Category Archives: Writing

Best Writing Software – What to Look for

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Today being a writer or writing does not mean that you just need a notebook and pen. In the recent era, numerous writing software programs are available, which are amazingly helpful for writing. Now, you do not need to have lots of papers, pens and scraps lying around. Today, there are collaborative documents, which help you share your work with others. You need good feedback on your work. So now you can share your work with multiple people and get feedback instantly, along with the original work still intact.

Journal is one such writing, which is multitasking and appears to be a boon for a writer. The name is very simple but it has amazing functionalities. You can store huge amount of functions in the Journal. You can make your personal notes, your research and you can create many other files. All the information you need about your writing will be in one place. This helps to increase your productivity and you are saved from searching for your work every time you need.

If you are working on two completely different subjects for the same project, you can create two different files in a single software. You can click ‘open the subjects’ you require at the same time. It is less fussy and very comfortable to work with.

There are many other writing software programs available in the market. Most commonly, they have the same configurations, with one or two aspects more or less. There are writing software created for technical writing, content writing, even novel writing software is available. A novel writer can create each character differently, write about it independently and then combine the files at the end. All the written work remains in one orderly place. Now, the novel is also published on the internet along with its hard copy. Therefore, there is software present which can do scriptwriting, and formatting for publication on the internet.

There are many interesting programs available in the software, which will help you to arrange your ideas and story by a series of questions. Now, you can do endless creative writing such as stories, plots, poetry, and screenplay and store it in the same place. There is no mess or risk of losing the document. The creative writing and novel writing software are very useful for the writers to organize themselves without any stress. But when it comes to writing, only the writer can do that with his or her imagination and skills.

Now, when you go into the market looking for novel writing software, you must look out for a few things:
• The best novel writing software must consist of templates which are used for creating plots, creating characters, their personalities, settings, sub plots, etc. All these facilities you must get in one place.
• The creation of the characters and outline must be flexible enough and it must be easy for writer to make changes in the characters or story line. Everything must happen very easily.
• There are very useful templates in the software which are useful for character development. The templates have some character defining options. There are programs fed into the software which can help you to get a good name for your character.
• A very important aspect of the writing software is very sensitive grammar and spell check software. You must check for it.
• You must look for features that will help to cultivate your settings, plots, characters, etc.
• The software must be user friendly and easy to navigate. It should not be complicated, as it will take days to understand the software.
• The software must be such that you can yourself get the settings and install it on your computer.
• The instructions regarding the software must be clear and detailed. The manual must be there to resolve issues in case of any confusion, and customer service must be available at all times.

You can do all this research in the market and over the internet. You will get options for the best novel writing software and you will also get information about the free novel writing software which you can use for some time limit. The best ones are the ones that can be useful to you in all the aspects while writing. The writing software is very useful in organizing your work. It is up to writer to use it to his or her advantage.

My personal recommendation is Screenwriter.

The Pros and Cons of Ghost Writing for Indie Writers

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What is ghost writing exactly, you may ask? You’ve heard the term and maybe seen the movie and/or the TV show, but you still have some questions. Well, a ghost writer writes and edits for pay for people who either don’t have the time or the inclination to write something entirely by themselves.

Also, ghost writers are often on hire to edit a person whose work is poorly worded or otherwise shoddy or difficultly worded somehow; publishing houses and literary agents both hire ghost writers on a regular basis to edit such work. The ideas are sound but the writing is poor, and ghost writers make it much better. Also, ghosts are paid upfront for their labors in most cases. So they don’t have to worry about either finding ideas or waiting to be paid on spec or on commission for their work.

When it comes to indie writers, the above holds quite true: independent writers often don’t check themselves for grammar and syntax errors, and they may turn in sloppy, poorly edited and poorly worded but great-in-the-idea department book manuscripts. So it takes a ghost writer to go over their work and improve it markedly for publication purposes. The pros of ghost writing in regards to indie writers include much better and improved book manuscript preparation, and the ability to present a clean, sparkling work to literary agents and publishers, and the cons mostly relate to the costs when you hire a ghost. These costs can go upwards of several thousand dollars in many cases. Usually, editing costs less than out-and-out rewriting or ghost writing.

So if you are an indie writer and you’ve been told your work needs some editing or at least a second set of eyes to go over it and proofread your copy, you really should follow this suggestion if you can afford to hire a ghost writer. Look under affordable ghost writers on the Internet, and see if you have a friend or colleague who does book editing for free or for less money than a professional, if you can’t afford the services of a professional book ghost writer.

Meanwhile, if you are an indie writer who could use a lot more experience in freelance writing for pay, or you could use a day job in writing somehow, ghost writing could be your choice. It can be hard to find work as a ghost writer on the Internet, so you will want to study up on how to get published under your own name first, and then see about writing some publishable pieces. There are a lot of articles on EzineArticles that tell you all about how to become a ghost writer.

The best way to make it a true day job is to get hired by a literary agent or large publishing company that is in the business of sending hires to ghost writers on a regular basis. You need to become part of their stable of writers and editors. It helps to be able to ghost write and edit both books and screenplays if possible. Also, your writing must be impeccable, and you have to deliver your finished writing work in record time in most cases. So the pros of being a ghost writer as a day job include some decent upfront payment for your hard work, and the cons include some pretty fast deadline turnarounds and also not having any credit or your own name on all of your hard work in most cases.

Like I said, it’s best to be published under your own name at first, and then you can follow some of the suggestions on Ezine Articles, such as starting your own ghost writing business website and doing your best to draw in potential leads. You can make a day job out of ghost writing and publish your own books at your own pace this way, by working anywhere from two to six ghost writing jobs per year.