program as there was a limited amount of space available for those characters.

Third, and probably the most inconvenient for me, is the lack of flexibility. When there is a character who, by the Marshall Plan's guidelines, is supposed to be the POV character, or if the scene is supposed to be a reaction scene rather than action, there is no way to change this. It's set in the system.

Now, I understand the reasons certain scenes are supposed to be from a particular character's POV, however, my ending just didn't quite work out that way. I tried to follow the plan exactly, but I found rearranging some of the scenes increased the tension, and made more logical sense.

It was a minor irritation, easily fixed when I saved the templates in Word format (an option that is a part of the program).

All-in-all, I enjoyed using the plan and the software that Evan Marshall designed. It's the most useful writing tool I've found. Sure, it's not the only way to write--and I would suggest using it as a guideline, not as an absolute writing Bible--but read the book and then take a look at some of the best commercial fiction on the market. A good percentage of them will have a plot that follows most, if not all of the suggestions outlined in the Marshall Plan.

It takes years for a writer to learn to plot this well. Thanks to Evan Marshall's book and software, you can learn it in a couple of weeks.