Some of you will recall that we never got round to scheduling a NiaD for last October because of an unwelcomed excess of Real Life™. When I announced that it wouldn’t be going ahead you lot were amazing, with exactly the right blend of disappointment and well-wishes to make me all warm and fuzzy, and help that Real Life™ seem manageable.
So, to say “Thank You”, we’re going to run a very special out-of-season version of Novel-in-a-Day… Welcome to Novella-in-a-Day!
Tomorrow (July 20th, 2016) sees the long-awaited release of Literature and Latte’s iOS version of their popular writing software, Scrivener.
Don’t get excited. This isn’t a review. I thought about writing one, but other people with far bigger readerships than me have done that already (9to5mac and sixcolors spring to mind). In any case, the only useful information I can impart is a couple of screenshots and the fact that it’s really good, and you’ll find all that out yourself tomorrow.
Still, the impending release means that the jolly good folks at Literature and Latte have provided an updated version (v2.8) of their Scrivener for Mac software to add the mobile sync functionality that makes the desktop app compatible with it’s upcoming iOS little brother, and a new Scrivener for Mac release means I need to go through my regular upgrade ritual. Continue reading
Scrivener for Windows has a number of writing tools available from the Tools menu, including options to look up selected words in a number of online references (dictionary, thesaurus, etc). These tools aren’t user definable, but if you are prepared to tinker a little under the hood there is a way to change these to something you use more regularly.
The steps below will switch the Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com references to enable you to look up words in the Collins online dictionary and thesaurus instead (in particular, the American English versions). Continue reading
A few days ago I wrote a novel in a day. A whole novel, in a single day.
I say “I”, but it’s only fair to point out that I had some help. Twenty-five of us got together and – over the course of twenty-four hours – produced “Made Man”, a 55,000 word tale of mafia life in 1960s Las Vegas.
You can read more about the Novel in a Day (NIAD) premise elsewhere on the site, but for anyone coming here new the basic concept was this: Someone would come up with the overarching story in advance, and break it up into individual chapters. On the day of the event, those chapter briefs would be emailed out to the participants who had the 24 hours to write their section and return it for inclusion in the final piece. An hour or so later, electronic copies of the book (PDF, ePub and mobi) were posted online for everyone to read. Other than their own brief, the participants had no idea what happened in the wider story, or where their chapter fell in the book… until they read the finished piece, of course. Continue reading
I’m very pleased to say that the Windows version of Scapple is now a reality. The folks at Literature and Latte(1) have just released a beta version of the software on their website(2).
But that’s not the exciting news. The exciting bit is that once again(3) I have been able to work with the Windows team at LitNLat to add a Science Fiction interface to the program.
Eight Questions is an occasional series of interviews that I’m including on the site. Being a naturally gifted (read: lazy) interviewer, I will be using the same eight questions in every interview.
This time, I’m asking the questions of the fine folks at Literature and Latte, creators of the celebrated Scrivener software as well as their newest release, Scapple.
Welcome Astrid, David, Ioa, Jeff, Jennifer, Julia, Katherine, Keith, Lee, and Tammy! Continue reading
Quite a while ago I posted on the Lit’n’Lat forum some details on how I use Keywords in my Scrivener projects to keep track of characters and locations, and someone suggested that I also post it here. So here goes…!