I have to confess: playing with a new household tool is sometimes more fun than getting a job done with it. But I can’t say that about the tools I use to help with the job of writing fiction. I love it when someone turns me on to a new one, and I thought it might be useful to share the wealth with you. And so….
Presenting…a new Truevoice feature, Fiction Writer’s Toolbox.
First 2 warnings:
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If you want today’s links, you’ll have to read the post–or skip right now to the continuation page.
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None of the tools I intend to highlight will relieve you of the basic 2-part task of the fiction writer: to imagine what needs to be imagined, and to render, in language, what the imagination presents
A little more on that second one:
The primary stuff of fiction can’t be teased out by faster, easier, cooler tools. You must gut it out the old-fashioned way…
True, there are mental “tools”–like freewriting–to stimulate your imagination and increase your imaginative productivity. But no mechanical or digital tool will do it for you acceptably.
I know: powerful computers, using esoteric Artificial Intelligence programs, have “created” stories, but to read one (yawn) is to understand what’s missing: the authentic voice of a human being. Some might find the work of Big Blue acceptable, but you can fool a discerning reader. No computer can supply the necessary element for good fiction: the living spirit of an individual. Someday perhaps computers will BE individuals with spirits, but until that day comes, it’s going to be “garbage in, garbage out.” Because at this point in our development, we can no more synthesize the human authorial presence than we can create, digitally, an individual. complete human personality.
But the tools I’m excited do this: they give you frameworks and environments within which to counter the chaos which is the world’s normal state–at least min is. Here’s my physical desktop. I took the picture just now, without touching a thing:
If the creative work area of my mind looked anything like this, I’d never get anything done.
Thus, my personal fiction writer’s toolbox. It helps me keep the internal part of my creative life reasonably straight and well ordered and its products quickly accessible to the more practical side of my working process.
And because (see again, above) I seem to have a problem ordering my physical world, these tools all exist inside the chunky little box you see in the photo. Some are software applications, others are web-based tools or services. Very few cost much, if anything.
I am a Mac user and well aware that most other folks use Windows, so I’ll be careful to give the available platforms for any tool I suggest. Web based tools, for the most part, are equally accessible to both–as are some (certainly not all) software programs. And let me add that no mention of a specific product here is a paid endorsement. I have no affiliates; I’ve never talked to a company or an individual developer about their product; I’m not going to profit one way or another by whatever I say here–accept, I hope, in your gratitude and good will.
Enough said. Here are my first tools. Both are web-based services, one a mainstream “white bread” choice, and the other a more esoteric, distant relation.
Google Docs is an online locker for your work, available to you free, if you have a (free) Google account–meaning, just open a Gmail account, even if you don’t use it. It’s also a full-featured online word processor. I’m writing a novel using Google Docs right now. It means I can put in a half-hour’s work on it if I happen to be somewhere with a computer that’s not mine. I go online, find my Google Docs account–id, password and there’s my work.
There’s hardly a fiction writer alive who hasn’t wanted to try a screenplay from time to time. But then they price the standard format programs, Final Draft and Movie Magic, and all of a sudden they’d rather write a short story. ScriptBuddy is on online formating service, free in its low end form, on which you can write your screenplay, properly format it as you go, and keep it in your own online locker, with security options you choose. It’s fun, relatively easy to use, and it doesn’t get much cheaper than free.
Thus endeth the first Fiction Writer’s Toolbox.
What are your favorite tools. Don’t horde the info–let’s hear from you!
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