Is it bad that I recognize some of those from big budget movies and anime
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Advice, tools, and other goodies for writers
Advice, tools, and other goodies for writers
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Advice, tools, and other goodies for writers
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I was linked to this article from, uh somewhere. I have no idea where from by now, was it on this forum even?
But it's really quite cool: Jim Butcher on Sequels. By "sequel", he means "the stuff in-between scenes where conflict happens". It seems like there's a lot more information on writing, starting from the bottom up on his LJ. -- ∇×V 
A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles
Now your character can talk like a real Canuck, eh? More importantly, the site gives derivations, examples of usage, and illustrations of how meanings have shifted over the decades for the defined terms. -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012 
http://www.grammarly.com/
A pretty cool chrome extension and webapp. Even the free version is pretty useful and they have a Word plug-in too. -------------------------------- Je ne suis pas une Intelligence Artificielle Turing. Je suis Charlie. 
One of the more common problems I see with fan writers is a tendency to write sentences that are just... clunky. Awkward. Sentences that, if you tried to read them aloud, just don't sound like a human speaking.
Here's a short little article with some advice on how not to write like that.
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold.... 
Hey everyone!
The last time I posted a suite of writing tools has been quite a while. Some have become defunct and others have had a great number of updates since last time. So, I'll go ahead and edit the original post and have this be the new listing. Let's start off with my personal favorite - Scrivener. Scrivener was originally written for Macintosh OS-X, but they've had a Windows version available for a while now, and now they've recently come out with an iOS version for Apple portable devices. "Why should I use Scrivener?" Simple - Scrivener was originally intended for screenplay writers (but it's just as good for other forms of writing, ie: novels) and so it has virtual cork boards with index cards you can use to 'storyboard' your story. Even better yet, you can establish a hierarchy for these cork boards, like scenes within a chapter, chapters within a volume, and volumes within a greater project. Unfortunately, those are the only tools relevant to keeping track of the plot, and the character development tools are weak at best (they do allow you to attach notes and custom metadata, though). However, Scrivener has two other wonderful tools - a distraction free mode and a compiler. Distraction Free Mode is like with any other distraction free writing application. It allows you to write, undisturbed by notifications from the internet, aps, or even your own PC/Mac. You can set a timer for when distraction free mode ends, as well as a word or character count target. You can even set a relaxing background image and adjust he font settings to how you like it, however there are no transparency features like in FocusWriter (I'll get to that later). Finally, Scrivener's compiler is a wonderful tool. While others have something similar, Scrivener's is robust with a myriad of features and output formats for just about everything you can imagine, including (but not limited to) Word Documents, ODT, PDF, EPub, HTML, and even good old plain text. Additionally, you can set up various styles for a given output so it looks like exactly the way you want it. It even permits you to select what parts of your project to include in the compile, so if you have a HUGE project divided into volumes then it's no problem, or you can even nix individual scenes if you'd like to. Oh, and let's not forget about the Research Folder! This is quite probably the most remarkable part about Scrivener. It's a folder where you can drop in virtually any file type and have it saved internally to the project file on your hard drive. There, you can pull up the material whenever you need it. I've even dropped video clips and music into the folder! It's magnificent! Now, as you probably guessed by now, Scrivener is certainly NOT free. HOWEVER!!! They do have a very generous trial period - 30 days of ACTUAL USE. Meaning that if you only use Scrivener for 3 days in a week, then you've only used 3 days in the trial period instead of a whole week! Pretty awesome of these guys, huh? And Scrivener is actually not that expensive for what you get: US$40. I often see games that cost more than this. Get it here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview Now, from the makers of Scrivener comes a very odd program called Scapple. What does Scapple do? FREE
FORM
SPIDER
DIAGRAMS
