Pam Boling Creative Services

The Writing Life

Writing Tools

Writing Tools

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Note: Some links in this post are affiliate links. Writing-related affiliate programs support my ability to devote myself to my trade full-time.

Imagine being an author in the early nineteenth century. You must pen your manuscript, because the first typewriter wasn’t invented until 1867 and wasn’t widely marketed until a decade later. Twentieth-century authors had increasingly helpful tools: electric typewriters, word processors, and self-publishing options. In 2020, time-saving apps for writing abound, and many are free.

Tools for Writing

Dictionary/Thesaurus: The internet gives you immediate access to reference materials. A dictionary, online or print, is essential to every writer. Language changes with time. New words are added every year. Usage changes: what was once considered substandard gains an upgrade with popular usage. Lower-case “google” started as a proper noun and blossomed into a universally-known verb. A thesaurus is also essential and available online. I find a print thesaurus easier to use, but I once thought a manual typewriter was easier than electric. Typewriters now give me a fright.

Microsoft Word is the industry standard word processor for writers. One of the main benefits MS Word has over other word processors is the ability to track changes. While it’s possible to edit a PDF or other document types, the track changes feature of Word turns implementation into a one-click function.

Scrivener If you’ve never experienced Scrivener, download the trial today and give it a test drive. Organize your entire writing project in one place: your research, character profiles, and ideas. Its built-in storyboard turns organization into a quick and simple task. You can build your project in stages, using chapter documents, reorganize at will, and Scrivener will compile a full manuscript when you finish. The thirty-day trial ends not in thirty calendar days, but when you have used it on thirty separate days.

Tools for Editing

Grammarly offers browser add-ins, integrations for Microsoft Office, and desktop apps that check grammar, spelling, punctuation, style, and tone. With the premium version, writers can customize settings, utilize the vocabulary enhancement tool, and check for plagiarism. It can be used live while writing to highlight problematic issues as they happen. (It flagged “used” in the previous sentence, for instance, suggesting I “verify preposition usage.”) It’s like having a writing coach peering over your shoulder as you type.

ProWritingAid, should you choose to subscribe, will become your best friend. A 14-day free trial masquerades as an evaluation license. Don’t be fooled: Their trial is like your hook. Once you get a taste, walking away is difficult. It checks grammar, punctuation, spelling, readability, clichés, diction, structure, pacing, plagiarism, and other areas. It will even create word clouds. With ProWritingAid, your writing will improve with little effort. For $70/year, it’s a good investment.

Creativity Tools

Scapple: Have you ever tried bubble mapping? Bubbling a full-length book on paper is a monumental task that can quickly get out of hand. Scapple to the rescue! Scapple is a product of Literature & Latte, the makers of Scrivener. The surprising thing about bubbling is the creative burst it incites.

Journaling

Do it. Daily. If you write nothing else on a given day, spend at least five minutes with a journal. There are many ways to journal and even more things to journal about, but there’s little debate that journaling aids creativity. I keep four journals: a stream-of-consciousness (SoC) journal, a daily journal, an emotion journal, and a memory journal. Now that I know the value of journaling, I’ll add a travel journal the next time I travel, bringing my total to five. Which journal I choose for my daily journaling depends on my current circumstances. I journal daily, now that I’ve witnessed the benefits firsthand, and I strive to write in my SoC and one other every day. Alas, most days see me writing in only one. I’m a writer; I procrastinate. I do, however, always journal by hand. Typing is a fairly mindless task. Handwriting, however, is the opposite: It triggers a unique neural circuit, according to researchers. It enhances memory, learning, and creativity.

Whether you use loose leaf paper and a binder or splurge on a commercial journal, the important part is using it. A spiral notebook works just as well as a leather-bound diary, but I don’t recommend using divided spiral notebooks for multiple journals. You might fill one of those subdivisions faster than others, leaving empty pages in your less-important journals. I bought fancy journals for years, but recently switched to composition notebooks. I label both the front cover and the spine for easy access. When they’re full, they fit neatly together on a shelf, sorted. (I also alphabetize my spices, in case you wonder.)

