Welcome to Inkscribes!

editMinion

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I've come to love this little program. My writing background consist of text-based RPG's, Role Playing Games. And even though I haven't played in an RPG for a long time, all the years I spent playing them has done something to my writing that doesn't quite fit for novels. I'm detailed orientated, down to the point that I feel compelled to tell you how fast my character is walking, even when it's irrelevant. But in an RPG, everything is relevant, not being clear on what, where and when your character does something will cause confusion.  As a result, I have a close, unhealthy relationship with adverbs. Sometimes, I don't even realize I'm using them. You can click the little minion to go to editMinion to see where your relationship ranks. All you need to do is paste a selection of your work into the space provided.
Click Edit at the bottom of the box and watch the little guy do his thing. There are options to
choose, by default the first 7 is selected. Averbinator picks up your adverbs; weak words shows you words that could be replaced with a stronger alternative; Said picks up said alternatives; Passive voice lets you know if you're speaking in a passive voice opposed to an active one; Prepositions tells you if you end a sentence that way; Homonyns allows you to view your homonyns and so you can review them and make sure you're using the right variation of that word; Cliche will catch words or phrases are cliche. Plus several other features that I've never felt necessary to use.
After clicking Edit! the Minion will give you an analysis. At first I used Chapter 1 of my WIP Prince Phillip. But, I realized I edited that chapter and it wasn't nearly as fun to look at. Nor did it show my sordid love affair with adverbs. The Minion Analysis Results will tell you a ton of useful things. Total Word Count, with a list of anything you have selected at top and their number count.

11 Adverbs. Heh. Look at all that yellow! A Sentence Length Graph with the options to see the longest and shortest sentence. Frequently Occurring words. Besides the character names, 26 instances of 'that', 19 'said'.
And finally, characters and places.
When you continue to stroll down, all these instances are highlighted for you and there is a helpful little legend at the bottom. Though I wish it used more unique colors, as I get confused with all the variations of purple. Using this program has definitely helped me with my passive voice; finding more powerful/meaning words to use in my stories; and my adverb usage.
These are the 3 main things I use editMinion for. Definitely not ending sentences with Prepositions. Now, here's the thing. It doesn't tell you these things are bad or good. It just highlights them for you to see. You have to be the one to choose which adverbs (if any) to keep, if passive voice works best for you and so forth. It can't teach you any of those things. It just shows you how often you're doing it. For me, I found out knowing that I abused adverbs like no ones business was definitely an eye opener.

And just to see, I put this blog post through editMinion.
This is what it looks like.

Then I edited it.

Monday's will be for 100 word Drabbles. 12:46am on Monday but I haven't been to sleep yet and it doesn't change over to the next day until I actually do. :P

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A groan crawled its way out of my throat, tearing as it went. I pulled my legs to my chest and shuttered as something twisted inside me. My fingers curled and clawed at the sheet as I rocked myself, hoping for a reprieve.
When it finally came I breathed a long sigh and my body hummed. In that single moment, being pain free felt like being on drugs.
Then the pain returned, tenfold, and I clenched my teeth as I tilted my head to stare out the window at the night sky.
A full blood moon stared back at me.

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I thought it was an interesting premise for a story. One I'd definitely like to turn into something longer. But then, I always want to do that. I dunno, I'd consider the next time you see a female friend though. I mean, what if she isn't on her period? What if she's just doing all she can to hold back the transformation?

Heh. Yep, my first drabble is about periods. Run while you can.

       On Wednesdays, I'll be posting writing tips, software information, hardware (whether that be journals or pens, or a nice typewriters.) Also, classes, seminars and the like. Anything that might help you with your writing. This will be a more of, "Oh look, this is a thing you might want to check out"...rather than, "I'm an expert on this thing, you should use it."

Of course, this'll be suspended in April, when everyday will be a double drabble. ^_^


It's become fairly popular with writers. Kelley Armstrong, the writer of The Dark Power series and Bitten series, is an advocate for it I found out during a class of hers.

I've been using Scrivener for a year, and I gotta tell ya. I'm in no way, shape or form, an expert at it. Actually, I'm 100% certain I do not use it to it's full potential.

It cost 40$ USD (click the image above to be taken to a place you can buy it or test or a trial) but you can get it for half that if you if you do something like finish NaNoWriMo. The program runs on MAC and PC, though from what I gather the better version of the software is for MA. I run PC.


I want to say it's pretty basic. But Scrivener, like everything else, has a learning curve. At the end of the blog, I'll post links to websites and youtube tutorials because I think that those are really essential in figuring out how to work the program. So, it's not super easy. Or at least, it wasn't for me. :) The picture on the left is what it looks like. You can creature a folder for each chapter and then a text document for each scene if that's how you work. Each chapter/scene you can have notes on the cork board so you can write a summary or idea of what does into the chapter. What you're seeing is my work on a novel called Prince Phillip. I don't use the corkboard function. Also, they can be moved around and it will move the scene it is attached to as well. So it's nice handy way of rearranging your story if it needs it.


This is probably my favourite part of Scrivener. You can set word count goals for chapters, color code your chapters/scenes to set them as finished, in progress or any thing you can think of because they are customization. You can also make unique status as well.




You can also change the layout. Half and half with the Outliner or the Corkboard. Horizontal or vertical. Or you can have the plane manuscript, which is what you do all your writing in. The program can go full screen to help you avoid distractions while writing. In the end you can compile your document and export it, though I haven't had the best of luck with that feature. <.<

Prince Phillip is a year-ish old and was the first novel I did solely in Scrivener. It's only now going through a rewrite/edit and boy does it need it. :)







Scrivener also comes with Character (As you may have noticed by the breathtakingly handsome man staring you, dear Heath Ledger plays the part of Phillip in my brain.) and Setting templates that you can alter to suit your needs or use to make different ones (Planet Bio's anyones?). You can import pictures to the program, and even whole webpages. Though, these features are different on PC. I think with MAC you get to drag and drop the images but for me I have to save them to my computer and it only lets me import links to websites. At least I can have them all in one place? Arguably you could simply do all that stuffing by sorting it in folders, or even in Word. It's possible (very possible) that I haven't just figured it out yet.

The thing is, Scrivener has a lot of options and ways to use it, for myself, I probably use at it's most basic level. When it comes to learning it you can simply mess around with it and learn through trial and error, read up on it or watch some video's. I found video's worked best for me. ^_^

Quantum Fairytale is a Quarterly Magazine. My short story, Child of Kuniva was published in Issue #12. This is my second publication. I do wish I had spent more time on it. I feel it's a good story idea but would still use work and tightening.

I've always tried to keep up with a blog and never quite seem to be able. I've decided to kick start Inkscribes with the a to z challenge.