Recent content by Penpilot

How does that compare to Scrivener? I've been working with Scrivener for years, and looking at DabbleWriter, on the surface it looks to be similar except way more expensive.

I'm a terrible speller. When I started taking writing seriously many-many years ago, my punctuation was terrible. I'm much better now, and how I got better was simply by writing a lot. Any time I would encounter a punctuation problem, I would look up the rule I was having trouble with, and then...

When I worked primarily in Word, I would have revision numbers for that one large file. Eg Novel-V001. But then I realized it was easier to work with smaller files. So instead, I would split a book into its chapters with each chapter having it's own folder. So, a chapter would be named like...

This is a bit tangential, but hopefully there's something useful to be gleaned from it. I grew up playing various sports. In terms of success, failure, and pressure, one of the keys I found for handling things was in repeating the following statement to myself. "Control the things you can...

Many-many years ago, my first book had an ending where the heroes were facing an army of the dead. After watching a documentary on the Great Wall of China, I got the idea for my third book, which involved a great wall that guarded the known lands from mysterious creatures known as the the...

IMHO, you identify and sharpen your writing voice by simply writing and revising. Finding your voice is kind of like going out and finding yourself as a person. When you're first starting out, you'll try on lots of different hats. You'll be influence by what you read, by what you see, etc...

In the writing sphere you're going to run into all sorts of personalities with something to say about you or about something you created. Some will be worth listening to. Others will not be worth the air spent to tell them to sit on a bag of dick-shaped tacks. Some can be tough, but fair. Some...

I was just reading through the new post in this thread, and it triggered a memory of a phrase I heard used during a sports broadcast, which I though was pretty cool, when a player had a bit of a brain fart. That phrase was "mental vapor lock" derived from engine vapor lock. Engine vapor lock is...

I have a CompSci degree, (but it's been a long time since I used it) and my initial reaction is their brain crashed, and there's no getting out of it until they do a hard reboot. To me, it's not a momentary pause. To me, what you describe is akin to bottle-necking.

For me, it depends. I think something like that best fits stories with a lighthearted slant or instances where a lighthearted tone is being conveyed. It's hard for me to imagine it being used in a dramatic scene, because seeing something like that on the page reminds me of comicbooks and...

That's pretty much how things unfolded for me, though, I did buy an old-old Mac for $150, and used that for a year or so just for Scrivener until the Windows version became a reality.

I use Scrivener. It basically it can ball up the story text and all the different notes and odds and ends into one project. I also keep an Idea's Project in Scrivener, where I jot down my story ideas for safekeeping and organization. Before Scrivener, I used this free program called yWriter for...

I usually boil thing down to this. The start of a story is simply someone with a problem, and a compelling reason to solve said problem. The story is them struggling to overcome the obstacle or many obstacles standing in the way of them solving said problem. A lot of times when we're stuck...

IMHO, your initial instincts about it are correct. When you boil it down, magically directing someone's emotions to make them do something they wouldn't otherwise do is robbing them of their ability to choose. You're basically asking how do you make forcing someone to do something they don't...

IMHO, you're overthinking. Write what you want to write, book A. Let's say the results end up being a disaster. You can always try again. The idea for that story isn't a one use only item. You can keep trying and trying until you get it right. My first novel was hot garbage in execution, but...