That's right. And, like Scrivener's research folder, you can drop in a myriad of file types - it's like the Research Folder on Crack and Methamphetamines! Best of all, Scapple has Scrivener's trial period, and again, only costs US$40. Get it here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple/overview So, Scrivener has a great stoyboarding tool, but sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes you needs something that's a little more nuts-and-bolts when it comes to working out how your story's plot is gonna go. Enter oStorybook. No, that's not a typo. I gotta explain. Thing is, these was another project simply called Storybook. It was Freeware - just had a little note whenever you started it asking for donations. There was a donor's version of the software that did not have this notification. However, despite this online panhandling, the project could not go on the way it was organized, and Storybook became Abandonware. But this was not the end. Along came a fellow by the name of Franz-Albert Van Den Bussche, along with their friends, Jean Rebillat and Bruno Raoult. These wonderful programmers not only picked up where the original project left off, but have improved vastly on the original. "So what's great about oStorybook?" In just a sentence? PLOT THREADS AND AUTO-GENERATED TIMELINES!!!! oStorybook is an EXTREMELY technical bit of writing software and it's perfect for someone who's big on world building. You can not only set up unlimited plot threads (with scenes that can be linked to any number of these threads), but you can also set the time frame of the story, character birth- and death-dates, as well as create a library of places and plot relevant objects (ie: Buckaroo Banzai's Oscillation Overthruster, Sailor Moon's Silver Moon Crystal, or MLP:FIM's Elements of Harmony) that can all be associated with different plot threads. And with this this software, once you have everything filled in, you can look into the timeline features to make sure that everything is lining up properly. You can see when and where characters appear, an overall who is where and when, or simply just at what points certain objects or places show up in your story. It's a perfect environment to fine-tune your story and ensure that everything forms a coherent whole, and best off all it is flat-out freeware. The only fly in the ointment is that it runs on Java, so you need to have an up-to-date version of the Java Runtime Environment installed. C'est la vie. Get it here: http://ostorybook.tuxfamily.org/?lng=en Okay, so now what about character development? oStorybook has some features, Scrivener has fewer, and though Scrapple is great for mapping out how everything connects, you still need something that helps put you in the right direction in regards to your characters' motivations. I have two pieces of software here that do pretty much the same thing: Character Writer and Persona. Both run on Windows and Macintosh, and both do not require Java. What's great about these is that they give you defined archetypes (each one having two sub-types), though Persona goes a bit further by expanding and organizing this list by gender. Conversely, Character Writer seems to have a smaller set, but also lets you set the gender of the character in a separate setting. What makes Character Writer stand apart from Persona is that it focuses more on mental issues by giving you two additional choices to make - a selection of three mental states (a good, bad, and in between), as well as how you want the character to end up with their mental health (better, worse, or no real change). It is then able to use the personality archetype, subtype, and mental health toggles to give you a rough idea of how your character MIGHT develop. Additionally, Character Writer supplies a sampling of the most common mental health defects seen in people today, and shows you how this may apply to your character. Persona's character archetypes are similar to that of Character Writer's, except that each archetype is divided on a wheel into wedges, with gender and heroic and villainous alignments shown in layers around the circle (Hero, Heroine, Villain, Villainess). This makes Persona's archetype selector something of a one-stop shop, though you still need to choose between on of the two subtypes. NOTE: Perona does not draw a hard line between heroic and villainous alignments - it simply shows how two people of differing alignments may get along with each other. Much like how you can have a party in a DnD campaign that has both evil and good alignments represented - there's nothing that says that these two cannot find common ground and work together as associates, even if they're not exactly friends. What's great about both pieces of software is that they let you see how any two characters might interact and influence each other which goes quite a ways towards helping authors overcome writer's block - the whole "But how would my character react under these circumstances?" problem. And thusly, these two programs provide you with a skeleton to develop your characters from. There are a couple of flies in the ointment here. Character Writer costs a whopping US$70!!! Persona costs much less (US$40) however it is clear from the minor glitches that abound that this is not as polished as it should be. They do have trial periods, but they are not as generous as Scrivener's. (Whose is?) Get Character Writer here: http://www.characterpro.com Get Persona here: http://marinersoftware.com/products/persona/ Now we get to some more utilitarian stuff: research tools! The two that I'd like to endorse are Google Keep and Evernote. Google keep is nice because of it's cross-platform capabilities granted to it by its web-based nature, although there is an Android app available for it. However, compared to Evernote, Keep is somewhat bare-bones. You can definitely upload photos, and you can also make a 'hand written' note that can include doodles. Evernote, however, features a 'web-clipper' add-on for Firefox and Chrome that lets you take selections from a web page and save them i several formats, as well as the ability to store just about any file type in its portfolios. It also has a mobile app for iOS and Android so you can snag pictures, video, audio, and annotate them on the go, and even a desktop for both Mac OSX and Windows. It's programmed in C++ so you don't have to worry about Java here, either. But here's the downside: the basic Evernote service (free) only allows 60 megabyte of uploads to their cloud per month. Yes. That's right. 