#GOOGLE DOCS

[mikkeneko]

PSA for Google Docs writers

[Edit] Also for Firefox, as per @essayofthoughts in the notes: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/delete-g-docs-type-to-insert/

If you (like me) use Google Doc to write fanfic, you may (like me) have been annoyed by the new "feature" they added in the past few weeks, "Smart Chips," where by default every time you open a new line it auto-inserts a "@" symbol and then prompts to add additional people into the doc for review or whatever other useless thing I immediately closed out of.

There doesn't appear to be a way to turn off this "feature" in GDocs however someone has put out an extension that nixes it:

[sequencefairy]

Source @ X

ID: tweets from @boulevarddouble:

okay SO. Just FYI i have an insider contact and i asked him about this new google drive nsfw scare.

backing up is never a bad idea.

99% of people will be unaffected, and this is NOT a crackdown on having nsfw content on gdrive

"What I think has happened is that drive has made several updates to its spam/abuse filtering and one of the focuses is trying to catch spammers who share explicit things in docs with random emails. Which is good in theory, but has the potential to hit false positives."

his recommendation is to keep NSFW words out of your doc titles and instead of sharing the "open link", share directly with you beta's email addresses.

It is also more likely to flag up explicit images, though that is less likely to be a fic problem.

/end ID

[eldritch-elrics]

obsessed with the new google docs feature that ai generates a doc summary for you. what the fuck is this

(context is i am writing a paper on gamer culture)

[the960writers]

Alternatives to google docs

For various reasons, this is now a hot topic. I'm putting my favorites here, please add more in your reblogs. I'm not pointing to Microsoft Word because I hate it.

Local on your computer:

1.

LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/), Win, Linux, Mac.

Looks like early 2000 Word, works great, imports and exports all formats. Saves in OpenDocumentFormat. Combine with something like Dropbox for Cloud Backup.

2.

FocusWriter (https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/) Win, Linux.

Super customizable to make it look pretty, all toolbars hide to be as non-distracting as possible. Can make typewriter sounds as you type, and you can set daily wordcount goals. Saves in OpenDocumentFormat. Combine with something like Dropbox for Cloud Backup.

3.

Scrivener (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview) Win, Mac, iOS

The lovechild of so many writers. Too many things to fiddle with for me, but I'm sure someone else can sing its praises. You can put the database folder into a Dropbox folder for cloud saving (but make sure to always close the program before shutting down).

Web-based:

4.

Reedsy bookeditor (https://reedsy.com/write-a-book) Browser based, works on Firefox on Android. Be aware that they also have a TOS that forbids pornography on publicly shared documents.

My current writing program. Just enough features to be helpful, not so many that I start fiddling. Writing is chapter based, exports to docx, epub, pdf. You can share chapters (for beta reading) with other people registered at Reedsy.

5.

Novelpad (https://novelpad.co/) Browser based.

Looks very promising, there's a youtuber with really informative videos about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHN8TnwjG1g). I wanted to love it, but the editor didn't work on Firefox on my phone. It might now, but I'm reluctant to switch again.

------

So, this is my list. Please add more suggestions in reblogs.

[amalgamasreal]

SOURCE

Bit of a long video but worth a watch.

TL;DW though is that hidden in the Terms and Conditions for Google's AI Labs is a nice little poison pill that says they get access to your entire Google Drive if you opt in.

So if you're an author of some type and you keep your unpublished works in your G-Drive that means an AI will get to scrape all of it and by opting in you will have given them permission to it. The content creator goes on to predict that Google is going to let out their own streaming service where the scripts, and potentially the art if it's animated, will be almost or entirely AI generated using that scraped data as a baseline and the authors/artist's who's work was essentially stolen in its most raw form to crib from will have zero way of fighting Google on that in our current legal system.

This is of course right in the middle of the writers and actors strike where we're seeing just what lengths studios will go to in order to screw everyone but themselves.

They go on to recommend that if you keep any creative or personal works on Google Drive that you pull it off as soon as possible and delete your entire Drive. They acknowledge that of course this doesn't mean Google really deleted the data but if you do it before they start compulsory opting everyone in there's a chance your work might get overlooked. They also recommend several free editing programs that aren't run by corporations like Google with LibreOffice (the default office program of most Linux distros) being named.

Finally they go over methods of shaming Google which I feel like you just have to watch for comedies sake so I won't describe them in full.

Now this is from me: I know the majority of people don't have the ability to build and manage a big archive just for themselves, but if you're a creative NOW IS THE TIME to educate yourself on what you can do to protect your works. Cloud storage was always iffy at best, but with AI scraping entering the mix it's now downright malignant. Get a bunch of thumb drives, buy some external hard drives, if you have the money buy a pre-built NAS, and if you really want to get into learn how to build your own NAS. These are the old ways before cloud and they're coming back again, more important than ever.

