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Top Ten Tools For Writers

Writing has been a beacon of development and change since the development of language. We have records of writing on walls, papyrus sheets, stone tablets and scrolls. Along the passage of time, writing changed a lot and the ways of writing have also changed. The tools changed, the technology, the topics, and the inspirations.

writers tools

In the present, writing has become competitive and has got a new fancy name – “Content Development”. We see a variety of content being generated and developed in blogs, videos and easily accessible on the web.

The tools of writing have become robust and user-friendly. Let us see what tools of writing help good writers become great. But before that, let us understand certain basic factors that influence every type of writing.

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What is “Writer’s Block”?

The inability of a writer to generate quality content or progress further in their writing process is called a “Writer’s Block”.

This condition is well documented in history and officially recognized as an ailment by psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler in 1947.

Many famous writers have suffered from this condition for years, for example – F. Scott Fitzgerald and as recent as poetess and songwriter Adele. Writers like Hermann Melville even quit writing altogether!

There are many reasons for writer’s block and with each to their own, the reasons differ.

Writers Block can be cured and the best ways to cure it real fast are:

  1. Go for a walk.
  2. Delete concentration killers such as notifications on your phone
  3. Do physical exercises
  4. Play indoor word games
  5. Change the setting of your daily life.
  6. Read your favourite author
  7. Write anything or for anyone
  8. Music helps
  9. Coffee will get you started
  10. A routine of work will help
  11. Take time to feel good
  12. Meet friends.
  13. Write down ideas on paper 
  14. Use an online free platform such as Milanote to play with structure and plot

Tips and Tricks for writing good content

  1. Curate Content – Compile a list of favourites
  2. Brainstorm – Ask friends, fellow bloggers or writers and peers for ideas. Contemplate on topics.
  3. Ask your readers – Get help from your readers through the feedback mechanism.
  4. Interview someone – Get talking to people on various topics.
  5. Ask a Peer – Invite or ask someone from your fellow bloggers or writer community to write on your behalf.
  6. Hire a Ghost Writer – Hire someone with writing skills similar to yours to write content in your name. For example – for years, Anne Rice, author of “Interview with the Vampire”, had hired her son Christopher and interns Becket and Stina to write for her on her behalf
  7. Analyze others work – Check and critique others work.
  8. Watch Movies or TV – Believe it or not, sometimes movies and TV help.
  9. Read Comics or Watch Cartoons – Letting go of you in your childhood favourites helps.
  10. Recycle your old content – Re-edit or update your own content

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Types of Writing

top apps for writers

There are many types of writing. And all of them are grouped in four styles –

  1. Expository Writing – In this writing, the main focus is on the development of content based on facts, figures, statistics and number proofs. This type of content has a certain style and chronology and sequence of development. This type of content is free of the personal views and opinions of the writer. Information shared is in the objective format.
  2. Descriptive Writing – In this writing, the writer describes any particular event or situation or condition in a first-person perspective, second-person perspective, third-person perspective or a completely objective perspective without any direct or indirect influence or connection.
  3. Persuasive Writing – In this writing, the main focus is debate or an argument. Such type of writing style is highly opinionated and has a definite, particular or peculiar position, stand or viewpoint. This can be termed as biased writing because the writer or author has facts, data and reasoning to convince their readers. The focus of such writing is on – Ethos: Credibility; Logos: Logic pertaining to the argument; and Pathos: Emotional appeal to the readers. Such writing is often accompanied by a “Call to Action”, which is a type of hook to encourage engagement from the readers.
  4. Narrative Writing – In this writing, the main focus is on the idea of storytelling. This type of writing can be in the genre of “Fiction” or “Non-Fiction”. It usually contains a plot, characters, setting, dialogue, action. Most narrative writing has a sequence – beginning, middle, and end. As in descriptive writing, the narration is from the viewpoint of the writer or from the viewpoint of one of the characters in the narration.

