The last few decades resulted in massive changes for writers, from self-publishing to a myriad of different tools to help us hone our craft. I’m no stranger to various apps and programmes, and have tried quite a few, if only to satisfy my curiosity. I’d recommend you at least try a couple.
Okay, I hear you say, where to start?
The sheer number of writing tools out there can be overwhelming and you’d do well to identify the parts of your writing process that could use some support. Below are a few suggestions. Note that some of the process stages overlap and so do the tools.
Because apps and devices that connect to the Internet can be notoriously efficient in diverting our attention, I’ve added the analogue versions of tools where applicable.
1. Developing ideas
Some writers find it easier to develop ideas in cooperation with others, so tools might come in handy.
ChatGPT will generate ideas on a specific topic or prompt (say you ask it to write 10 ideas for haunted house stories). If you like any of the results, you can run with it, or ask it to generate more, or create variations, until something piques your curiosity. ChatGPT can serve as a brainstorming partner. I, for example, have once asked it to generate ideas for culinary noir stories involving artificial intelligence as one of the characters. I was mostly curious whether ChatGPT would cast itself as a hero or a villain (it did neither and chose to be a side-kick instead). While I found the ideas too basic for my taste, asking questions made me wonder what role I would cast an AI character in. The result is Ernest’s Choice, the opening story of my collection ‘Pass the Cyanide’.
The simplest analogue version for story ideation is to brainstorm on paper. Write down all the questions you have and any comments or answers that appear, not judging them by quality or usefulness, but letting them all come out instead. This is my favourite exercise for getting unstuck. The key is not to judge the ideas, but to park them all in your notebook or on a piece of paper, so as not to stop the creative process.
If you’re completely out of ideas, then use De Bono’s random words method. I share the adapted version: you’ll need something to write with and a physical book, a magazine, or a newspaper. The idea is to write a story based on random words, knowing only one word at a time, but for it to be random, you’ll need to close your eyes, point your finger at an open page of a book or a magazine, and then choose the word closest to your finger. Write for five minutes and make sure to include that word. Afterward, pick the second word and repeat the process. Three or four words are usually enough to make a story, but you can do more if you like.
The more you do the exercise, the better your brain will get at coming up with stories.
2. Writing
If you struggle with the writing part, know that you’re not alone. Writing is hard, whether you’re a beginner or have some stories or books under your belt. The more you learn and advance, the more critical you’ll become of your writing. This is completely normal. Most writers suffer from the impostor syndrome and even successful, bestselling writers worry if their next book will sell.
When it comes to writing itself, it’s up to you to explore the method that suits you best. Some swear by drafting on paper, others prefer to type. If you’re in the second group and have a messy writing process or find it hard to focus when writing on the computer, try Scrivener, a software that combines writing tools with formatting and some revising.
I admit to having been skeptical, but I have converted immediately and cannot imagine writing without it. Out of Scrivener’s many features, my favourite one is the view that blacks out your entire screen apart from the white page on which to write. It also does all the formatting for you, whether you’re writing non-fiction, fiction, poetry or something else. For example, if you choose a fiction template, it’ll make automatic indents with each new paragraph, correctly format the dialogue, and even generate names for characters. On the structure level, you can use it to set writing or project goals (e.g. word count/finish date), check the statistics of your work (e.g. overused words) and outline each scene.
The best part is that it has great templates for characters, settings and research which you can use or tweak, and that it’s super easy to move around chapters or scenes by drag and drop. In my case, that means no messy leftover scenes, no gazillion research files in various versions or pulling out my hair when I have to reorganise the plot. Scrivener allows you to revise with colours, so you always see the changes and have many other useful features.
And yes, you can import documents from Word and export into various formats. You’ll need to buy a license for each computer you want to use it on, but you do get 30 free days to test it. Also, once you buy that license, you own it.
Sudowrite is an AI tool that will help you with the writing itself as it will generate passages of text based on your prompt. You can ask it to write up a scene in which a character needs to solve a challenge, or you can copy and paste parts of your own text and ask it to continue the scene. The tool also helps you generate ideas or develop them further.
You will get a workable draft to tweak, revise and polish. Some use it to perfect their descriptions, though the Writers Helping Writers thesaurus collection will do the same for you.
I’ve tested Sudowrite out of curiosity and found it an interesting tool to play with, though I don’t use it in my writing.
3. Revising and editing
There are plenty of tools to help you in this final stage of writing. Below are the ones I’ve tested and I’m still using today. All are paid, but you might discover a free alternative.
Marlowe is an AI tool that is trained on analysing story structure. It will draw out your narrative arc and compare it to similar works of fiction, show the rhythm of your storyline and identify the turning points, visualise pacing and character traits, outline themes and provide some comparative titles.
Marlowe is not a replacement for a human developmental editor. However, for writers with a tight budget, it is a useful first analysis of their novel, giving them a rough idea of things to fix. Note that Marlowe is a paid tool with options for analysing one manuscript or opting in for a subscription.
ProWriting-Aid will help you perfect your grammar and spelling, analyse your writing style and sentence and paragraph length and fix common writing tics, like show and tell, weak adverbs, dialogue, etc. This tool cannot replace a human editor but will help you get better not only at spotting the weaker parts of your writing, but also teach you how to fix them. ProWriting Aid integrates well with Scrivener
I use ProWriting Aid regularly and take many of its suggestions on board, though never all, and neither should you. Sometimes we break the rules for a reason and the tool won’t know that.
AutoCrit (affiliate link) is a subscription-based AI tool that can do many of the things ProWriting Aid does, but it also analyses your story based on its genre and gives you a score. This is useful if you write fiction, because each genre has different conventions as to length and substance, and analysing your sci-fi novel using data for literary fiction would be of little use.
AutoCrit analyses your text and gives it a score and breaks its recommendations into several parts, from readability, pacing and momentum, to dialogue, show don’t tell, filler words and redundancies to passive voice, overused words and cliches.
Again, it will be up to you to decide which suggestions make sense and which ones don’t.
4. Formatting & Publishing
If you publish your stories on your website, send them to a magazine, or pitch to an agent/publisher, a Word document will do fine, but if you’ve decided to publish them yourself, then formatting tools are a must. Professional formatting is a mark of quality of any book, and though you can do it yourself cheaply, I wouldn’t recommend it. If you plan to publish only one or two books, hiring someone to format it for you might be cheaper, but your chances of making corrections later on will be much more limited.
These tools are easy to use, don’t require any programming skills and will transform your manuscript from a Word document into an Ebook or a paperback.
I’ve created all my books with Vellum, a wonderful and fuss-free formatting tool, that doesn’t leave much room for mistakes. You can try it for free but will need to buy a license if you want to export your book into different formats. The creators keep on developing new features and improving the program, from adding possibilities to show message bubbles on the page to adding background to your chapters, etc. It’s beautiful and simple and unfortunately available only for Mac users. PC users can try Atticus.
After you’ve formatted your book, you’ll want to publish it online and make sure it reaches the right audience. Publisher Rocket (affiliate lnk) is a tool for those who want to publish on Amazon but need help fine-tuning their keywords and categories to make sure they reach their audience. Publisher Rocket provides you with data on genres and subgenres and analyses your competition. It’s an advanced publishing tool that can save you lots of time and give your books a better chance to be seen from the start.
That’s it for now. Let me know which ones of these tools you’ve tested and how they’ve worked out for you.
