For writers looking to improve their blogs quickly, Darren Rowse’s “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” program might be just the thing. Rowse runs Problogger, one of the top blogs on the Internet and the place to go for information about making a living as a blogger. For the next month, starting April 6, he’ll send out an email every day to everyone in the “31 Days” program with a quick, 10–15 minute task they can do to make their blog a little bit better.

I know little beyond that — like you, I’ll have to wait until the 6th to see what kind of tips Darren is sending out. But, Darren is a) super-smart about blogging, b) very good at explaining things, and c) about the nicest guy you’ll ever meet, and therefore one ofthe givingest, so I’m sure the tips will be effective, well-written, and generous.

The program is free — you just need to give your name and email address to receive the daily emails. IF you need to get your blog in order — or maybe even get your blog started — this looks like a good, quick way to pick up a little steam.

Creating a Master Document isn’t all that hard, but it’s a little fiddly – you have to get the styles just right and you need to set everything up from the beginning for best results. Sebastien Berthet emailed me about his solution to the same problem, a program he created called Chapter by Chapter.

Chapter by Chapter is a free plugin companion (Update: Sebastian tells me that the program stands alone and therefore is not technically a “plugin”) for Word – it works with Word 1997 through Word 2007 – that allows you to pull together multiple documents into a single longer one. In addition, the program places an outline view in a pane to the left of your editing window, allowing you to jump back and forth between the various pieces of your manuscript with ease. When you’re done, Chapter by Chapter handles the task of compiling the documents.

Since Chapter by Chapter uses the built-in cut-and-paste function  to assemble the final document, it doesn’t have the same file and text corruption issues Master Documents users sometimes run into (although Word 2007 fixes a lot of those problems, too) – only the text and basic formatting is moved, not all the underlying options and style information that Word dumps into its files.

More importantly, while you need Word to do the work of outlining the document and assembling the pieces, once a document is associated with your project you can use any word processor to work on it (as long as you don’t change the file format). Which means you can transfer the document to a Palm or Windows Mobile device and edit it on the go, or stick it on a flash drive and work on it with whatever software a computer at the library, Internet cafe, or parent’s house has installed. When you come home, copy the revised document over the original, fire up Chapter by Chapter, and you’re good to go.

Ultimately, Chapter by Chapter just provides a more elegant interface than Words Master Documents and Document Map features. Sebastien has made a lot of effort to make Chapter by Chapter easy to use, and to make it work well with other tools writers might use (like SuperNoteCard). Especially if you’re using pre-2007 versions of Word, you should definitely look into Chapter by Chapter.

Chapter by Chapter (Free)

FileHamster is a free version control system that runs on Windows and automatically saves a new copy of your file every time you save. What this means is that the history of every document you create is saved and can be recalled at any time.

FileHamster runs in the system tray of your computer and watches any file you tell it to watch. Whenever a new file is created in a watched folder, it will create a backup, and as you change and re-save the file, it will create new subsidiary backups. Double-clicking the FileHamster logo in the system tray will bring up a list of all the files it has saved, allowing you to view the history of any document at any point in its history. You can open any file from the chain of revisions and use it as any other file.

To be honest, I don’t use FileHamster that much — it just sits in the background, quietly doing its thing, without me even being aware of it most of the time. But, as with any backup strategy, it’s good to know I could access my past revisions, if I needed them — and I never know when in the future I just might.

FileHamster (Windows-only; Free)

• They’re “push” technology: Instead of waiting for a reader to visit your blog, or check their RSS reader, you “push” newsletters directly into readers’ email inboxes. Since most people check their email daily (at least!) there’s a good chance they’ll read your newsletter the day you send it (or shortly thereafter).
• You build a list: You have a record of the email addresses — and often the name and other information, such as location — of your newsletter readers. This is valuable information for anyone with some marketing savvy; most importantly, it means you can always reach the readers most important to you.
• You have pretty exact numbers: It can be hard to analyze website logs to determine how many people are visiting your site and what they’re doing there. Are unique visitors more important, or daily hits, or time spent on site? How do you put it all together? With email newsletters, you have numbers that are more like a magazines subscription count: while you can’t be positive the people who get the newsletter are reading it, you know exactly how many are getting it.

Use Feedburner to Create Your Newsletter

The easiest way to set up a newsletter is to use Feedburner’s email service. Feedburner is an RSS feed service, but they can take the content of your RSS feed (which is generated automatically by most blogging sites’ software) and send it via email. They handle the signups and confirmations, providing a sign-up form you can embed on your site, and will auto-generate a newsletter whenever there’s new content in your feed.

You can use Feedburner to simply recreate your blog in email form — every time you post, your list will get a copy of the post via email. Since only a small percentage of websurfers really “get” RSS, this provides a way to turn first-time visitors into regular readers. You can customize the header of your newsletter with a logo, and include ads in your newsletters if you want.

