Posts tagged tools
After using a Logitech Internet Pro keyboard for the past several years, as well as an Acer OEM keyboard occasionally, I'm seriously thinking about getting a new keyboard. I write upwards of 7,000 ...
I recently found out about full-screen writing applications like OmniWriter and DarkRoom and I'm interested in using them, but I'm skeptical as to whether or not these are actually useful for impro...
What's a good program or technique for tracking submissions? I need something that'll keep track of who I've submitted to, when, if they've replied, and preferably tell me how long it's been out. A...
I would like to get a better picture of a manuscript I've written, especially in regards to word usage patterns and potentially overused terms. I'm curious whether anyone can recommend a document ...
I write mostly speculative fiction, and use Scrivener for writing and note-taking. But I'm looking to start crafting timelines to keep track of the exact year and months events in the distant and ...
I'm writing a technical manual about creating database systems, and wondered what is the best verb tense for title names. My ideas are: Continuous (-ing) form: (e.g. "Creating a Cluster", "Creat...
I write technical non-fiction and find that I cannot write well without first constructing a detailed (10-20 page) outline. Are there any good outlining solutions for OSX? Apps? Templates in Micros...
I usually keep a notepad and pen with me at all times. So, if I'm out thinking about a story and a scene or a bit of dialogue comes to mind, I write it down for recall later. I also keep a list of ...
In the IT industry, we often write a lot of technical documentation meant for internal use only. Those documents are often stored in an internal wiki and accessed when the need arises. The conten...
Are there resources (books, blogs...) which describe proven techniques to obtain certain effects? For example: you will obtain this effect if you use the first person, effective ways to describe fe...
I am wondering if how we name a version of a spacecraft differs from how we name a version of a software. For software, I usually see things like "2.0.32.32" or something like that and sometimes th...
I use Ulysses 15 for my writing. The tool has a robust global search but, to my knowledge, it does not provide a replace function (only the sheet search has a "find and replace" function). Does an...
I have been struggling to write a book on my 14 years research. I have used Microsoft Word exclusively, but I have a problem that the book uses lots of pictures, sometimes six per page and this is ...
I'm boring and just use Word and Excel for writing my novel and keeping track of stuff. I've tried a couple others, including Scrivener and Evernote, but never got into it. I like the idea of spe...
In Word, if the cursor is in a part of the text that has some style applied to it, such as Title, the format will be highlighted in the ribbon to let you know: Scrivener, however, is lazy, and do...
I'm planning to create a game. It won't be the first game I've created (or even released), but it will be my first game with any story to speak of. I'm still very much in the planning phase of the...
In Word it's quite easy to stop the CApitalization OF THe FIrst TWo LEtters, but I cannot figure out how to do it on Scrivener. How would I auto-correct this error?
Is there any software for making non-linear story or dialogues? I tried MS Word/Google Docs but that's not good for dialogues. In one complicated dialogue I wrote in Google Drawings, it looks like ...
When I plot my own novels or analyze other works to understand their structure, I like to visualize the dynamic of the storyline(s) in a diagram. Usually I draw this by hand. A first version of su...
I'm looking for a simple editor to start getting into world building and story writing which is working out fine in Microsoft Word. However, I'm finding it difficult to continue without any structu...
I'm still new to articy:draft and I want to know if it's possible to search and replace words across the whole project. I know searching is possible, but I can't find the replace function, if it's ...
Typically, the voice of marketing content doesn't match the voice of technical content -- marketing is trying to persuade you that you need something; technical writing is generally instructing you...
I have to create a small world for my WIP game so I can submit it as my thesis. While I am aware I can use simple text editors (my usual choice) I want to be able to create a tree/web of my ideas, ...
I would like to know whether there are any tools that would help an author write a branching storyline. Usecases may for example be: campaigns for Pen and Paper games visual novels Choose Your O...
I'm using Scrivener for Windows (latest version). I set out to read my entire novel in Scrivenings mode. However, the text is a bit small for easy reading. I see a Zoom toolbar at the bottom of th...
