An Unofficial Guide to Goodreads for Readers and Writers Sortable: This customizes an order in your bookshelf. This can be useful for your favorites shelf (organized it from most-beloved to least), a ‘tearjerker’ shelf (from ‘drowning’ to ‘drizzle’) or whatever you come up with. First select the sortable option and then return to that book shelves page. Sticky: Bookshelves are ordinarily displayed in alphabetical order however stickied shelves will always top the list.Exclusive: Books can only be in one exclusive shelf at the time. 3.1.7 Organizing Your Books’ Columns Your ‘My Book’ page, by default, displays your books’ cover, title, author, avg. rating, rating, shelves, date read, and date added however the displayed information is customizable. To adjust these columns click the ‘Settings’ link located to the right of ‘Batch Edit’. Select or deselect the information that is interesting to you. 4. 4.1 Book Recommendations 4.1.1 Goodreads Computerized Book Recommendations Goodreads recommendations are not like Amazon recommendations. 4.2 eBooks
Evernote, OneNote, and Beyond: The 12 Best Note-Taking Apps Where do you put your thoughts, your ideas, or the name of a movie someone recommended? If you write them down or otherwise capture them, you get an accurate record that you can always refer to rather than rely on a faulty memory. The place to put all this information and more is in a note taking app. Note taking apps are the digital equivalent of notebooks, and because they're digital, they can do more for you than paper ever could. Editor's Note: Originally published in October 2015 by author Jimmy Daly and then updated in April 2017, we've updated this post with new selections and app descriptions. What Makes a Great Note Taking App? To find the best note taking apps, we started with a list of about 35 contenders and whittled our way down to the 10 best based on a few criteria. All the apps chosen for this list met a standard for being easy to set up and use. One final point for consideration was whether the app offered a unique experience. The Best Note Taking Apps Bear (iOS, macOS)
Creative Mind Mapping for Novelists Brainstorming ideas seems to be one of the hardest stages in the writing process for many novelists. As I discussed in a previous post, this storm of ideas that flash and thunder in our brains often appears unruly and difficult to harness. I introduced the practice of mind mapping, which is used across many disciplines—such as in classrooms for essay writing and in business meetings to problem-solve. Mind Map on the Macro and Micro Levels I’ve never seen anyone specifically focus on novel structure or fiction plotting via mind mapping, so I’m going to show you ways I feel mind mapping can be useful for the novelist. Going deeper, you can merge mind maps, which I’ll explain in a later post. Brainstorming Characters and Theme Together I’m a character-driven novelist, so I always first start with character ideas along with theme. So I took out a large piece of paper and wrote “Billy Thurber” in the middle (see my previous post on how to create a mind map). Focusing on Theme in Your Mind Map
Learning Markdown: Write For The Web, Faster Table Of Contents §1–What is Markdown? §2–How Markdown Works §3–Learn Markdown In 20 Minutes or Less §4–Exporting and Printing Markdown Documents §5–MultiMarkdown Tutorials §6–Using Keyboard Shortcuts and Menu Items §7–Automation and Shortcut Tools §8–Markdown Editors for Mac, PC, iOS, Android, and Web Applications §9–Conclusion: Where To Go From Here §–Appendix: Cheat Sheet 1. There’s a wealth of articles about Markdown on the Internet, but many of the resources are not useful for how to get started using and laying Markdown syntax. Markdown was developed in 2004 by writer and blogger John Gruber. What Is Markdown? Markdown is essentially a syntax language for formatting text as you write. Formatting text in Microsoft Word, and other traditional text editors, can take a while. Additionally, the formatting done in programs like Word use a lot of code for formatting – code that can mess up articles intended to be published online. Some people, knowing this, use HTML formatting directly instead. 2. !
Tutoriel : Créer vos ebooks avec Sigil | iPodTutoFast Suite à la demande de nombreux utilisateurs, je vous rédige un petit tutoriel qui va vous permettre de créer rapidement et facilement votre propre eBook. Ce tutoriel repose sur l’utilisation d’un petit soft Freeware nommé Sigil, qui va vous permettre de créer/rédiger/éditer vos eBooks. Dans ce tutoriel, je vais vous montrer comment créer rapidement un livre au format ePub intégrable dans l’application iBooks pour iPad, à partir d’images. La première étape consiste à récupérer le logiciel via ce lien : Repository. Installez le ensuite. Une fois l’installation terminée, lancez Sigil. Cliquez ensuite sur Insert–>Image : Sélectionnez toutes les images qui composeront votre eBook et valider. Cette partie est optionnelle, mais j’aime bien avoir mes eBooks et mes bibliothèques taggées correctement. Nous allons ajouter les informations de titre, d’auteur et de langage en cliquant sur Tools–>Meta Editor. Remplissez les 3 champs affichés et cliquer sur OK. Be Sociable, Share!
