Just how much progress have computer systems made in understanding the human voice? I don’t mean recognizing specific commands, like the hands-free Bluetooth in your car. I’m looking for a tool an author can use to write a book without typing. I want to know how well a computer can understand people when they just talk to it. And the answer is, “not very well.” Continue reading “Voice-to-Text Dictation Software”
Author: Gordon Long
Gordon A. Long is a writer, editor, publisher, playwright, director and teacher.
Learn more about Gordon and his writing from his blog and his Author Central page.
Story Structure: All a Novelist Needs to Know
The structure of every story follows the pattern of the average human emotional experience. That pattern is the same, whether it’s a first kiss, eating a chocolate bar, having sex, or reading a full-length novel. Hollywood scriptwriters have found this pattern, follow it, and often make great heaps of money for their producers by doing so.
But how does this help the novel writer? We’re all much more “seat of the pants,” aren’t we? Creative, innovative, never following the crowd? Well, yes, we all have an intuitive grasp of the idea, or we wouldn’t be writers. But my experience is that a formula helps you most when you discover you’ve screwed up. Be as creative as you want, but when you finish your first draft and discover it’s flat, boring, and takes too long to get anywhere, what do you do? You go to the formula to see what you missed. Because it will be there.
My favourite crutch at times like that is Continue reading “Story Structure: All a Novelist Needs to Know”
My Self-Publishing Hero: Cas Peace
I don’t remember how Cas Peace fell into my Indie publishing career. My first evidence of her shows up in emails in 2014, but we had already Beta-read several of each others’ books by that time. Maybe she was an angel sent to someone who sorely needed the help.
In any case, she and I are very different writers; she says I write with too much control and too little emotion. I think her work is too emotional. So we have a symbiotic relationship, each trying to pull the other towards “normal.” Whatever that is.
I commented in last month’s post that an hour with a good developmental editor can make a great deal of difference to a book. A Beta read by Cas sets me up with months’ more work!
Here is our interview, where I pry into what makes a hero tick. Continue reading “My Self-Publishing Hero: Cas Peace”
A Holistic Description of the Editing Process
Beta read, proof-read, copy edit, line edit, stylistic edit, substantive edit, aunt Mary’s read-through: you name it. Ask just about anybody what the different types of editors are called, and they’ll give you a different answer. And why should we care? We can’t afford them anyway.
Knowledge of these various functions can be applied to our own self-editing process and make us better writers. So… we can’t afford four different editors. We should be sitting ourselves down at various stages of the writing process and making certain decisions, whether we have help or not. Continue reading “A Holistic Description of the Editing Process”