60 MESELY MEGABYTES Oh, and you can only sync up two devices to the cloud service. They do have paid plans that offer more. (A LOT more.) The Plus plan allows for 1 Gigabyte of uploads to the cloud per month, and the ability to sync up an unlimited number of devices. The Premium plan gives you 10 Gigabytes a month to play around with. Both are yearly subscriptions, with Plus at US$34.99/yr, and Premium at US$69.99/year (however, Premium has a Student discount at 50% off the subscription price). And then... there is Evernote Business. And boy, do they mean BUSINESS. Evernote Business allows for an unlimited number of people to share the same account, and grants you a whopping 20 Gigabytes of uploads to the cloud every month, PLUS! an additional 2 GB for each user on the account. And the crazy part is that it only costs US$12/month per user. But there's the rub - that's a MONTHLY subscription. And while easier to swallow in the short term, Evernote definitely gets their money's worth because even for a single user that's US$144 yearly - a little over what TWO Premium subscriptions cost. So, it's up to you what you want to do. There are other features that are exclusive to each successive tier, so it all depends on how much you REALLY want to get out of Evernote. Start using Google Keep here: https://keep.google.com/ Get Evernote here: https://evernote.com Finally, we get to my favorite part - the stand-alone distraction free writing environment. FocusWriter is a very robust word processor with distraction free features. What's nice, though, is that you can relegate FW into a window instead of full-screen mode, so you can jump between apps as you please. FocusWriter has a full bag of basic tools to help writers, such as a timer that lets you set aside a certain amount of time in your day to focus ONLY on writing, as well as variable targets for word or character counts per day. It even keeps track for you, marking when you're on a 'streak' of consecutive days for hitting or exceeding your targets. FocusWriter also allows you to set themes, each with their own unique background image (or just a flat color), and you can even set your font, font color, background color for the text, and whether this has any transparency effects. When they say 'fully customizable' they frickin' mean it! Additionally, FocusWriter will work in several file formats, and you can have multiple documents open at any given time. Best of all? IT'S FREEWARE! HELL YEAH! Get FocusWriter here: https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ I do have one honorable mention here, something I have not yet had the time to delve into called The Novel Factory. At first glance, it seems to combine elements from oStorybook, Scrivener, and Persona. However, I suspect that this software is more of a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none deal. However, it does have a polished look to it, so we'll see. At the time of this posting, they were running a special - a 50 day trial period, and until December 7th you can get 30% off the price using the code NANO2017. They do have a web-based version with cloud features as well, but that's pretty pricey stuff. The plans are all billed on an annual basis. I'd rather just buy the desktop version, but if you're jumping from machine to machine a lot, then this might be a solution for you. Get the desktop version here: https://www.novel-software.com Get the web version here: http://www.novel-factory.com Welp, hope someone finds this stuff useful. I certainly have been. 
I've been meaning to buy Scrivener for a few weeks now, but some of the other tools you've listed call to me... I may delay my purchase to get a better sense of what some of these programs can do for me first.
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold.... 
Recently found this essay and thought that it may be of interest:
The Epic of Space by E.E. "Doc" Smith , the author of The Lensman series.
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”
— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
RE: Advice, tools, and other goodies for writers
02-15-2018, 07:33 AM (This post was last modified: 02-15-2018, 07:34 AM by InsaneTD.)
My partner linked me to this website called World Anvil. I haven't had a chance to have a really good look at it yet. What I have seen off a quick read of the site shows it should be a pretty decent note organiser at least. Also seems to be free.
https://www.worldanvil.com
Hm. Looks very interesting. I'll have to give it a try when I get home from work.
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
I recently stumbled across the youtube channel for Chris Fox, a self-publishing author who also writes books advising on how to write. A lot of his videos are full of advice on how to be a better writer, on a number of levels.