With very little work, you could also create a specialized newsletter “channel”, offering premium or bonus content in addition to your blog — or instead of blogging at all. In WordPress, you can easily set up a category of posts that don’t get published to the front page, and generate category-specific feeds (they’re at “http://yoursitename.com/category/categoryname/feed” for each category). Create a “newsletter” category, and feed its URL to Feedburner. If you’d like to send newsletters out on a specific day, simply schedule all your posts to be published on that day using the WordPress “Schedule” function. On the allotted day, Feedburner will collect all the posts from your RSS feed, apply your custom formatting and header, and generate a table of contents that will appear at the top of your newsletter.

Stikk has come up with a way to make sure there are consequences if you fail. Stikk is an online service that allows you to set up a “contract” with yourself, and back it up with money. You deposit $10, $20, $100, or whatever amount is worth working for, and if you achieve your goal, you get it back. If not, the money is donated to one of several charities Stikk has established partnerships with.

If putting your own money on the line isn’t enough to keep you motivated, Stikk has another card up their sleeve: the anti-charity. Select this option, and not only will you lose your money if you fail to reach your goal, but Stikk will donate it to a charity you hate. If you’re pro-life, it will go to a pro-choice charity; pro-choice writers can choose a pro-life one.

Stikk allows you to self-report whether you’ve failed or succeeded, working on the honor system. If you don’t quite trust yourself to be honest, you can designate a third-party “referee” to verify your success or failure. Pick someone you trust to be fair — if they say you’ve failed, you’ve failed, as far as Stikk is concerned.

You can set Stikk up to track a single big goal, but you can also set incremental goals — like, “write 5,000 words a week). I wouldn’t set goals that are more granular than that, since you do need to log in and report success or failure for each goal — or your referee does, if you choose to have one. Try to find a “sweet spot” that’s frequent enough to keep you working steadily but not so frequent that keeping your Stikk account up-to-date eats into your writing time.

But for the most part, I’ve tried to recommend free or, as much as possible, low-cost software and services — and when possible, open-source software. There are a number of reasons for this, which add up to something like a philosophy:

1. Writers, especially beginning writers, often can’t afford expensive software. There are programs out there that promise to help you write better, faster, and clearer copy — for a price. And it’s usually a high price — some of these packages run over $200 US! If you’re just getting started, it might be months (or even longer) before you see any financial return, let alone enough to make back the cost of these programs. Why spend so much when there are plenty of free programs that do the job as well?
2. A lot of software for writers seems “scammy”. Writing isn’t easy; good writing even less so. I’m deeply suspicious of software that promises to make writing a novel or screenplay easier. Organizing notes, handling formatting, etc — these are things I expect software to do well, not make writing easy.
3. Open source software is free in more than just cost. There’s a saying in the open source/free software world: “Free as in speech”. Writers above all people have a responsibility to support efforts to protect freedom of speech (and the most to gain from those efforts), including the freedoms that are embodied in open source software — to look at and modify the code. Even if you can’t modify your software, there are programmers who can, and open source software gives them the freedom to do so. (Actually, I’d like to find more open source software specifically for writers, so if you know of anything, drop me a line.)
4. Free tools are often as good or even better than their paid alternatives. If there’s a paid program that’s really the best for its purpose, I’ll recommend it. But where free programs do the job as well, I see the cost of the paid alternative as unwarranted.
5. I can’t afford it. I’ve written largely about products I use, or would use, and cost is a factor in whether I decide to use something. I can’t afford a hundred or more dollars to evaluate a program — and even less to evaluate all the programs available for writers.
6. I don’t do the kinds of writing a program supports. For example, since I’m not a screenwriter, it’s hard for me to be fair in evaluating a program intended for screenwriters. When hundreds of dollars are on the line, it’s even harder.

There are programs that are worth the money, and I cover them when I can. There are also programs that are industry standards, like FinalDraft A/V for screenwriting. My feeling is that if you’re at the stage in your career where you need to use FinalDraft, you’re probably pretty comfortable with the technical aspects of the software — and you can probably afford (and probably need) the support material (books, classes, etc.) you need to use the software. A blog post probably isn’t going to cut it for you.

All that said, if there’s paid software that people really need to know about, let me know. Most paid software offers evaluations, and the 30 days or so they let you us the software for free is enough time to figure out most of the basics. I can also try to get a review copy from companies that don’t offer demos, though that’s a hit-or-miss prospect.

Finally, I’d be happy to post your reviews, if you want. If there’s a piece of software that you’d like to see get some attention, write a short review and I’ll consider posting it to the site (and I’ll give you credit). The ultimate goal is to help writers find out about technology that can help them, so if there’s something I’m missing that would help you or your fellow writers, I’m more than willing to figure out how to add that to the site.

