One Stop for Writers Ideas for Authors

 

 

What can I say about this amazing app? It has so many useful tools right at your fingertips.

Let’s start by talking about pricing first. many other apps like Book Funnel, Book Brush, and Headspace have annual fees. The costs can add up. But $105 a year is not that much, and you can buy in increments. Grab One Stop for Writers for a single month and slog through your plot issues. For $11, you get access to the entire app for twenty-eight days. If you can’t solve your hero’s wound or your heroine’s external conflict by then, buy the six months subscription for $60. Maybe I’m preaching here, but if you’re honestly stuck, the cost is minimal compared to the pain of not fleshing out your plot. Even the website says, “for the cost of two lattes a month.”

Applying Skills. Cost aside, let’s get serious. We all take those classes from Inkers Con and read the craft books like Show, Don’t Tell by Sandra Gerth. And then we forget or never actually read the book or… generally procrastinate. This site allows authors to use all those classes and craft skills. We can create our setting and character descriptions using those “show, don’t tell” techniques. We can “romance the beats” on the story and scene maps at the same time we “goal, motivate, and conflict” our characters. You know what I’m saying. The site allows you to use all the skills you’ve learned in a practical way.

Bibles. I can’t stress enough about creating a series bible. I have two series and am forever referencing who works where, what they look like, that elusive last name. One Stop for Writers allows you to input not only the basics for a bible but the itty-bitty details that make readers adore your books. When you throw that special teddy bear from Book One into Book Five, readers cheer. I’m old. I don’t remember things as well as I used to. A site like this, organizing my information, is invaluable.

Pantser versus Plotters. At first glance, the site looks Plotter-centric. With all the mapping and planning tools, pantsers may be turned off. But with these tools and worksheets, pantsers can fill in plot holes, fix a saggy middle, or just mark down character traits. The site is designed not just to help you organize your story but to discover it. I’ve never seen a spot where I can create a character with such depth. The thesauruses and the character sheet (all that wound stuff) help me strengthen my characters. No one wants a cardboard cutout in their book. One Stop for Writers can make your book friends live.

Jump on the free trial, and see if this app is for you.

 

How to Use One Stop for Writers

 

I’m so excited to share this site with you. Let’s Go!!

To begin, start your free trial. The first time you visit the site, hit the Sign Up button, give your email and a password or use Google, Facebook, or Twitter. Confirm your email with a link, and boom, you are off and running.

The first screen has a ton of information. Depending on how your brain works, you might want to check out the videos under the Useful Links block. The Getting Started video will give you all the details available. Or you could keep reading my blog. Up to you.

(Psst, these boxes will change as you use the app. Useful Links becomes Recently Visited. But all the tools are easy to find in the Stacks menu.)

The second link, Features and Tools, is basically my how-to section of the blog. A list of features and how-tos in one simple spot. (Fantastic, right?) Let me highlight these features quickly and dive into one or two. There’s so much to explore.

I’ll run through the top menus and highlight the features. There’s so much here that I can’t get too detailed. Most features have a video to show you how to do it. Not to mention, many things are filling search or data fields.

Thesauruses Menu

This menu takes you directly to the sixteen detail thesauruses. These tools can add details, sharpness, and specificity to your novels. They include character motivation, conflicts, emotional wounds, occupations, physical features, and more. Click on a thesaurus and a trait to explore. The bottom of the page has links to other thesauruses to further explore linked traits, behaviors, or thinking.

The Stacks Menu

Storyteller Roadmap: A great place to begin. Choose one of three options: Planning, Writing, or Revising. Each option has detailed steps, amazing advice, and my favorite, handouts! There are articles, advice, and even nap time build into these guides. Worth checking out.

Character Builder: An intensively detailed profile for your characters. Click on the +New button and give your character a name. Now fill in the fields about backstory, personality, behavior, motivations, physical details, daily life, gallery, and a summary. There are notes on the side to explain some terms and ideas in the builder. You can include their “wound” or the “lie” they tell themselves, positive and negative traits, quirks, occupation, hobbies, and so much. You can use from the thesauruses or create your own wound by clicking on the appropriate box. There are many choices for each feature, and most are hyperlinked to the entry that describes the lie or wound or whatever you need. Gallery allows you to upload an inspiring image. For subscribers, you can consolidate all the data and download it into a PDF for ease of use as you draft.

Story Maps: This feature uses Michael Hauge’s Six Stage plot structure. You can create your story arc to add the big moments of your novel/story. The tool has some resources to better understand Mr. Hauge’s technique with website references, articles, and a video. Plus, there’s plenty of help as you create in the form of pop-up dialog boxes on each timeline event. This feature is for the overall story.

Formal Scene Map: Here, you can plot out the events and order of scenes in your chapters. The structure it creates can help ensure that each scene is needed and move the story forward. You can reorder scenes by clicking and dragging them.

Informal Scene Map: This component is the same scene map with fewer details. It’s for those who don’t need the intense structural details to plot the book or track the scene.

Timeline: Much like the scene and story maps, the feature allows you to sequence the events of your story. With this tool, though, you place the happenings in chronological order. Great for stories with huge eventful backstories, secret babies, or time travel. Again, you can drag events to new locations along your timeline.

