Andrew Ferguson
Children's/YA Author
Archives
Want to Add Handwritten Notes to your Scrivener Project? Try Notebloc.
Posted on March 22, 2021 Leave a Comment
Let me introduce you to Notebloc for Android and iPhone. This handy little app not only uses your smartphone’s camera to capture images, but it also automatically adjusts the colour and angle of your image(s) before easily exporting them as jpg or pdf files, making adding your handwritten notes to Scrivener a breeze.
The Overwhelming Art of World-Building
Posted on December 31, 2020 Leave a Comment
Research is, undeniably, one of the most important stages of writing a story. Understanding the time and place your story is set in will enable you to make that story more true to life, and therefore, more compelling. But what if you are writing a fantasy, set in an imaginary world? Make no mistake: research is just as important in fantasy as it is in non-fantasy, perhaps even more so since you are creating a world from scratch. If you’re writing a historical fiction set during the Spanish Civil War, you probably won’t need to research whether or not gravity existed in Spain or what colour the grass was. We can take these things for granted in non-fantasy, but in fantasy you need to become an expert on your entire world… and still make time to actually write the story!
3 Useful Android Apps for Writers
Posted on November 29, 2020 Leave a Comment
If you’re anything like me, the motivation to write and the floods of inspiration tend to come at the worst possible times. While I’m a firm believer that there is no substitute for sitting at your desk for hours with tea constantly being fed to you intravenously to get stuff done, there surely has got to be some way that we can utilise that spark of inspiration or motivation when it strikes… right?
You bet there is. The following apps are all available for Android OS and have served me well for all my writing needs:
Throwback Thursday: The Overwhelming Art of World-Building
Posted on September 17, 2020 Leave a Comment
Research is, undeniably, one of the most important stages of writing a story. Understanding the time and place your story is set in will enable you to make that story more true to life, and therefore, more compelling. But what if you are writing a fantasy, set in an imaginary world? Make no mistake: research is just as important in fantasy as it is in non-fantasy, perhaps even more so since you are creating a world from scratch. If you’re writing a historical fiction set during the Spanish Civil War, you probably won’t need to research whether or not gravity existed in Spain or what colour the grass was. We can take these things for granted in non-fantasy, but in fantasy you need to become an expert on your entire world… and still make time to actually write the story!
Throwback Thursday: Using Notebloc to Add Handwritten Notes to Scrivener
Posted on February 20, 2020 Leave a Comment
Let me introduce you to Notebloc for Android and iPhone. This handy little app not only uses your smartphone’s camera to capture images, but it also automatically adjusts the colour and angle of your image(s) before easily exporting them as jpg or pdf files, making adding your handwritten notes to Scrivener a breeze.
Want to Add Handwritten Notes to your Scrivener Project? Try Notebloc.
Posted on February 25, 2018 Leave a Comment
Let me introduce you to Notebloc for Android and iPhone. This handy little app not only uses your smartphone’s camera to capture images, but it also automatically adjusts the colour and angle of your image(s) before easily exporting them as jpg or pdf files, making adding your handwritten notes to Scrivener a breeze.
I Love Scapple; You Should Too!
Posted on January 8, 2017 6 Comments
At first glance, Scapple by Literature and Latte might appear to be just another piece mind-mapping software claiming to possess the secret of eternal creativity but in actual fact, it is quite different in a few important ways; ways which make it the ideal tool for those of us who have a million different ideas they need to organise and have been unable to find a large enough whiteboard or a thick enough packet of post-its.
‘Freedom’ is the word that comes to mind when I think about Scapple. Freedom to organise all your thoughts (however many, and however big or small) into whatever order you want, in whatever style you want and with remarkable ease.
Keeping Focused With Scrivener
Posted on August 28, 2016 2 Comments
However, simply having the right tools for the job does not an author, make. While Scrivener did provide the resources to easily research, plan and write my novel in an organised way, I was not getting the most out of it at first because I wasn’t bothering to do any proper planning. I was just writing mountains of narrative; something I could have done for free on OpenOffice. However, not to be deterred from my dream of finishing that novel, I (a natural ‘pantser’) decided that I had to become a ‘planner’ to take my writing to the next level.
It was the right decision but it was still an unnatural transition for someone used to the freedom of ‘pantsing’. I decided in advance, therefore, to stick to a simple three-staged approach…
The Overwhelming Art of World-Building
Posted on June 19, 2016 5 Comments
Research is, undeniably, one of the most important stages of writing a story. Understanding the time and place your story is set in will enable you to make that story more true to life, and therefore, more compelling. But what if you are writing a fantasy, set in an imaginary world? Make no mistake: research is just as important in fantasy as it is in non-fantasy, perhaps even more so since you are creating a world from scratch. If you’re writing a historical fiction set during the Spanish Civil War, you probably won’t need to research whether or not gravity existed in Spain or what colour the grass was. We can take these things for granted in non-fantasy, but in fantasy you need to become an expert on your entire world… and still make time to actually write the story!
3 Useful Android Apps for Writers
Posted on November 1, 2015 3 Comments
If you’re anything like me, the motivation to write and the floods of inspiration tend to come at the worst possible times. While I’m a firm believer that there is no substitute for sitting at your desk for hours with tea constantly being fed to you intravenously to get stuff done, there surely has got to be some way that we can utilise that spark of inspiration or motivation when it strikes… right?
You bet there is. The following apps are all available for Android OS and have served me well for all my writing needs:
Andrew Ferguson 