Emerging Writers' Festival | 2011 May 26 – June 5. How to Write & Blog Efficiently with Free Tools like Evernote, DropBox, Picasa & Live Writer. A while ago, I wrote a blog post about . That was over a year ago. Times have changed, tools have evolved and processes have gotten better, at least for me. I still believe that how your blog or write is extremely personal in nature and what may work for me, might not for others. I would, however, like to offer some “best practices” that I use that I have found provide efficiencies for me. To quickly outline how I write an article or blog post, here is a high-level process and the I use. So, here’s how I currently do my blog writing: – save a title for an article (Evernote) – get your ideas down (Evernote) – take pictures and photos (Picasa, DropBox) – move it all to your blogging software (Live Writer) – edit it all, print out and read (PAPER!)
– get your article live & share it (WordPress, Twitter, Facebook) Those are pretty much the 6 easy steps that I use as well as the free tools that I use for each step. Conceptualizing a subject for an interesting article is always hard. BOOK GRAPHICS | A busy author's best friend. The Fantasy Novelist's Exam. The Checklist for Writing a Novel and Getting Published.
Don’t fall down on the easy stuff. If you’re writing a novel and sending your manuscript to a publisher, it has to be in perfect shape. Make sure that you can tick every box before you consider your novel completely finished. Technical Have you run a spell check on your entire manuscript? (If you have problems with the passive voice, run a grammar check too.) Have you made sure that character names and place names are consistent throughout? Language Is the language in your novel clear and understandable? Character Are all your novel's characters utterly necessary? Style Have you checked that, wherever possible, you’re ‘showing’ and not ‘telling’? Theme Does your book have a theme? Dialogue Is the dialogue within your novel realistic? Surnames in Fantasy? You should look at the ways people come up with surnames in our world. Patronymics, names based off where they're from, etc. The SCA website has a very nice explanation of all the ways people arrived at various types of surnames.
It's buried a few layers down in links, though. Personally, when I'm coming up with fantasy surnames, I do it the same way as first names. If you've got a decent conlang behind it, you could be more creative: "Vura Moahti" where "mo" means "black" and "ahti" means "wood". If you want to use a trade, another common way to make a surname, you could have "M'bala Tak", where "Tak" means "smith".
Many surnames, especially those chosen when a group was forced to take a surname are ornamental. Now, if this was D&D style, the character would probably be called "Ghil Whiterose", but since it's general fantasy, I'm leaving the name untranslated. These names are all on-the-fly, since I usually don't go this deep for my own naming. Names. Names Names are often a problem to come up with, so there's a variety of generators for people, places, and things!
General Extreme Fantasy Names For those more over-the-top fantasy names, suitable for grim heroes, overpowered heroines, and the general over-the-top types of character. Or parents with no thought of a child's future! Greek Namers It produces greek-sounding names - they may not translate to anything, but they'll sound right! Dark/Evil Names Dark Elf Names Not all elves are nice, after all. Species/Specific Angel/demon Name Generator Generates names for angels and demons for characters or your own pantheons and hierarchies.
Theme Western Names Next time you've got a story on the American Fronteir or the Weirded-out West, come here for quick names and ideas! Locations Realms Need to give a Kingdom, Provice, or other setting an interesting title like "Dragon's Empire" or "Kingdom of the Great Grail"? Ships Pirate Ship Names For your more "piratey" sounding ships. More Resources! Writing a Novel and Getting Published For Dummies Cheat Sheet. The Checklist for Writing a Novel and Getting Published Don’t fall down on the easy stuff. If you’re writing a novel and sending your manuscript to a publisher, it has to be in perfect shape. Make sure that you can tick every box before you consider your novel completely finished. Technical Have you run a spell check on your entire manuscript?
(If you have problems with the passive voice, run a grammar check too.) Have you made sure that character names and place names are consistent throughout? Language Is the language in your novel clear and understandable? Character Are all your novel's characters utterly necessary? Style Have you checked that, wherever possible, you’re ‘showing’ and not ‘telling’? Theme Does your book have a theme? Dialogue Is the dialogue within your novel realistic? The Structure of Your Novel Checklist The structure is the backbone of a book: beneath the surface, it holds everything together and imposes order on the flow. Ask yourself the following questions: 10 Strategies for Finding Quality Time to Produce Content. Part of my personal and professional job is creating content. Content for blogs, presentations, papers, emails, tweets, you name it. Contrary to popular belief, content can not just be created in a few seconds.
It has to be born, nurtured, developed, rethought, rewritten, finalized and published. It’s an iterative process. And very personal. I wrote an article a while ago about how I write a blog post. The process hasn’t changed, but my time to do it has. I know that I’m not alone here. Office hours – this is an idea that I borrowed from college. What tips or tricks do you have when creating content, collecting your thoughts or just sharpening that pencil in your brain? HTD says: How do you create content? 10 Strategies for Finding Quality Time to Produce Content was last modified: January 26th, 2011 by Michael Sheehan.