ProWritingAid This was recommended by one of my RedPenners and it's been on my Recommendations page for some time. Within the Red Pen Editing cycle, step 9 is DRILL DOWN where, having addressed all other issues of structure, voice, tense, etc., we focus on paragraphs, sentences, words, and punctuation. It's the final sweep before sending our precious manuscript to our beta readers for feedback. Step 9 relies on our understanding of spelling, grammar, and...
During the Simply Scrivener Special webinars, I share my screen so that I can demonstrate various features of Scrivener. One issue that arose early on was visibility. Consider this view of my Safari Supper novel. Shared across the Internet, with my attendees watching on screens of various sizes, immediately the cry went up: 'I can't read the words.' Changing the size of the text within the Scrivenings pane is easy enough. Notice the 100%...
Another question, from a recent session of the Simply Scrivener Special webinar series: How do you pull material into the Research folder? Easy! The blog post of 9 October 2015 introduced the concept of collecting Research resources within the Research folder. However, let's look at this feature of Scrivener in some more detail ...
As a writer, I think it's essential to meet with other writers. We are a weird crowd. We need to stick together! For many years, I belonged to a number of online writers' groups. The BBC GetWriting was the first and, when that folded, many of us moved to WritersDock and/or MoreWriting. And then there was Chapter79 which, sadly, closed its doors (portal?) recently. When I first moved to Salcombe, I set...
This question came up during the April session of the Simply Scrivener Special webinar series. Which project template should I use? The developers of Scrivener anticipated many different types of material an author might want to write. For each, there is a separate template: Blank, Fiction, Non-fiction, Scriptwriting, Poetry & Lyrics, and Miscellaneous. If you choose Fiction, there are then three more options: Novel, Novel (with Parts), and Short Story. For a novel, the Manuscript part...
I'm delighted to announce, starting on Monday 25 April, I will be hosting a series of free monthly online training webinars. We kick off at noon BST and, in the 60 minutes that follow, I'll be providing a live presentation of features of Scrivener, supplementing this ScrivenerVirgin blog series. It's an AMA session - ask me anything - so come along with your questions ready to copy and paste into the Q&A...
In Joseph Michael's free video series of Scrivener Secrets, his third video on publishing and exporting Secrets explains how to print, compile, share and export your work. Scrivener covers all angles The choice of templates provides for every eventuality: fiction, non-fiction, scriptwriting, etc. If you choose fiction, which is where I usually start, then all the 'normal' pages for the front matter are set up for you within the binder. All you have to do is fill...
Some folks don't sign up for courses. They tell me the price is too high. What about a zero-cost course? All you put in is your time. Twenty minutes of your time - watching a video. Don't miss this! Joseph Michael, the Scrivener Coach, has published a three-part video series, to take you step-by-step through some of Scrivener's amazing secrets. Setting up Scrivener for your success Organizing your writing for complete control How to print,...
On my new Recommendations page, I recommend - inter alia! - Joan Dempsey and her various courses for writers, having attended her Revise with Confidence course and being mightily impressed with her material and style of delivery. Joan also publishes a free monthly newsletter to which I subscribe. The March issue included an interesting - and new to me - editing tip: use a different font so as to shift your...
In the post before last, the (mysterious to some of you) tag <$p> appeared. I go back a long way with various computer codes, so anything within the triangular brackets < > is 'normal' to me. But, in answer to those of you who were puzzled and wrote asking for an explanation, here's the lowdown on tags. What is a tag? A tag is a string of characters which starts with < and ends...