Stream of Consciousness Journal

The purpose of the SoC journal is to write every thought that comes to mind as quickly as possible. A brief meditation prior to starting SoC journaling is recommended. This helps tap into the subconscious, where some of our best thoughts live. The goal is twofold: to free the mind and stimulate ideas.

Daily Journal

Your daily journal is where you will put your thoughts to bed for the day. It’s more focused than SoC. I search for both the best and the most bothersome thoughts of my day and write about them. This engages subconscious problem-solving skills at one of the most opportune times, just before going to sleep. I have more vivid and memorable dreams most nights since I started journaling at bedtime.

Emotion Journal

Fiction authors know the importance of understanding emotion, and scientists know the importance of emotional intelligence. Emotion brings characters to life for readers who, in turn, develop an emotional attachment to our characters. The more attached readers become, the more loyal readers they will be.

The stronger a writer’s understanding of emotion—the more emotionally intelligent the writer—the more compelling characters she’ll create. Exploring and writing about your own emotions not only boosts your emotional intelligence; it can boost your overall wellbeing.

Memory Journal

Merely writing about memories invokes more memories. Writing about one memory in as much detail as possible can invoke many long-forgotten memories. This is one instance where Scapple helps: Jump over to Scapple and add a memory to your memory bubble, then go right back to your memory journal. You’ve preserved a mental tag you can revisit, and you barely missed a step in your journaling. (I want a Scapple mobile app.)

Fiction authors can extract vignettes from memory journals to use in their writing, either as inspiration for scenes or in their full iteration as a scene. Better still is the self-knowledge gained from memory journaling, which also aids in the writing process. Authors are introspective by nature. Exploring memories expands our breadth of self-knowledge. This is one of my favorite writing activities.

Other Tools

Recommended Books

On Writing

Writer’s Market: Serious writers have at least one Writer’s Market book on their shelves. They publish market guides for writers (general), one for novel and short story writers, and another for children’s writers and illustrators. My use predates the internet, and I still have several older editions as well as the latest. This is one of the best marketing tool available for writers.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White, available in full online through Project Gutenberg. It’s free, readily available, and awaiting you. Originally published in 1918, this is the bible of writing mechanics and easy to understand.

On Writing Well by Steven Zinsser

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

The Courage to Write by Ralph Keyes

The Courage to Create by Rollo May

Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer

The Art of Character by David Corbett

The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker

(Stay tuned; this list will grow.)

On Emotional Intelligence

I recommend reading reviews on these books before purchasing. Better yet, check library and online lending resources to preview before purchasing. Some online resources include: Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and Open Library. Also, check back because this list is growing.

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman

The Remembered Self by Jefferson A. Singer and Peter Salovey

The Handbook of Emotional Intelligence: Theory, Development, Assessment, and Application at Home, School, and in the Workplace by Reuven Bar-On

Boosting Your Emotional Intelligence by Professor Jason M. Satterfield

Your First Editor

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Your first editor is you. Hiring a copy editor for the first time can be daunting, and seeing the first edit can cause a fright.  

Finding an editor you trust is the first important task. Rapport with your editor is just as important as your editor’s skills, perhaps more so. Ask for a sample edit so you have a snapshot of what to expect. Most editors will oblige. After seeing suggested changes, contact the editor with any concerns or questions you have about the editing. Analyze the response: Is it professional? Courteous? Defensive? I truly hope you don’t find an editor who’s defensive, rather than authoritative, about her work. Knowledgeable editors can and do back up their suggestions with documented rationale for the changes. This is how editors who work well with dissent respond. They do exist, though, which is one reason to get sample edits—not just one—ahead of hiring an editor, because bad rapport doesn’t end well. Being contractually obligated under these circumstances can and should be avoided. Be choosey. Editors turn away clients if they foresee problems.