Words Count is an online readability analyzer, offering you more information about your prose than you could possibly imagine. Cut and paste in any sample of text (up to 20 pages) and Words Count will give you back the percentage of your writing that is verbs, prepositions, and other parts of speech, the relative occurrence of personal and impersonal pronouns, a breakdown of word usage by frequency, an assortment of different readability indexes such as the Fleisch Readability Index, and lots more information. If you’re using Word 2003 or 2007 or Google Docs, you’re already getting some of this information, but Words Count takes it to the limit, offering about every known way of looking at whether your text works, and for whom. My only complaint is that it doesn’t offer much in the way of explanation for many of the readability indexes; I guess that’s why we have Wikipedia…

Worth a check-out.

Here’s how it works — you start reading a story, choosing options to move the story forward, and working your way though other people’s contributions until you reach a part that hasn’t been written or hasn’t been provided with options to move the story forward, what they call a “fragment”. Then, you start writing. Your segment will become one branch of the story’s structure, and others can rate it. Once it’s written, you only have 60 minutes to make changes before it’s locked for good (so that others aren’t caught out using elements in their new branches that you’ve deleted from the branch they’re building on).

Protagonize seems to have built up a fun, active community of writers — there are hundreds of stories and authors working on them. While it probably isn’t the place to write your next best-seller, if you’re looking for a fun way to connect with other authors, Protagonize might be just the thing.

Protagonize (Free)

I’ll use a word processor — usually Buzzword — for shorter (<1500 words) pieces, but for longer, more complex pieces, I prefer to use an outliner. And not just any outliner -- in my estimation, nothing beats the all-but-defunct outliner KeyNote from Tranglos software.

Why “all-but-defunct”? The developer dropped the project some three years ago, now, declaring “hobby programmer bankruptcy”, a final admission after years of inactivity that he never was going to get back to work on the program.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to — KeyNote is as feature-rich as it ever needs to be. Unlike most outliners, KeyNote allows you to edit in Rich Text Format, (which means you can do things like bold or italicize text, insert bulleted lists, indent paragraphs, and so on). There is also a full “ecosystem” of templates, styles, and plugins to add functions — for instance, you can use it as a full-fledged Personal Information Manager.

But I just use it for writing. I create an outline in the “tree view” — a “trunk, branch, and leaf” where subtopics are added to main topics. Each entry in the tree view can have a page of text attached to it. So, once I’ve finished the outline in the tree view pane, I shift to the text editing pane and move through my outline, adding notes, blocks of text, quotes, and other material as I go. Then I go back and do it again, writing transition sentences and patching up the text. Usually after two passes, I’m done — in longer pieces, it might be three or four.

The finished piece can be saved as an rtf file (which can be opened in any word processor with formatting intact), as a webpage, or in the native format to re-open in KeyNote later.

KeyNote will run on any version of Windows, although the page hasn’t been updated since Vista was released. It might have a few quirks on different versions, but nothing that would render it unusable. KeyNote is open source software, so it’s conceivable that someone will pick it up and update it at some point — so far, though, nobody has. And really, it’s not necessary — KeyNote just keeps on doing its thing, better than anything newer that’s come along.

KeyNote (Free)

Better yet, PlotBot allows you and any number of collaborators to log in and work on the same screenplay at the same time. You can set your script to “Private”, allowing in only the people you’ve invited, or “Public”, letting you set up open projects that anyone can contribute to. You can even do a “Showdown”, letting people write their own screenplays to a prompt you provide, useful for competitions or just plain fun.

Creating a new project is easy. Once you’re logged in, click “New Project” and you’ll be asked to name your project and write a description. The next page allows you to assign a copyright, offering your choice of “All rights reserved” or any Creative Commons license.

PlotBot offers lots of great options to you can add to your project — you can add a project blog, write style guidelines, and add reference documents and character descriptions. The interface basically walks you through the process of writing — first you create an outline, the you add scenes, and then you flesh out each scene. There’s also a section for notes.

In the screenwriting section proper, you are given options to write sluglines, actions, or dialogue. Each presents you with a text entry field that offers only what you need for that kind of line — for example, the dialogue lines have a field for the name of the speaker and a box for their line. Sluglines offer a drop-box to select either “INT” or EXT”. As you add different types of text, it’s automatically formatted for you.

To edit text, you just click on it and it immediately becomes live, with whatever options are available for that kind of line. Every line is stamped with its author and the time of the last edit, and you can attach comments to each separate line. It’s all very slick and fun to use.

Finished screenplays or drafts can be printed directly from the browser, downloaded as a Rich Text File (that can be opened in any word processor without losing its formatting), or downloaded in XML, which the programmers admit is useless at the moment — but since it’s a standard, it’s assumed that future applications will be able to use it somehow.

All in all, PlotBot is a very well-conceived and well-executed application. It may not be as flexible as your desktop version of Final Draft (or even your free version of Rough Draft), but it’s fun, available everywhere, and offers collaboration features that even Final Draft can’t boast. And, as a final note, you can set the interface to any of over a dozen languages (though some translations are more complete than others) — including Pirate! Arrr, that be good!

PlotBot</> (Free)