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Best Practices For Good Writing

  1. Why are you writing? – Define the purpose of your writing. Aggregate facts, points and goals. Define the purpose.
  2. Who is your audience? Or for whom are you writing? – Define your readers. Get your tone and content tailored and structure your tone and text based on the type of your reader. Set an appropriate level for common readers and advanced readers.
  3. Clear Look and Structure – Make it appealing to the reader and keep the structure flexible for the reader to go back or go ahead. This will help your reader to understand and not get lost in words.
  4. Use simple sentence structure, simple grammar and keep paragraphs short – Do not overwhelm your reader with words and advanced grammar. Write in layman’s language and keep the grammar simple and correct. Avoid paragraph stuffing with connective clauses. Start a new idea in a new paragraph. Even if it means writing a single sentence!
  5. Use the right and correct words – Keeping the reader in mind, try to use single words to express a feeling or range of emotions. Build a repository for such keywords.
  6. Consistency in words, style and meaning – Adopt or create a consistent word, style and meaning strategy.
  7. Revise, edit, re-compose – Re-visit your content from a fresh perspective. Pass your write up to peers and/or colleagues for critique. Based on this exercise, edit or re-compose your content.

What is Proofreading?

what is proofreading?

Proofreading is the most essential part of any content development process. The main reason and concept of proofreading is to ensure that a write up is perfect in terms of grammar and vocabulary. The main areas of checking are –

  1. Sentence structure
  2. Punctuation
  3. Spelling
  4. Capitalization
  5. Consistency
  6. Numbers
  7. Formatting

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Tools for Writers (Writing Tools)

These are the tools used for writing and curating content for writing –

  1. Google Docs

A clean online writing suite from Google. It gives all the functions of Microsoft Word. And the best part, you do not have to click the “SAVE” button, because it saves the documents on its own. You can create various files with different or alternative storylines and outcomes. This will save a lot of time on writing a novella or a book.

2. Zoho Writer

Another best alternative to MS Word is this software. It has many formatting options. The best thing is that it can integrate with MS Word. Zoho Writer is a smart writing tool that gives you an overview of all your writing and editing bits to help you draft a complete story.

3. Scrivener

It is a paid tool where you can research, write, note-taking, editing, and research. It helps to organize all thoughts and ideas in one place. This tool deletes all distractions on the screen giving only a narrow strip of writing space where you can fully concentrate. It also helps you to be on target with their “Project Target” tool which shows you a progress bar with red, yellow and green change as you try to finish your work. It will also give you project stats such as words, characters etc. The feature of Pantser and Plotter gives you the freedom to write the outline or create notes of the whole story in bits. Collect all your research in one place and use it to edit side by side.

4. Evernote

This is content curation and research saving tool very effective for busy writers. Comes in free and paid versions. Put all your research on one website and create notes just like “sticky notes”. This will help you organize your thoughts, research and writing in various groups.

5. YWriter

The best tool for re-writing or re-editing. It helps to re-draft and re-frame content as and when required. All your writing can be clubbed into one cohesive manuscript and helps to edit. You can even create profiles of characters, add viewpoints etc. Is focusing on your problem, this tool will help you with goal setting function.

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6. Fade In

For movie and scriptwriters, this tool helps to create screenplays once the draft has been uploaded. It is feature-rich with a real-time layout option, collaborations bookmarks. It even lets you add images! Gets you to auto-complete your manuscript based on the development. It also gives editing, re-writing and collaborations tools. Accepts multiple file-formats with revisions and other things. Plus it can be used on a mobile.

7. LibreOffice

An open-source alternative to MS Word. It gives all functionality which MS Word gives. Plus it also supports older file formats and layouts. This open-source office tool kit will give you all the functions of MS Word plus it’s free.

8. Ulysses

If you believe that content is above formatting, this tool is for you! It helps you to markup your text. Forget separate files and it will organize all for you in a library. You can even refer between chapters easily. Take your work on the go with Cloud function for all operating systems.

9. Writer

This tool is very much like the one mentioned earlier. Plus it gives word count and estimated time to read. How cool is that? Keep writing without distractions with goal setting functionality and works on all formats.

10. Associated Press Stylebook

Whether a writer or corporate this stylebook will help you write, edit, re-edit and publish everything you write. Plus it gives all types of styles to work on. A powerful tool for writing on flees.

ShowFlipper has a large collection of all genres and style of writing books from established and emerging writers from all over the world!

If you are a writer and are concerned about completing your projects, then the best way to go about it is by taking notes. Science has proven that notes’ taking has its own benefits and writers can fully exploit this to their skills.

If you liked our blog, please comment. Also share your tools, tips and best practices. We shall update them and share them!

Check out Duffy’s other Writing Tips