Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

Writing Tools and Software to Help You Improve

There are all kinds of apps for that. Regrettably, they can be kind of a pain in the butt. Unfortunately, no software exists out there that does it all. Some are online, forcing you to paste it into their box, make your changes, then cut and paste back into your word document. Others include addons that plug into certain word editors, like Microsoft word or open office. Others only work for firefox and other browsers.  

They vary a lot. The ones that cost money, usually want to charge you a monthly membership for the prevlidge of using their software. Some will offer lifetime memberships, but those can range in the $100s for cost. The only "stand alone" software I was able to find was stylewriter 4.0, which does a great job in some respects, like analyzing the quality of your work, but sucks horribly in others, like fixing punctuation.  

Free stuff: Prowritingaid (online only, but can unlock a word addon for X money), hemingwayapp (desktop app in development), editminion (online only), After the Deadline(addon to some software, not including word) 

The Expensive Stuff: Grammarly, Whitesmoke, Writer's Workbench, Prowritingaid (full version, my preferred choice, and StyleWriter 4.0 (also like, but not worth the price of admission)

Novel Preparation Software -  

So you now can write in a decent editor. You can now break down your work, both by having it read back to you and breaking down sentence structure. However, how are you going to maintain all of your ideas? How are you going to keep the appearances of the dozens of characters you introduce in order? How is everything going to fit and make sense? Personally, I used excel. I just create a custom spreadsheet and fill out my character and their personality much like you would a character in a dungeons and dragons game. I'll bet if you google character spreadsheets or character design templates, you could find any number of templates that you could work off of, if you didn't want to do it yourself.  

But... what if you want something more? Like a program designed for inserting information and organizing it in an easy to follow way? Something that allows you to put in characters, settings, events, event logs, and even chapters in an easy to follow organized fashion. This way, you can track and plot and organize and never forget Jim had blue hair and Joe had purple hair. Well, here are a few that I've found.  

Online Novel Software - Hiveword, Litlift 

Free Opensource - Storybook, Evernote, Scrivener, yWriter, Twine, Writer's Café, Gingko, StoryMill, Plume Creator, Liquid Story Binder XE, Treesheets, Pagefour, Storyist, Masterwriter.... There are a lot... is the point I'm trying to make.  

$$$ - I'm sure there are.... But why would you pay money?

Dictionary and Thesaurus -  

Well, duh... that's kind of what they are there for. I don't use them all too much, but I will google a word when I don't know it. The way I typically use a thesaurus is when I know the word I'm trying to think of, but can't quite think of it. I'll try to track it down by taking its synonyms. Dictionary.com and thesaurus.com would be the simplest way to achieve this. However, if you're not happy with that, Thesage is a free dictionary and thesaurus all in one.  

Online: Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, Wordweb 

Free Software: Thesage 

$$$ Software: Webster's has one that costs money, the only reason I liked it is that it would read the word and definition for me, and it would make things easier and help with pronunciation.  

***I'd give more examples, but to be honest, I don't really see a point.

Idea Generators -