Alpha Readers Forum Writing Tools.

I'm curious to what tools you guys use to aid your writing process.

Well, about 7 years ago when I thought I could sit down and write this story I used my computer.  I found a portable hard drive and started to download onto it all my notes, pictures, thoughts, etc.  I created a lot of material, to include some basic dictionaries and the like.  Unfortunately, I had a hard drive break down on me and I nearly lost all my work.  Fortunately, I'm an expert at hacking into computers and was able to recover the information from a broken hard drive. (phew!)  After that I've replaced the hard drive every year.

Just recently, I've discovered Google Drive. guess who's uploading his materials? This guy! *two thumbs*  Pro:  No more having to hack my computer in case of a drive failure;  I can use my phone to do work on it; and I can share it with my editor and other author friends.

Bad side, I don't have the privacy I want to be able to type and edit and smooth things out like I want (my computer was designed to be for fun..... so 49" wide screen for video games :D )  And sitting down at the computer to write a story becomes difficult as it is a source of distraction in itself.  Poor discipline on my part.

I also use a printed out version of my stories where I can go sit on the couch and write on the pages my annotations and then come back to them on the computer. I highly suggest this.

I also high suggest, a cute smart daughter who loves to read your work too!  She is a great help to me as she will read the materials and point out some mistakes to me.  She keeps asking me:  "When's your next installment daddy?"

I have a laptop (netbook) that I use as well.  The bigger desktop computer I do a lot of research on for development.  The laptop is less powerful and better for typing my manuscript (less distractions)  My phone is for just jotting down notes that I feel will be needed later.

Well thats about all I have, I have heard in the past of using a cork board.....  For pictures and the like.  I also use character sheets from D&D to monitor the development of the characters too.  I use Google Drives where I have a character dossier for each major player in my story.  anyone out there use the cork boards?

I don't use a cork board, but as an audio engineer I have 2 whiteboards I tend to use. I have used that at times, but it usually gets erased and moved to my evernote account.

I discovered this forum quite by accident, I use writing software called Writer's Cafe, and when I came across this group I thought it was a user group for that program.

That, of course, was in error, but it was a fortuitous mistake. I have enjoyed my time on here, and have met some great people, some amazing writers, and have received some valuable feedback, and I hope have been helpful in my reviews of other writers' creations.

I tend to write a lot of my work on my Blackberry phone, using the Memo Pad app. I know that sounds rather bizarre, but it works for me better than pen and paper as my hand writing is so messy, five minutes after I have scrawled it, I can no longer read it myself. If I try sit down at a keyboard, I find it quite easy to wander over to Facebook, Twitter, blogs, news aggregators, or even just waste time here at WritersCafe.org. : )
I e-mail myself the text and paste it into my writing software, and work with it further from there.

The software that I use can be downloaded for free at
and the trial version allows you to explore and work with it extensively. To purchase the full version is only about $40 US. It has a built in editor, story board, notes, character cards, and numerous other handy features in one compact install. You can install the registered version on numerous machines, updating versions between machines is unfortunately not automated, but using a USB stick, or e-mailing the latest version to yourself allows all versions to be in sync.

As to backups, generally I depend on my gMail to hold the text I sent to myself, I probably should save those to Google Drive as another storage. I do also send most of those e-mails to another e-mail account I have in Germany, and they are safely stored there as well.

That's a pretty funny occurrence. I had never heard of that software and I'm going to try it out if there is a OS X version.

Yes, it comes in Windows, OS X and Linux flavors.
I have not begun to grasp all the tools it has yet, when you install it, there are writing tips, inspirational quotes, and ideas that pop up when you start. When you purchase the registration, it unlocks a full writing guide as well.
Play with the demo, it is free, and although limited in what you can save, you are able to experiment with all facets of the program.

I tend to write everything freehand. I just can't seem to type it all out right from the get go. I use college ruled one subject notebooks, G-2 07 gel pens (seriously the best, I've been using them since high school), little sticky tabs I can use to mark chapters, and a moleskine for general notes/character sheets/chapter outlines/etc. Moleskines are great because they have hard covers and a built in book mark. I also use a lot of post-it notes, endless post-it notes. They're everywhere. All over my notebook, my moleskine, the wall, on the pages as I write them. It's actually really colorful.

 After writing a couple of chapters out by hand, I type it all up in Word Processor and edit before I post. I've tried using other programs, but they just don't seem to have the features that I use with Word. In college most classes require you to use Word nowadays so I can't seem to use anything else without some level of frustration. It's just what I've been taught.

I also tend to make playlists for everything I write, a side effect of art class. I used to make a playlist before every new painting, depending on how I wanted it to feel. It worked pretty well. The soundtrack to The Sharpest Lives mostly consists of the music found on True Blood, the Lizzie Borden soundtrack, the new Pretty Reckless album, and a few songs from the Misfits soundtrack as well. The main song for that novel is probably Attitude by Hardknox, a now defunct British duo. Everytime I hear that song I imagine Jo punching something, it just fits so well. :)

These days, I use Google Drive too. It works well enough until you hit about 40k words, then it gets slow. On my next book, I'll probably break the parts into separate files.

Are you just writing in one big document? I divide my scenes into separate document files.

Yeah, I did the last book as one big document. I will split it into thirds next time.

I've started using scrivener recently.

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