OmPad: Free, beautiful, minimal and inspirational writing web app Welcome to OmPad! Free minimal writing app that helps you focus and concentrate on writing great content. Format your text with headings, bold, italic, links, images, lists, code and quotes. Customization: Change the theme, size, font and width by hovering over the OmPad logo (bottom left)Formatting: Select the text and a floating toolbar will show up.Images: Type in a URL, select it and click the image buttonHTML: Click the bottom right word-count You can start editing this text you are reading right now, go ahead, click here and start typing! "This is the best writing app ever, and it's free!" Put your browser on full screen mode for an immersive distraction-free experience. Simple, powerful, beautiful. There is no Save button, everything is auto-saved as you type. Made with ❤ by Xavi Esteve
MacDown: The open source Markdown editor for OS X. 64 Online Writing Tools For Writers, Bloggers & Authors — The Writing Cooperative 64 Online Writing Tools For Writers, Bloggers & Authors Download a PDF of these online writing tools for your next writing project. Word Processing (More than just Word and Pages) AutoCrit: Manuscript editing software for fiction writers ($5-$12 per month)BlankPage: Geared towards novelists, it focuses on distraction-free writing, with motivators, prompts, outline help and moreByWord: Simple and efficient text editing for Mac, iPhone and iPad ($11.99)Calmly Writer: Distraction-free writing ($2.99)Focus Writer: Distraction-free writing with a hide-away interface. Mind Mapping & Brainstorming Bubbl.us: Brainstorming made simple with a graphic mind map to organize ideasMindmeister: Collaborative online mind mappingMind42: Shareable mind mapping and brainstormingMindMup: Open source and easy to use Distraction Blocker Session Timers Ebook Creation & Publishing Editing Notetaking PhotoEditing Photoshop: The industry standardGimp: Free photoediting softwareCanva: Quick and easy designs Prompts Journaling
Top of Tree - Tree, outliner for Mac OS X. Horizontally expanding outliner. Tree view In tree view, Tree displays your data in a horizontally expandable tree diagram. This offers you a more intuitive way of working with your outlines. You can easily switch between tree view and a traditional list view while editing your documents. Examples of usage Tree can be used for Writing a novel Travel planning Recording ideas Writing legal briefs Great for a quick hierarchy for websites Taking notes for academic researches and writings ... Tab Bar * Newly added button on the far right of the tab bar. * In Tree 2, the tab’s function changed to focus on showing items in separate tabs. Plain Text and Rich Text Tree now supports a new file type to handle rich text with the ability to choose from multiple fonts and styles ( bold, underline, italic ). You can select the document text format from the format menu or change the new document text format in the preferences. Input and Output Tree can open Plain Text (.txt), Rich Text (.rtf) and OPML 1.0, a XML format for outliners. Download
Tools for writing the next best seller Don't you wish you could write a novel? I always did. It's such a daunting and convoluted undertaking. How can anyone even organize and keep track of all the plots and characters? I have started a few stories, but quickly abandoned them because I just couldn't seem to write anything cohesive that seemed worthy of showing to other people. I often wonder how authors like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, or Patricia Cornwell can come up with so many stories, believable characters, intricate plots, and put them together in books that are good enough for publication. National Novel Writing Month While researching topics on writing inspiration and tools to use for writing, I came across NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo requires participants to begin writing a 50,000-word novel on November 1 and submit the product by November 30. Open source is mightier than the pen! Obviously, one needs a word processing program. I'm just crackers for bibisco Tools for novelists Novel organization
How To Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method Writing a novel is easy. Writing a good novel is hard. That’s just life. If it were easy, we’d all be writing best-selling, prize-winning fiction. Frankly, there are a thousand different people out there who can tell you how to write a novel. In this article, I’d like to share with you what works for me. This page is the most popular one on my web site, and gets over a thousand page views per day, so you can guess that a lot of people find it useful. Good fiction doesn’t just happen, it is designed. For a number of years, I was a software architect designing large software projects. I claim that that’s how you design a novel — you start small, then build stuff up until it looks like a story. If you’re like most people, you spend a long time thinking about your novel before you ever start writing. But before you start writing, you need to get organized. Step 1) Take an hour and write a one-sentence summary of your novel. Some hints on what makes a good sentence: Shorter is better.
True Novelist - Write Your Novel WRITING TOOLS Character Pyramid Tool (PDF) Visualize your character’s FLAWS & associated behaviors (for a deeper understanding of this tool, please reference The Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Flaws) Character Target Tool (PDF) Organize and group your character’s POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES by category: moral, achievement, interactive or identity (for a greater understanding of this tool, please reference The Positive Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Attributes) Character Profile Questionnaire (PDF) Not your average character questionnaire! Reverse Backstory Tool (PDF) Work backwards to find your character’s wound, needs & lie (for a deeper understanding of this tool, please reference The Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Flaws) Weak Verb Converter Tool (PDF) Transform all those generic, boring verbs into power verbs Scene Revision/Critique Tool Level 1 & Level 2 (PDF) A ‘light’ and ‘in-depth’ revision checklist for creating compelling characters and scenes
Best Book Writing Software: The 6 Documents You Always Need Open as a Writer - The Write Practice If you’ve been around The Write Practice long, you’ll have noticed we’ve recently talked a lot about which book writing software you should use. While I’m a strong believer in “use whatever works for you,” I’m also a strong believer in Scrivener. So today, instead of giving you more reasons why I think you should use Scrivener (because there have already been plenty…) I’m going to tell you which tabs/notes you’ll want to create and have open while you’re writing. Side note, if you don’t use Scrivener, you’ll want to have these as separate documents or pages on Word or Google Docs (or whichever book writing software you use). 6 Essential Documents for Writers Here are the six tabs, documents, or pages you’ll need open all the time if you want to really get your writing done. 1. I LOVE lists. This works incredibly well for my writing as well. For creative writing, I try to stick with time limits instead of word counts since the writing is so unpredictable. 2. A few recent examples for me: 3.