World Building Surveys: This feature asks questions about the world of your story. It covers not only the big issues but the smaller details that make a story great. You can select what type of survey to create, and the app will generate questions about that topic. Perhaps you have an alien race and need to explore their contact with humans. Select Creatures and Aliens (intelligent) and drag the questions from the right to get an answer field. You can also add your own.

Idea Generator: This element has a great graphic of a series of drawers. Click on one to see several ideas, plus a link to the corresponding thesaurus for more ideas.

Templates and Tools: Templates of each tool can be saved on your own computer for working offline. Worksheets can be downloaded as a PDF or saved in your workspace. The list here of possibilities is huge. The tools break down into character arc, backstory wound, character fears, emotional progress, emotional value of a setting, and more. Each category has templates to use or you can click New on the worksheet options to create it in your workspace.

Checklists and Tip sheets: This section has fifty-three pages of information. You can download the image, share it on social media, or open it in a new tab to use for reference as you write. Topics run from A-W, including conflict, motivation, plot holes, and show versus tell.

Tutorials: Last in the Stacks menu is a list of help topics. It explains many of the elements available from the app with text and videos. Things covered include characterization, setting, character arc, and miscellaneous.

The last menu is Connect. Inside, you’ll find ways to ask questions of the admins, create a wish list of features you want, bug reports, testimonials, and support for using the site.

This service offers plenty of tools, information, and support for writers. Take the two-week trial and check it out. You might find your next writing home.

 

One Stop for Writers

 

One Stop for Writers is full of resources for authors of every genre. Inside the site are tools such as timelines, character generators, story, and scene maps, world-building resources, and more. They designed the site as a library with information writers can pick up and use immediately.

Did I mention it has a great thesaurus? A handy tool for any writer, but perhaps you’ve heard of the Emotional Thesaurus series? This site is brought to you by one author of these books. There are sixteen different thesauruses available, including positive and negative traits, character motivation, and conflicts. (Basically, you have access to the eight books in the series plus more!)

You can do more than just grab info and head back to the writer’s cave. Each item in the Stacks section is available for working on a project. You can save the work in your personal workspace. You can organize documents by project to keep your workspace clean and organized. Timelines, character arcs, story arcs, and more can be sorted by series or story, all in one spot.

There are also downloadable, detailed worksheets for characters, emotions, and settings. Work offline and add details back in once you have the information.

Users can export data into TXT and CSV. It also can be exported as a Scrivener file.

One Stop for Writers is a website and is not available as an app. It can be used on a laptop and desktop on both PC and Mac.

Users can start with a two-week free trial. There is a one-month option for $11. Need more time? Six months is $60. And for a one-year subscription, the cost is $105.

Next week, we will look at the tools available on One Stop for Writers.

 

SmarterQueue for Authors

 

Here are my thoughts on how to use the app to help your author platform easier to manage.

First of all, social media, right? Some authors are champions—mastering those apps and making the rest of us look like amateurs. Other writers do a minimal amount of social media and have amazing profits. I don’t know what the balance is. I’m not a marketer. And from my sales, I need to take more classes on the subject. Anyway…

SmarterQueue can make social media tasks more organized. It will probably still take you the same amount of time to create, manage, and refine your materials. With SmarterQueue, the posting and analytics will solidify your time on the task and show results ease.

With the app, you can sit down for an allotted time and plan out a week’s worth of social media. You can create, tweak, and schedule, then move on. The app will not only post for you but keep track of your likes/shares/retweets/etc., freeing you to complete other tasks. Many organizing gurus suggest this method for your social media. Create in one go, and schedule posts, giving you time for other things. With this app, you’ll only need to check in one spot to see how things are working. And you can edit on the fly, if, say, a war starts, and you want to remove a post that might be insensitive.

The scheduler can show authors what kind of material they are posting and how the audience is responding. I can see in an instant if I’m spamming readers with “Buy Me” posts. Diversifying content helps to engage our audience. We can also see if we are neglecting one of our titles or we’re over-sharing cat videos. Seeing all the content in one spot with data to back up your posts quantifies your social media platform’s performance. With this information, we can stop doing things that steal time from writing.

Enough of that soapbox…

SmarterQueue also has great help in two areas. One, they have a Find Content option. If you’re stuck or are unsure of what to post, this is the option for you! You can search hashtags, mentions of your handle from Twitter, reshare your best posts, find others’ blogs and content to share. Using this option will diversify your posts and add great new content.

Two, the app has fantastic help. Not only do they have a starter guide to get your orientated, but they also email every day for the trial period. Each message contains great tips to assist you in maximizing the impact of the app. Speaking of email, they also send a weekly stat update to your analytics, with gentle reminders to post.

Essentially, SmarterQueue will help you save time on social media tasks with bulk prep and automatic posting. It will analyze your posts, likes, etc., and help you increase your presence and impact. With a two-week free trial and tons of emails and blog posts to help, SmarterQueue will make social media easy.

Thank you to Angela James for suggesting this app.