Many factors determine the final cost of copy editing: word count; level and type of editing needed; and the author’s writing skills, which determine an editor’s time investment. An editor’s job is to make your work salable. The more polished a manuscript is when the editor gets it, the less work for her, the less it costs the author. Your editor will likely ask for sample copy before giving a quote.

These tools and tricks will help polish your manuscript.

Formatting

Formatting is critical to the publishing process. Learn formatting standards for the market your medium. Set your formatting before typing the first word: page size, margins, font, font size, and any other standards set forth in the publishing guidelines.

Spell Check

It’s a good idea to manually run spell check when editing your work to ensure you didn’t miss any errors. While spellcheck isn’t failproof — it won’t catch all homonyms — it’s the best tool for double- and triple-checking spelling quickly.

Punctuation Check

A punctuation check to cut back on errors your editor will need to fix. The Microsoft Word grammar checker misses some punctuation errors. Other recommended tools include:

  • Grammarly’s free desktop app and MS Word integration app
  • ProWritingAid has a more robust Word plug-in and is user-friendly, but only available via paid subscription or 14-day trial

Troublesome punctuation for writers:

Exclamation Points

  • Exclamation points denote emphasis or emotions like excitement, anger, and fear. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.” The exclamation point (or mark) first appeared as a typewriter key in the 1970’s. Previously, the apostrophe over a period required backspacing to create an exclamation point. Usage has escalated, some think dramatically, in recent years. Editors judiciously slay them.
  • Overuse of exclamation points diminishes the intended effect of the mark throughout a work. The Chicago Manual of Style, dubbed “the editors’ bible,” says the exclamation point “should be used sparingly to be effective.”
  • Used sparingly and judiciously, they add shape and dimension.

Semicolons

  • There are only three acceptable uses for semicolons:
    • to join two related independent clauses
    • in complex serial lists like New York, New York; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; and Las Vegas, Nevada.
    • with conjunctive adverbs like however, therefore, consequently, nevertheless, etc.

Dashes

A hyphen is not a dash and is used for different reasons than dashes. Learn the differences and how to use both devices, and they will enhance your writing. These characters deserve a dedicated blog post, coming soon. Meanwhile, Grammarly has a detailed article on dashes.

Colons

Capitalization: The first word following a colon is capitalized only if it starts an independent clause or is a proper noun. Otherwise, use lower case.

Ellipses

  • Ellipses have only one correct usage: to represent eliminated words from text, most often in direct quotations, like this:
    • “Literary agents reject 96 to 99 percent of projects they receive due to … bad spelling and grammar.” In this example, “bad spelling and grammar” is the last of several listed reasons that literary agents reject projects.
    • “Literary agents reject 96 to 99 percent of projects they received due to … bad spelling and grammar …” This example indicates there are more reasons listed both before and after “bad spelling and grammar.”
  • Any other use is considered bad grammar and risks rejection by editors and agents in traditional publishing.
  •  Do not be tempted to overuse ellipses for pause. While some style guides consider ellipses for pause acceptable, excessive ellipses create choppy prose; avoid them, especially in dialog. Repeated use of ellipses to stall dialog can give an illusion of aphasia, a brain dysfunction caused by stroke or brain injury that impairs a person’s ability to use language. The better choice to demonstrate pause is to use em dashes.

Dialog tags

There are two predominant schools of thought on tagging dialog. One group believes “said” is the best way to tag dialog, with few exceptions. The other school staunchly advocates variety in dialog tags. Each group has their own rationale, and both groups are passionate about their opinions. Like all extremes, there is a middle ground: adding variety by using appropriate alternatives to “said.”

One fact remains: Any editor worth her salt will clean up dialog tags. Messy dialog tags slow readers down, but readers hardly notice “he said” in a sentence, if at all. Because they skip this particular tag, it actually speeds pace. Different tags can be used to add color or to strategically slow down a fast-moving scene. It’s imperative, however, to use appropriate language when tagging dialog, which represents speech. As with every part of writing, unless it’s a fantasy, authors should stick within the realm of what’s physically possible. If you can’t do it, can your fictional characters? You might consider eliminating it. Your editor will.

