By Adam Buckley: I often envy the Amish, because sometimes, churning butter feels preferable to managing a Google Sheet. Nevertheless, technology is an integral part of being a writer in the 21st century. You’re reading this on a digital site’s blog page just as I’m writing it via digital software. Perspective is key: I’ll take Microsoft Word over the stone tablet any day. The modern writer has many tools in their digital toolkit beyond a simple word processor. Exploring and employing your various online options can make you not just a more organized writer, but a more creative one, too. 1. Google Sheets I know I was just ragging on it, but I’ve found Google Sheets quite a useful tool for story planning. For fiction writers, particularly the ambitious ones, plotting and planning encompasses a large portion of the actual labor of writing. If you enjoy crafting an immense cast of characters with their own sprawling plotlines across a large number of chapters, a Google Sheet is a great tool to track where and when characters are. In my experience, it's low effort and high yield to manage a Google Sheet like this. With some simple color coding and elementary school knowledge of charts and tables, this is a simple but effective way to track a large amount of information. This is a screenshot of a Sheet of my own. I make sure to highlight which character appears in each chapter, that each chapter has its title and (spoilers) if a character died in said chapter. The vast amount of cells in a Google Sheet also allows for experimentation, as seen with the days of the week below the chart. I can track which chapters happen on which day along with everything else, all on one spreadsheet. In addition, with separate pages, one can map out distinct sections of their project, and whether that be “acts” or “parts”, Sheets gives you that flexibility. 2. Planning/Lore documents The next item is more a method of organization than a distinct tool. Creating specific folders for your different stories is a common practice, but I like to make a dedicated planning document separate from the main story document. Here, I give myself the freedom to explore whatever stray thoughts or ideas that come to mind in a dedicated space that I can go back and reference at any time. I use these planning docs as repositories of character backstories, concept/reference art, worldbuilding and potential chapters titles. All of these different collections of ideas can be managed with Google Docs’ chapter system. I label a section in the document itself then change the text's type from “normal text” to one of the “heading” options. These headings then become hyperlinks on the left-hand side of the page that, when clicked, instantly take you to a particular section. It's an amazingly convenient way of traveling through your documents without having to scan every page for what you’re looking for. 3. Canva Graphic design is my passion, and Canva is my best friend. Canva has a premium subscription that opens up many of its more elaborate templates and design elements, but its standard free scheme is perfectly serviceable for writerly purposes. Canva is relevant to writers because it's incredibly easy to pick up and start designing logos for your fictional organizations or banners for your great houses. When creating a “whiteboard” template, you have a blank white field that you can do what you want with. I’ve used it to create timelines for my projects, and its easily moveable elements make it effortless to change things to your liking. These services might not appeal to every writer, but they provide interesting ways to bring your ideas to life. Writing isn’t just the physical act, it's also these oddball ways of expressing yourself with your project in mind. Make some fake propaganda posters on behalf of your Evil Empire, or some in-universe internal memos or stickers with memey inside jokes you can slap on your laptop. Run wild, because who knows, it might open up the door for new ideas you wouldn’t have stumbled upon otherwise.
4. A.I. I do not endorse the use of A.I in any shape or form, but it had to be mentioned. At best, implementing A.I into your written work casts doubt upon your abilities and integrity as a writer, and at worst, you are a plagiarist. Ethically, I cannot and will not advise anyone to turn to A.I. at any stage of your creative journey. Is it tempting? Yes. Is it wrong? Also yes. Generative A.I. gathers text off the internet, without the consent of its authors, in order to spit out answers at any given prompt. Not only is that morally dubious, but there’s no guarantee that text will make any sense or even help you creatively. Many turn to A.I. in the idea-generation phase, when there’s no clear-cut story and only the germ of an idea. Many have said that it's possible to bounce ideas off an A.I. model, but none of these are replacements for genuine, human ideas born from your brain and soul that you’ve workshopped with other real humans. A.I. might have its uses, but none that I could condone in a creative space. 5. Other writers While flesh and blood human beings are not, in fact, digital technologies, they are supremely valuable during any creative journey. Cave paintings, medicine, and the Model-T all pale in comparison to humanity’s greatest invention: community. On campus, your friends and classmates should always be willing to give your work a read or workshop it with you. And if they aren’t, you should make new friends. Your professors and the Writing Center are other avenues to connect with other writers from whom’s experience you can benefit from. Ask them to look at your work but also pick their brain for strategies they use, how they organize their workflow. Don’t feel bad about picking up tricks from other writers; we’re all stealing from each other anyway. These five tools are ones that, as a writer, you should be aware of if you’re not using them. My only ask is that you try on some of these like a new jacket, and if you find that the sleeves are too tight, or that Google Sheets is being a pain, then move on to the next one and see how that treats you. Ultimately, creating a workflow utilizing methods that you find the most beneficial is the end-goal. If none of these suit your fancy, it's important to remember that the internet is a wild frontier filled with other writers sharing their methods and secrets. Keep an open mind and you’ll never know what might help you take your writing to the next level.
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