Scrivener is my go-to writing tool for just about everything1 but it has a weakness: compiling Word documents with built-in headings that make them easy to navigate. Here’s how to solve that problem. I don’t often write about Scrivener because there’s a community of people who really know their way around it, not least the […]
If you want to publish or submit AI-generated writing, you need to know this: you don’t own that work. No one knows who owns that work. You had an idea and created the prompt that lead to the work, but in the world of intellectual property, ideas are worth nothing. Expression is everything. That’s why […]
If you’re going to use AI for writing or research, you need to know two things. The first is that AI doesn’t know anything. There are other important things to know about AI. It’s trained on content taken without permission of the creators. It contributes to rising greenhouse emissions and power consumption from technology companies. […]
Most writers hate writing a synopsis, so it seems like the perfect challenge for an AI. What I discovered reveals a lot about the current state and limitations of generative AIs like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The current wave of interest in AI is fascinating because it inspires so much hype on both sides. I […]
It’s became a fashionable rallying cry for writers to say “I will never use AI”. While there are many good reasons to worry about artificial intelligence, I think writers should never say never to AI. As a science fiction writer who finds non-human intelligence fascinating, I’m intrigued by the hyperbole and achievements of AI research […]
With only three weeks left until Nanowrimo 2023 kicks off, there’s still time to prepare your story so you can hit the keyboard hard on November 1st. More importantly, a little prep will give you something to fall back on when the words run dry on November 21st. I won’t be on board the Nano […]
Plottr is my latest bid to find a story outlining tool that will tame my excesses as a discovery writer and help me to work faster. I’ve looked at how I hoped to use it with three different projects, now it’s time for a deep dive into the experience. Navigating the Plottr interface When you […]
I’ve been away for a while [DRUM ROLL] writing a new novel in my Nightmare Vacations series. It’s also been an opportunity to test drive Plottr, a visual tool for story planning. For a lazy pantser like me, outlining can be a chore that gets in the way of turning that great new idea into […]
How do you turn a collection of story ideas into a coherent 100,000-word novel? Novel planning was one of the most daunting tasks I faced as a first-time novelist. As a journalist, I’d got used to writing a few hundred words without an outline, or jotting down a few ideas for a thousand-word article or […]