[saintofmisery]

012 :: DILIGENCE

april was tortured poets department month so this is a month or two overdue. but i was inspired to create a doc perfect for writer characters! ink spills and coffee stains, isn't it a little reminiscent of colder months even if it's nearing summer? it's cozy, beige, and was utterly lovely to create.

how to use :

— go to file & select make a copy.

— don't remove or modify the credit.

— before using, turn off the ability to make a copy.

— likes and reblogs are greatly appreciated!

how to edit :

— edit however you want, but some elements will get moved if you go beyond the text amount.

— what you'll receive upon purchasing is a pdf file with the link and other detailed instructions on how to use. 

DOWNLOAD HERE.

[lennons-ghost]

GOOGLE DOCS TEMPLATE XVII - DRACARYS

. . . single-muse template

rules

i. please don't remove credit

instructions

i. click the link in the title

ii. select "file" in the toolbar, then "make a copy"

iii. edit images by right-clicking on them and selecting "replace image"

iv. feel free to edit as you please!

author's note: i'm officially back!! this is an old w.i.p. i finally finished, hope u guys enjoy!

[lilbeanz]

Something my phone does when I'm writing on it is autocorrect *him* to *Jim*

And I -

It makes me laugh every time istg💀

[physalian]

You don’t have to pay for that fancy worldbuilding program

As mentioned in this post about writing with executive dysfunction, if one of your reasons to keep procrastinating on starting your book is not being able to afford something like World Anvil or Campfire, I’m here to tell you those programs are a luxury, not a necessity: Enter Google Suite (not sponsored but gosh I wish).

MS Office offers more processing power and more fine-tuning, but Office is expensive and only autosaves to OneDrive, and I have a perfectly healthy grudge against OneDrive for failing to sync and losing 19k words of a WIP that I never got back.

Google’s sync has never failed me, and the Google apps (at least for iPhone) aren’t nearly as buggy and clunky as Microsoft’s. So today I’m outlining the system I used for my upcoming fantasy novel with all the helpful pictures and diagrams. Maybe this won’t work for you, maybe you have something else, and that’s okay! I refuse to pay for what I can get legally for free and sometimes Google’s simplicity is to its benefit.

The biggest downside is that you have to manually input and update your data, but as someone who loves organizing and made all these willingly and for fun, I don’t mind.

So. Let’s start with Google Sheets.

The Character Cheat Sheet:

I organized it this way for several reasons:

I can easily see which characters belong to which factions and how many I have named and have to keep up with for each faction

All names are in alphabetical order so when I have to come up with a new name, I can look at my list and pick a letter or a string of sounds I haven’t used as often (and then ignore it and start 8 names with A).

The strikethrough feature lets me keep track of which characters I kill off (yes, I changed it, so this remains spoiler-free)

It’s an easy place to go instead of scrolling up and down an entire manuscript for names I’ve forgotten, with every named character, however minor their role, all in one spot

Also on this page are spare names I’ll see randomly in other media (commercials, movie end credits, etc) and can add easily from my phone before I forget

Also on this page are my summary, my elevator pitch, and important character beats I could otherwise easily mess up, it helps stay consistent

*I also have on here not pictured an age timeline for all my vampires so I keep track of who’s older than who and how well I’ve staggered their ages relative to important events, but it’s made in Photoshop and too much of a pain to censor and add here

On other tabs, I keep track of location names, deities, made-up vocabulary and definitions, and my chapter word count.

The Word Count Guide:

*3/30 Edit to update this chart to its full glory. Column 3 is a cumulative count. Most of what I write breaks 100k and it's fun watching the word count rise until it boils over.

This is the most frustrating to update manually, especially if you don’t have separate docs for each chapter, but it really helps me stay consistent with chapter lengths and the formula for calculating the average and rising totals is super basic.

Not that all your chapters have to be uniform, but if you care about that, this little chart is a fantastic visualizer.

If you have multiple narrators, and this book does, you can also keep track of how many POVs each narrator has, and how spread out they are. I didn’t do that for this book since it’s not an ensemble team and matters less, but I did for my sci-fi WIP, pictured below.

As I was writing that one, I had “scripted” the chapters before going back and writing out all the glorious narrative, and updated the symbols from “scripted” to “finished” accordingly.

I also have a pie chart that I had to make manually on a convoluted iPhone app to color coordinate specifically the way I wanted to easily tell who narrates the most out of the cast, and who needs more representation.

