62. Best Writing Tools for Authors

Welcome to the Book Marketing Show Podcast, where each week we'll show you exactly how to sell more books and have fun doing it. And now, your host, Dave Cheson.

Hey guys, I'm Dave Chesson and welcome to the Book Marketing Show Podcast. Now today, we're going to dig a little bit into software and talk about some of the best book writing software out there. Now, Word... or Microsoft Word, is a great program. It was designed to help people write anything. But that's kind of it, right? It was designed for anything. It's not specialized for creating a huge document like a book or novel.

And there are some things out there that were designed solely with books and novels in mind. Now... I've tested a whole bunch and every day there are new programs out there. I try to keep up to date. I've tried Ulysses and Yrider and things like that. But today I want to focus on Word Document, Google Docs, and then the next step, Scrivener.

Now, Word, again, kind of self-explanatory. Everybody listening has probably had experience with that. It's a great thing to start. If you're on a super tight budget, as in zero, go with the tool you already have. If you don't have Word, and by the way, I kind of sort of ticked off that they've been moving to the SaaS product, Service as a Software, where they're charging. But here they're there. Google Docs is a great...

As a matter of fact, it's actually a bit better in my mind than Word. While you can't display documents as well as in Word, The fact of the matter is, is Google Docs is a phenomenal opportunity for you to collaborate. Either collaborate with other writers and you guys can write together at the same time. You can even see them writing as you write. You can send notes. You can kind of sync things.

bring in all these images, it works incredibly well. And of course, if your computer dies, it's saved in the cloud, so you're good to go. And I really like this opportunity or this capability. But I've also seen authors take a book that they've written. and put it in the Google Docs and in the cloud, and then have their beta readers go there and read the source document.

Now, what's really awesome about this is you can see people reading in real time. You can see how far they got. But more importantly, as they have a question, they can make a comment right at that point. and they could also feed off of each other. So you could have beta readers see what somebody else said, and then they could be like, oh, I didn't think about that, but they're right. You totally do need to do that. And this can be a really cool opportunity. And yes, Google Docs is...

100% free. So if you don't have Word on your computer, you can easily do Google Docs and you can take advantage of the benefit I just talked about. But now let's talk about Scrivener. I haven't exactly held back on my love for Scrivener. Years ago, I think I went...

2008 or so? I was at the Naval Postgraduate School and I was working on my master's degree. And I also was moonlighting for Apple as a salesman. And we got this free software and this new one was called Scrivener. I was like, huh, that's kind of neat. Sure, I'll go ahead and check it out. And I fell in love with this thing. I used it to write my thesis, which was a good 100 plus behemoth.

book about how China could affect US defense corporations. I assure you, if you have a hard time sleeping at night, go ahead and pick up a copy. You'll be out cold within the first page. But being able to organize everything, I mean, plan out my entire thesis, develop the research, have it set, be able to look at the research as I write, to be able to source and have footnotes and all these crazy things and have it be able to be.

just organize for it was a lifesaver. So since 2008-2009, I have used Scrivener for the development of not just my thesis, But also I've done a couple of academic papers for the Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs to a whole bunch of others when I was a diplomat in the U.S. military. And I also used it to write my books and even to develop courses as well. So if you're about to embark on some large document, be sure to check out a software that's designed for exactly that.

There are a lot of people who have a bit of chagrin against Scrivener, and I can kind of understand that. The truth is, is that something like that that has so many cool features to it can also be a bit daunting. There are a lot of authors that say they have to spend too much time trying to figure out.

how to use the darn thing instead of just using Word, which they've always used. And I get that. But when you start to see why Scrivener was designed the way it was, it can be mind-blowing. For example, you could just open up Scrivener and you could just start writing. just like you do with Word. There is the added benefit of being able to reorganize chapters, sections, or scenes. That's kind of cool.

Sure, some people say that the ability to split the screen and look at your notes as you're writing, it's okay, but is it really all worth it? But when you talk to authors that really unleash the beast, and I mean are like really using it, it can be incredible. Let me give you an example. I love that in the fiction books that you can actually pre-develop your characters, okay? Legitimately pre-develop your characters before you start writing. You can assign them a picture.

description, physical features and things like that. And as you go to write about said character, you can go ahead and also look to the right and see them as you're writing and access your notes. And remember, was it the left eye or the right eye that has the scar, right? right there, you can't mess that up. You can also do that with scenes, okay, or with settings.