Many new authors are tempted to use expressive verbs that can’t represent the spoken word in a real world environment. We can’t “breathe” a thought to a lover, “laugh” a joke to a friend, or “moan” a grievance to anyone. To breathe is to inhale and exhale not words, but gasses. Try talking while simultaneously laughing. And a moan is a non-verbal, inarticulate utterance, by definition.

The good news is there are ways to spice up dialog with tags that speak to your readers without raising eyebrows. Get a good (preferably print) thesaurus, and look up “said.” Some examples of appropriate verbs to tag dialog include: proclaimed, stated, acknowledged, answered, yelled, screamed, recounted, claimed, exclaimed, announced, noted, uttered, told (requires object), along with many others. One way to test verbs is to use their present tense in this sentence: “I can ___ 100 words a minute.” If it works in that sentence, it works for tagging dialog. Like most things, it isn’t failproof, but it does help clarify.

One final note: There is no reason to include adverbs, including adverb clauses, in dialog tags if the author has revealed the speaker’s emotion either in the dialog itself or in the content leading up to the dialog. Showing is better than injecting qualifiers after the fact. Examples:

  • “Hell no, you aren’t going to that dance,” Mary told her daughter emphatically. The “hell no” part showed readers Mary’s emphatic stance, rendering “emphatically” redundant.
  • “Get out,” Mary exclaimed harshly. “’Get out!’ Mary screamed” eliminates the need for “exclaimed” with punctuation. Screaming is harsh, thereby negating the need for a qualifying adverb.
  • “My sister died yesterday,” Mary said sadly. Unless Mary wanted her sister to die, we can assume she relays this information sadly. Expressly stating that fact is not only unnecessary, it’s redundant.
  • When there’s a need for a qualifier — which should occur infrequently, if ever, in this editor’s opinion — exposition offers a better method of showing than injecting adverbs to expressly state the qualifier:
    • “I certainly will not sign that contract,” Mary said angrily. We don’t know why the contract angered her, something from her past that hasn’t been disclosed. Without this information, attentive and detail-oriented readers will wonder what caused her anger.
    • Better: “’I certainly will not sign that contract,’ Mary said. The last time she signed a non-compete agreement, she ended up unemployed for two years because she had no skills outside her industry. She signed documents indiscriminately during her employee orientation. Had she known one of those documents could prevent her finding work, she’d have opted out. If opting out wasn’t an option, she would’ve continued her job search. Hindsight.” This gives much better insight into Mary and could even be used as foreshadowing.
  • To create your own adverb-slashing technique, ask yourself how you can develop your story to show that instead, then watch your story grow. Like magic!

Manuscripts can be quickly scanned for dialog (CTRL/CMD + F, search for quotation mark), and it’s a good practice to check tags during your editing process.

Another benefit of passing your manuscript through the above checks is that your edited manuscript will have more white space, as opposed to red editing markup, because you will have already done those edits.

My Approach

My job as an editor is to improve the works of my clients to the best of my ability, based on my knowledge of the writing process. Things I suggest if I find errors or other ways to improve a work:

  • Grammar, punctuation, spelling, pronoun usage, syntax, active versus passive voice, clichés, diction, readability, pacing, consistency
  • Excessive and unnecessary adverbs: I’m an adverb slayer, unless they serve a purpose that can’t be better served otherwise.
  • Clarity: Verbosity is the enemy of clarity. Unless you have above-average editing skills as a writer, your word count will drop if you accept all changes.
  • Clarity: Verbosity is the enemy of clarity. Unless you have above-average editing skills as a writer, your word count will drop if you accept all changes.

My job, in short, is to return your manuscript in its best form, still in your voice, with no new ideas added and no content removed that moves the story forward. Your book, but better.