Often used as a tool for therapists, emotion wheels can help find just the right word to describe a feeling. You start in the middle and work your way outward. Originally introduced by Robert Plutchik, emotion wheels have evolved depending on need. Great tool for writers! Below is one example but you can google “emotion wheel” to find other examples.
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What tools do you write with? I use both MS word with track changes on and Scrivener. At How To Plan, Write, And Develop A Book, owner Mary Carroll Moore gives her professional advice on how she stays organized while writing.
By Mary Carroll Moore
No matter where you are in the book-writing journey, at some point the sheer volume of material begins to overwhelm and it’s time to look carefully at how to organize yourself.
A private client recently wrote me about this. She’s been trying to locate some “islands” (snippets of writing, or scenes) that she’d written a while back, but she couldn’t remember how she’d titled them. They were virtually lost in the mass of material on her computer.
She asked: “I’d appreciate your advice on how to save my islands on Word. Should I title them? Date them? How will I handle revisions? As separate documents or just edits of the original? Confusion reigns on this front! Also, in your book (Your Book Starts Here), you mention saving work in files. What are these exactly and how do I create them?”
I work in both Scrivener and Word. I find Scrivener easiest for organizing, but I do end up using Word quite a lot for final drafts before submitting. Here are the methods I use in each, plus some low-tech organization tools learned along the way.
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Have you tried Grammarly? I read about it from over at The Creative Penn. It is a program that is supposed to help your writing by checking your grammar as you work. There is a free and a paid version and both come with browser plugins and even a download to work with MS Office. If this works as advertised it would be quite useful. Nothing replaces a professional editor for eBook work, but perhaps you could at least cut your costs a little by fixing what you can first.
We rarely see the errors in our own writing, which is why I’m a super fan of using professional editors to improve my own books.
But there are things we can do to improve the manuscript BEFORE sending it to an editor.
Grammarly is one of those useful tools that can sort out the basic errors, enabling you to improve your writing and learn as you go. It can also help with emails and online writing, where paying a pro editor isn’t cost effective.
As indie authors, we are 100% responsible for producing books that are not only readable and entertaining / informative but also ones that are mistake-free. When readers are distracted by misspellings and grammatical errors their reading experience is going to suffer. And that means your reputation as an author is going to suffer as well.
The Kindle also has a function for readers to report typos and if you get too many of these in a book, you’re going to get a quality notification.
For this reason, we always want to use professional editors and proofreaders when we’re publishing our books. Nothing can replace the editing and proofreading of a human being, especially one who specializes in your genre.
However, the messier a manuscript is when you send it to a professional for proofreading or editing, the more it’s going to cost you to improve and fix.
This is where the online app, Grammarly, steps into the picture.
Author Tools – things to help you get your writing done
More help for Scrivener users! Katrina Archer at Fiction University shares her tips on how to use Scrivener to format your script.
June 16, 2016
By Katrina Archer, @katrinaarcher
Are you about to indie publish a book but can’t figure out how to get the formatting right? Do you already use Scrivener and don’t have the budget to shell out for a high end design app like InDesign or to splurge on Vellum? Then Scrivener’s Compile settings may be the solution for you. While not for the faint of heart, you can turn out a nicely formatted book for both print and digital entirely within Scrivener. The focus here will be on print, because it’s typically trickier, but the same techniques can be used for ebooks. (Note: this tutorial uses features available in the Mac OSX version of Scrivener. YMMV with Windows.)
The first thing to do is get organized (boring, but you’ll thank me for it later). Each edition of your book may have different front and back matter, for example, to list different ISBNs or calls to action. In the Binder, add folders for each edition. I usually place my back matter folder beneath the main manuscript folder, whereas Scrivener’s manuscript format template provides an existing folder for front matter. In the examples below, I’ve created folders for ePub, Print, and Kindle editions. Within each folder, I’ve added files specific to the edition in question.
Read the full post on Fiction University
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Author Tools – things to help you get your writing done
I don’t know that a first draft only mobile word processor is for everyone, but if you want to what one is like head on over to Boing Boing where reviews his.
Jun 3, 2016
I jumped on the Freewrite/Hemingwrite kickstarter ages ago. It took so long for the single purpose, first-draft-only word processor to show up, I’d occasionally forgotten it was coming. I’ve had it for a few weeks now, and last weekend I typed a review out, on the unit itself.
Thing is, you can’t edit on the unit. The review below is the raw output of my clattering away at the old-timey keyboard.
If there is elegence to be found in simplicity, the team at Astrohaus have done their damnedest with the Freewrite, their single-purpose, distraction-free word processor. Originally billed as the Hemingwrite, I bought into the kickstarter on this years ago, hoping it’d help me focus on some short stories I never get finished while working on my laptop, or bother to transcribe from my notebooks.
I waited a long time for this unit, so I’m a little less forgiving of the problems than I might be with another kickstarted piece of kit. I have absolutely no complaints about the fit and finish. The device is pretty lovely in its gaudiness. It is supposed to resemble a typewriter, I think of the 1920s-1930s generation of my Remington Rand Deluxe Porta 5. It sort of does, the selector switches are mounted in a way to resemble the reels for ribbon, but it more closely feels like a mid to late 1990s portable wordprocessor. It weighs slightly, but not much less. It works about the same, and part of its charm is that it throws back to a mechanical keyboard like they would have used back then.
The keyboard is pretty much heaven, if you come from the days of yore, as I do. It feels like I am jamming along on a Commodore Vic20, or a WYSE terminal. While the e-ink isn’t vac green, its about as slow as the old led based screens would have been. You get just enough text on the screen to let you read back 1-3 sentences. You can’t edit at all, aside from erasing with backspace, so watching as you type and not looking at your fingers on the keyboard is really critical. I find that if I miss a typo by more than 5 words, I try to leave it and not go back.
Read the full post on Boing Boing
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Writing Tools – things to help you get your writing done
Thorin Klosowski at Life Hacker reviews Ulysses, a plain text writing tool. What are some of your favorite apps or tools to help get your writing done?
I’ve long been a fan of plain text for everything from notes to general writing, but it wasn’t until recently that I found my holy grail: An app that could sync with multiple devices and handle multiple output types. Ulysses. It’s the plain text version of Evernote I’ve always wanted.
Occasionally I get contacted by over excited people who want to share something totally awesome and new with me that will make everyone a lot of money. Since I am trying to keep this site indie and clean I usually say no. But every once in a while, there is actually something cool that I think you will like.
Full disclosure – I am not making one penny off of this. This is a really awesome site that some of you might enjoy, and the people I have talked with seem super nice.
So now that is out of the way, let me introduce you to Skrawl.com.
Skrawl.com is a collaborative and competitive group writing website. Users have the choice to enter into a writing competition based on a theme or topic, then the readers view the entries and vote on their favorite. The winner’s entry becomes a part of the story and that process continues until the story is finished. Writing styles can range from stories, scripts, articles and debates while breaking off into numerous categories from Action & Adventure to Fan-Fiction. It is free to enter, which is always nice. They also have “writing challenges” where you can win prizes, on top of bragging rights.
It looks like a great way to get some practice in, meet other writers, and possibly get some exposure. Plus you get to vote on your favorites to move up. If anyone joins, could you come back and let us know how you like it and also give us a chance to root for you!
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