Start Here

The Plan

Or… What’s going on here?

What’s going on is: I have a bookshelf… or three four five plus a growing number of overflow stacks… full of writing books.  Many of them I’ve read.  Most of them I have not.  

It’s time to read them.

But we’re not doing a book-by-book review-type-of-thing here.

I’ve gone through the table of contents and indexes (or indices, if you prefer) of all these books and come up with twelve monthly themes and four or five tools under each theme, one of which we’ll tackle each week.

(Or, at least, that’s how we started.  We now post more or less three times a month, Monday . . . Wednesday . . . and Friday, with approximately ten days lapsing between every post . . . unless I’m between posting spurts, giving all I’ve got to finishing a project, in which case such lapses have lasted years but hopefully only last a few months.)

On Mondays, we’ll see what the master craftsmen have to say about the week’s tool.

On Wednesdays, we’ll look at how the master storytellers make use of said tool.

And on Fridays, we’ll (*Gulp*) share how we’ve applied the tool to our own writing.  It’ll be great.

So… Welcome!  I hope we can learn a lot from each other.

Things to Know

POSTS
I consider this site a living document. To me, this means WWT does not repost old posts.  If I learn something new about a tool, I usually just update the old post. So if you want to learn about a tool, look for it on the tool page. From there, you’ll find all the information I have on that tool and any links to one-off content (such as comment questions whose answers ran long). If you want to know when tools get updated, be sure to subscribe to the newsletter.

SERVICES
The logline posts (here, here and here) are the second-most popular posts on the site (designing principle being first). Someone recently hired me to review their logline with the kind of analysis used in those posts, and it turned out to be a great experience. So, if you think your logline might benefit from this kind of analysis and would like to hire me to review it (or to review something else! I’m still figuring out how I can best help), email me at writeswithtools @ gmail dot com.

FOLLOW
To follow the blog and receive notices by email when new tools post, enter your email address over there –>, on the right sidebar, where it says enter email address, and hit subscribe.

NEWSLETTER
To join the quarterly-ish (that’s still vastly overstating it) newsletter and receive updates and free worksheets and whatnot–including our 19-page Character Development Workbook—click here.

KO-FI
All WWT content is free, but if you find some of it so helpful it inspires your generosity, you can support WWT here: https://ko-fi.com/writeswithtools.

AFFILIATE LINK DISCLOSURE
Something like ninety-nine percent of the external links on this site are Affiliate Links (Amazon), which means I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you.  In other words, if you’re thinking of buying copies of craft books for your home library anyway, buying said copies through the links on, say, this page is a no-brainer way to help support this site. And I appreciate it. Thanks!