<span class="vcard">Written Well</span>
Written Well

Storyist

Storyist does everything for an aspiring novelist or screenwriter, and unlike many other one-size-fits-all solutions, it does them all pretty well. Unfortunately, it’s only for Mac users, but if that’s you, it’s worth checking out the free trial to see if Storyist feels like a good fit.  The software includes an iOS version for iPads and iPhones so you can access your files and work on them from anywhere. And when we say that Storyist does everything, we mean everything. Here are just a few of the high points. Full Featured and flexible text editor Outlining software Plot planner with...

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Dynalist.io

Dynalist is free outlining software that lives in the cloud so you can log in from any device to see your outlines and work on them. We love the simplicity and ease of us, coupled with the ability to handle complicated outlines.  Spending a few minutes with the tutorial in Dynalist will teach you how to create simple outlines very quickly, with child and parent items indented appropriately and displayed based on your preferences. You can create as many unique outlines as you like, and customize them in all kinds of ways with checklists, colors, images, and H1, H2, and...

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Horror Guide

No matter the subgenre, all horror shares an overarching theme: fear. Whether it’s splatterpunk, serial killer, supernatural, or anything else, every book in this genre is a spine-tingler. You can never go wrong in ramping up the fear factor, and the good guys don’t always have to win. And where there’s not fear, there’s tension. Every horror reader wants tension. They want to be concerned for the safety — and often sanity — of the characters. You need to make those characters relatable and then put them on a path to destruction. Like every thriller has a ticking clock, every...

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Grimdark Guide

Grimdark is the unwanted bastard of high fantasy. The battles are graphic and gory, the politics dirty, the protagonists venal, corrupt, selfish, and flawed—and those are the good guys! But there's something refreshing about everyone in the book acting like humans in all their cheating, lying, duplicitous glory.

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Portal Fantasy Guide

A portal fantasy is when your main character is transported to a new, magical world. The transport being magical is less important than the world they land in being magical. I would consider Outlander a historical romance, though the protagonist is transported to the past by magic. But there is nothing magic where she lands.

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Epic/High Fantasy Guide

Epic fantasy is what most people think of when they mention the fantasy genre. It is the big book, sweeping epic, secondary world fantasy that started (mostly) with Tolkien and his many imitators and continues on today with immensely successful writers like GRR Martin, Robin Hobb, and the independently published Brandon Sanderson.

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Fantasy Guide

Fantasy is one of the “What if…?” genres that characterize speculative fiction. But in fantasy, the answer to that question is always going to be magic, eldritch, otherworldly—but to varying degrees, depending on the subgenre. The subgenres of fantasy are wildly divergent. Pay close attention to the differences, because some are so far from each other, it seems strange to put them in the same overarching genre. A modern urban fantasy book bears almost no resemblance to an epic fantasy. And this is in all particulars, not just the text of the book itself. Cover, blurb, tropes, tense, point of...

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