Friday, October 23, 2009

Free Stuff for Writers

yWriter  I've heard this program  mentioned several times but never checked into it until today.  I spent the afternoon playing with it and so far I really like it.  It doesn't have the bells and whistles a lot of programs have plus it won't write or come up with ideas for you but it will help you keep things organized.

Here's some info from the website:

Features:


Organise your novel using a 'project'.
Add chapters to the project.
Add scenes, characters, items and locations.
Display the word count for every file in the project, along with a total.
Saves a log file every day, showing words per file and the total. (Tracks your progress)
Saves automatic backups at user-specified intervals.
Allows multiple scenes within chapters
Viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome fields for each scene.
Multiple characters per scene.
Storyboard view, a visual layout of your work.
Re-order scenes within chapters.
Drag and drop of chapters, scenes, characters, items and locations.
Automatic chapter renumbering.

Changes from version 4:

There are lots of usability tweaks such as drag/dropping.
Full screen editor.
Automatic daily zip of the entire project.
NEW: Text-to-speech built into the text editor.


One thing I really like is the very detailed and easy to understand user guide.  I sat down with the program this afternoon and had no trouble figuring it out.  Naturally, this may not work for you, and that's cool but you might want to check it out.

45 Free Things For Writers  I got this link from Twitter today.  There are some cool things here.

Cheryl, this ----->Free Report – “The Non Celebrity’s Guide to Getting a Children’s Book Published” made me think of you.  I didn't check it out but it might be worth it for you.:-)

Also another link I found today is TweetGrid.  Now, you have to have a Twitter account for some of it but you are able to follow any twitter threads in a streaming format.  Right now, I'm following #NaNoWriMo and getting any tweets that mention NaNoWriMo.  It's kinda cool to see all the different tweets and people.  Definitely a time sink but you can follow other topics that interest you so it could be useful.

On a more personal note...I think I've settled on my NaNo project finally.  I'm 90% sure anyway.  :-)

1 comment:

  1. Very cool stuff. I downloaded that Non-Celebs guide to getting a kid's book published and will take a look at some of the other stuff too.

    Thanks!

    Cheryl

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