Does your novel writing software analyze your novel?
Do you know how many times your characters meet each other? Do you know where the main character meets his lover for the first time?
This is the novel analysis and it’s really useful to have a clear vision of how our novel is structured.
So, does your novel writing software helps you to analyze your novel?
Novel analysis with bibisco
When I designed bibisco, I first wanted to include the features for the study of the character and the definition of their conflict.
But then I wanted to insert a feature that I have not found in other novel planning software: the tools to analyze the novel.
Let’s take a look at the analytics features offered by bibisco.
Chapters’ length
In this analysis, it’s possible to observe the length of each chapter and compare it with the others.
You can analyze if the length of the chapters is homogeneous in the novel and if there are chapters that are much longer or much shorter than the others.
Characters’ distribution
This analysis is particularly appreciated by users of bibisco, because it allows analyzing the presence of the characters within the novel.
It also allows observing the distribution of the presence of the characters between the chapters.
Some characters may be present only at the beginning of the novel, others only at the end. Generally, the protagonists have a constant presence throughout the novel. If a character doesn’t show up for half a novel, that becomes immediately apparent.
Furthermore, through this analysis, it is possible to find out at a glance when two characters are present in the same chapter.
Locations and Narrative Strands’ distribution
In addition to the distribution of the characters, bibisco also allows us to analyze the distribution of locations.
And the distribution of narrative strands.
Characters’ list of appearances
This analysis, for each character, provides the list of all their appearances in the novel in chronological order.
For each apparition you can find:
- date and time of the apparition
- location
- scene
- chapter
This is extremely useful for ensuring consistency (How can this character be in Dublin when he was in Sydney an hour earlier?), especially for very long novels with a lot of characters.
Use of points of view
In this analysis, the writer can study the use of points of view in the novel.
Was the use consistent? From the point of view of which characters was the story told?
This knowledge is particularly important because every story changes according to the point of view of the teller.
Tag your scene and bibisco do the magic
bibisco automatically generates the analyses illustrated in this article.
The writer simply has to tag each scene with the characters that appear, the location and time in which it takes place, the point of view used, the narrative strand to which it belongs.
Conclusion
A good novel writing software must help the writer not only to write the novel but also to analyze it.
bibisco offers deep analysis and at-a-glance infographics detail about chapters’ length and how characters, locations, points of view and narrative strands are distributed chronologically and across chapters.
This means you can easily see where things happen in your novel.
Such information could be invaluable for preventing inconsistencies and, ultimately, understand the structure of your novel.