There's two things I do. One is I will find a picture of the house or the base or the whatever. And then I also go to some of like the architect websites out there and I'll find the building layout. Okay, the public ones. of some of the larger buildings that are out there so that I can kind of see the building. And as I'm writing, talk about the character running down the hall and taking a sharp left as he goes into the male bathroom.

These help me to be able to create a more concrete story. So using Scrivener, I can pre-develop the scene or the setting, and I can pre-develop the characters and have them all set. But that's not all.

Scrivener can also be a really good project management tool. You can have it... count the number of words that you're writing, but it could also tell you, you intended to publish your book in the next three months. You've got to write 700 words every day. Oh, you only want to write Monday through Friday? Okay, now it's 950. You see, it can start to really change.

and help keep you motivated and keep you on pace to hit your deadlines. That's just another feature. But also you can look at some of the Scrivenings mode or the Corkbore mode, and you can lay out your story and move it around. So it can really help you to be organized and see where you are as an entire project. There are also some really cool features like, for example, I love using metadata and keywords.

You're probably like, yeah, Dave, we already know. You talk about keywords and stuff. But no, what I mean by this is that I can tag my chapters, okay? So say, for example, what I like to do is as I'm writing a chapter, Every time I talk about a certain character, I'll put the keyword in for that chapter. So that chapter has been marked that character A, character B, and character F.

are in this chapter. And I can now quickly see all chapters the person has mentioned. I can do the same thing with scenes or a certain location. I can do this with a certain spaceship. right? This way I can start to mark and see how many times where the spaceship was discussed, where it was missed. Oh yeah, don't write about it in chapter five because you blow it up in chapter four. Wait a second.

It just helps me to organize and be able to look and access and change quickly if I need to. Another feature that I really like about Scrivener that a lot of people don't know or use is the ability to collaborate with an editor. Now, there are a couple ways you can do this. Number one is you can take your Scrivener project and put it into like Dropbox or Google Docs and then your editor can just open it up and you can both work real time and it's always saved on the cloud.

But another thing about that is you can take a snapshot of what you did and then that person can come in and edit and you can quickly flip back and forth between the versions. So you can see what the editor did or changed and you can... immediately revert back. I really love this functionality. And also the editor can comment in the sides. It's a lot more fluid. It's right there on the same document. And more importantly, you don't have version control issues, something that...

Most authors have probably run into publishing the wrong version or working on the wrong version. And if you haven't done it, one day you probably will and you might remember this. My point though is I love the fact that my editor and I can work within the same document together and there's no issues coming from it.

All right, just to kind of recap on today's message, Word is a great program and it can work, but I kind of like Google Docs a bit better and it's absolutely free and not everybody has Word. However, though, I am a big fan of Scrivener. Yes, you do have to sit down and learn it. It is $45, but I've got a discount code or you can just find it online. There's 20% off. You can take advantage of that, dropping it down to something like $37.

And if you intend to write, especially novels or to write consistently, getting familiar with a program that was designed for writers can be a huge benefit. And yes, you might just want to take an hour or two, just watch a couple videos or take a course on Scrivener and how to best use it so that you're actually benefiting from its design. Instead of what a lot of authors run into is they just open up and they start writing and then like, eh, I don't know if it was worth it.

If you are interested in learning more about Scrivener, I have put together a very affordable course. I saw that there was a course once out there that was like $300. I'm like, that's 10 times the cost of the software. Anyways, be sure to check that out.

I've designed it so that not only does it give you all of the facts and the features, it talks about where everything is located, how to actually operate it, but then you can actually see me go through and put together both a fiction and nonfiction book.

This is kind of the section where it's like the practicality. Hey, we talked about keywords. Look how it's used in this part. Look how you can use these features and so forth. So be sure to check that out. You can find it at ScrivenerLessons.com. And go ahead and start learning the power of Scrivener as well as boning up so that you know more about what it can do and you can start unleashing the Scrivener beast. And with that, I'm Dave Chesson of the Book Marketing Show podcast, signing off.