Okay, I just discovered a freakin' gold mine on Wikipedia that is perfect for people who say that they're bad at writing fight scenes. (At least, those of the knock-down-drag-out-punch-up varieties.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession...ng_attacks This is a comprehensive listing of moves and attacks, including illegal moves, used in professional wrestling from around the world. Which means it includes some really wild shit from Japan such as 'Asian Mist'.
RE: Advice, tools, and other goodies for writers
09-01-2018, 12:05 PM (This post was last modified: 09-01-2018, 12:06 PM by batzulger.)
Lester Dent(aka Kenneth Robeson the creator and writer of Doc Savage)'s Master (pulp) fiction plot.
Lester Dent Wrote:This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.
SEZ
BZG
RE: Advice, tools, and other goodies for writers
12-04-2018, 08:45 AM (This post was last modified: 12-04-2018, 08:45 AM by Bob Schroeck.)
Reposted from General/General:
(12-03-2018, 02:08 PM)robkelk Wrote: The Princess Bride Guide to Copywriting
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
Oh man, now those are some absolute gems there, guys.
Some of it I had already been doing in Being You is Suffering where Garrick keeps thinking to himself, "Forewarned is forearmed." I've also had to go through and weed my lexicon a few times. And in a few spots I've had to cut things down to brutally short summaries.
RE: Advice, tools, and other goodies for writers
12-11-2018, 09:46 PM (This post was last modified: 12-11-2018, 09:46 PM by Bob Schroeck.)
So, I recently stumbled over BetaBooks, and I was wondering if anyone knew anything about it.
For those who don't, it's a very interesting-looking web-based pre-reader management tool that lets you give and revoke access to your work, facilitates feedback from your prereaders, track who's read what yet, and like that. The thing is, it's not free, or not entirely so. They have a free version, but it's limited to one work and three prereaders, and lacks some of the more interesting features. Anyway, has anyone besides me come across it?
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
Hmmm... This would probably be an incredibly useful tool for someone who's bread and butter is writing. For example, people who publish on Amazon's store on a regular basis. Some of these people make a rather decent amount of money that way, and a tool like this would be a worthwhile expense.
That said, for someone like me? Who would just be starting out with writing original stories with an intention to publish them? This seems like it would be very useful, even for the free service. Main reason being that while putting stuff up in forums like this is good for getting kudos, this places a very high emphasis on constructive feedback. For example, I could use it and have maybe Rob, Mamorien, and Star Ranger be my pre-readers (if they wanted to) and have the whole thing get picked apart mercilessly. (12-12-2018, 09:37 PM)Black Aeronaut Wrote: For example, I could use it and have maybe Rob, Mamorien, and Star Ranger be my pre-readers (if they wanted to) and have the whole thing get picked apart mercilessly. I think I could find the time to pre-read your stuff, BA. (Nobody else's, though, at least for the next half-decade.)
--
Rob Kelk Sticks and stones can break your bones, But words can break your heart. - unknown (12-12-2018, 11:25 PM)robkelk Wrote:(12-12-2018, 09:37 PM)Black Aeronaut Wrote: For example, I could use it and have maybe Rob, Mamorien, and Star Ranger be my pre-readers (if they wanted to) and have the whole thing get picked apart mercilessly. No worries. Not gonna be getting started for a while. I'm having enough trouble chaining the muse to my side just to get my other projects going again. 
Something worth paying for: Unblocked: The sure-fire way to get rid of writer's block forever
Amongst other things, it explains why this advice: (04-03-2015, 11:44 PM)Bob Schroeck Wrote: only makes writer's block worse.
--
Rob Kelk Sticks and stones can break your bones, But words can break your heart. - unknown
RE: Advice, tools, and other goodies for writers
07-21-2019, 10:49 AM (This post was last modified: 07-21-2019, 10:50 AM by robkelk.)
There are some crowd-sourced translation dictionaries at Glosbe - here's the English-Old Norse one.
As reliable as anything else that's crowd-sourced, of course, but they've got a lot more of them that Google Translate does.
--
Rob Kelk Sticks and stones can break your bones, But words can break your heart. - unknown
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
Suggested books for writers, but the one that really got my attention was the emotion thesaurus:
https://youtu.be/r4428fR8IJY
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”
— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
How about this site:
https://interestingliterature.com/2015/1...d-writing/ Then there is this site: https://www.writersdigest.com/ |
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