So I have a bunch of gifs saved in my Research folder, but unfortunately, when I click on them, they don't play - I have to open them in an external editor to view them. Is there a way to make them...
I use Scrivener, and sometimes when I highlight a line or even just click the cursor, the font shrinks to tiny. When I check the font size on the computer, it hasn't changed (still size 12), but cl...
I do soft cover books and laminate the top side, and therein lies the problem. The cover keeps curling up too much. I have tried Ningbo 350gsm which works perfect except that now it's too stiff and...
I have recently undertaken a personal project to translate my WIP novel into Japanese in parallel with writing it. I am managing both in LaTeX and editing them in vim, but the topic itself is too ...
Does the ulysses app have anything that is useful for creating placeholder text? For instance, if I didn't have a character name, or a place name I could do: {protagonist_first_name} or {placen...
I have a manuscript that I'd like to add Drop Caps to at the beginning of each chapter. I currently have it loaded into my Storyist program on my Mac-book Pro. Does anyone know how I'd go about a...
I'm using Microsoft Word 2016 for formatting my paper. I'm trying to use different footnote numbering sequences for the title page and main body. More specifically, I want to use special characters...
Why am I getting a strange double quote (“) in Open Office instead of the ordinary one (")? Every time I type the double quote, I get the weird version instead of the ordinary one. How do I get th...
I'm looking for free software, preferably open-source, that would allow me to create maps for my story. I guess what I need is a tool that would allow some measure of 3D modeling. Features I would...
Is there a way to have comments in different colours, in Microsoft Word, Open Office Writer, or Libre Office? (I am currently using Open Office, and I'm happy with it, but I am open to making the s...
Writing fantasy and sci-fi, I grow a sizeable specialised vocabulary per story (names, locations, fantastical things, etc.) I grow tired of the autocorrect grumbling at this vocabulary, and would m...
I'm looking for software or markup/markdown based tools for organising anthologies selected from a large number of short pieces of writing. In this case it's poems, but the content of the individua...
I'm using Scrivener under Windows to write a text. How am I supposed to generate a document (Word, OpenOffice.org, LaTeX or something else) with a table of contents? I found some tutorials for do...
Are there any tools or online communities that deal with word association? I'm looking for a resource where I could poll for common associations for a particular word. If you do know of such a too...
Background I'm a plotter, meaning that I develop my novel before I start writing it. You could say that I'm almost an extreme variety of plotter, as I narrow my outline down to the scene before ev...
First off, 'platform' might not be the best word. I am talking about what you construct a website with, as in Wordpress, vbulletin, etc. I can't seem to find what these are called. I will use the w...
Increasingly often, if you Google for a recipe your search results will be full of long, image-rich blog posts that, somewhere in there, have the actual recipe you were looking for. Many of these ...
I'm looking for a software that helps me develop and organize the characters for my novel. What I want: something like a filesystem, with a file for each character it should have or allow me to ...
Summary: I'm looking for a way for reviewers to comment collaboratively as close to "inline" as possible on a large HTML project. The problem in detail I work on a team that documents a large pro...
I am writing a novel on Microsoft Word 2016. Does it give a correct word count that I can tell to my publisher?
I'm having trouble with keeping "units" on the same line, or together. For example, g C m-2 (grams of carbon per square meter) often gets broken between the "-" and "2". I realize it's possible to ...
This site's writing reports claim that excessive use of prepositions makes writing unclear. For example: "The principle of keeping nouns and verbs as close to each other as possible for the benefi...
I have a Scrivener formatting question. Using Scrivener (on Mac), I'm trying to put a poem into a page of a novel. Scrivener keeps capitalizing the first word of the next line even though the previ...
I need to revise a screenplay in Final Draft, and I'm finding that the revision features in the program are poor. Are there any ways to introduce revision features in to Final Draft, similar to Tra...
Often while writing a software requirement/change-request documentation, I need to include the quoted requirements descriptively, the impacted modules, the changes provided both in UI and in logic....