—

Google Docs

Can’t show you much here unfortunately but I’d like to take an aside to talk about my “scene bits” docs.

It’s what it says on the tin, an entire doc all labeled with different heading styles with blurbs for each scene I want to include at some point in the book so I can hop around easily. Whether they make it into the manuscript or not, all practice is good practice and I like to keep old ideas because they might be useful in unsuspecting ways later.

Separate from that, I keep most of my deleted scenes and scene chunks for, again, possible use later in a “deleted scenes” doc, all labeled accordingly.

When I designed my alien language for the sci-fi series, I created a Word doc dictionary and my own "translation" matrix, for easy look-up or word generation whenever I needed it (do y'all want a breakdown for creating foreign languages? It's so fun).

Normally, as with my sci-fi series, I have an entire doc filled with character sheets and important details, I just… didn’t do that for this book. But the point is—you can still make those for free on any word processing software, you don’t need fancy gadgets.

—

I hope this helps anyone struggling! It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Everything I made here, minus the aforementioned timeline and pie chart, was done with basic excel skills and the paint bucket tool. I imagine this can be applicable to games, comics, what have you, it knows no bounds!

Now you have one less excuse to sit down and start writing.

[cellohum]

03 / KISS OF DEATH

monochrome ﹒ gothic ﹒ single muse ﹒ character template

。 。 。 introducing kiss of death, a devilish seven paged template designed for character exploration. due to its monochromatic tones, it gives a gothic and dark vibe to it. with its use of tables and drawings, it is mainly tailored towards pc use.

⸻ [ features . ]

8.5" x 11" page size.

a seven paged doc that includes a title page, character overview & appearance, personality, magic, backstory, and connections.

⸻ [ policy . ]

you may change the layout, color palette, images, etc.

you may combine this with my other docs.

you must get consent to take inspiration.

you may not combine my docs with other creators' docs.

you may not remove credits or make them hard to find.

you may not use for mass or commercial use, including as a server template.

you may not sell or redistribute my docs.

( faceclaim is taeyeon from girl's generation )

[leeluvsu]

006: Love Letters !

introducing. . . , Love letters , a google doc character template inspired by the holiday: valentines day! The doc holds three landscape pages. It includes spots for the profile, persona, backstory and 4 spots for additional information.

( !!! ) make sure to credit me! in order to do that, keep my @ at the bottom of the first page!

HOW TO USE ! ◞ . . . most of the drawing are made up of drawings, to make it simple, use the replace image option. There is also one quote made up of a drawing, which the text can be easily replaced for pc users. ◞ . . . the doc would look good with any kind of pictures, though I will say the color theme shouldn't be changed as the png's wont be able to change colors. ◞ . . . If you have any questions, please ask! ◞ . . . I'm not sure of the models name, but here's where I got the photos. ◞ . . . download here

[stargazingdesign]

22 - GIENAH | Stargazing Design - DOWNLOAD HERE

Hi everyone! Got a little bit inspired by the sorceresses (and obviously by my wife a.k.a Yennefer of Vengerberg) while replaying The Witcher 3, so today I bring you Gienah, a witchcraft themed google docs template. This doc might be perfect for your witchcraft related muse, featuring an abilities section with a lot of room to write. Hope you enjoy it!

✦ How to Use After purchasing, you will receive a link to the live template. Just click on it, select “file” and then “make a copy”. You can and you should edit anything you like, but please: ✦ Don’t remove my credits and the link to my tumblr ✦ Don’t allow others to make a copy of your copy ✦ Don’t share the link that you received for this doc

The pictures are of Anya Chalotra in The Witcher series.

If you have any doubts or need help to edit, feel free to contact me, I’ll be happy to help!

Likes and reblogs are appreciated! 💖 Thank you so much for your support! ✨

[frownyalfred]

me cracking open a new google doc: i'm about to ruin so many people's days

[1e1e1e]

vii. valentine.

happy (extremely late) valentine's day!

this template is actually inspired by KPOP scrapbooking journals and graphic designs LOL but i thought it'd be cute for a sapphic couple doc! have fun with it!

editing and modifications are welcome once you purchase the template.

all elements are created by me. If you take inspiration from this document, please credit me as the source of your inspiration.

don't claim this as your own.

please like or reblog this post if you use my template! 

how to use

click underlined "valentine"

download the template via my ko-fi

follow the instructions left on the note attached

once you receive access to the template, go to file  →  make a copy

[unityrain24]

okay i feel like i've seen a poll like this but i don't remember the results so

i use google docs btw

[strixcattus]

Hey, Google Docs? I'm off by one letter. I'm off by one doubled letter. I get it, you're AI-fried right now, but you have to be able to recognize when a single letter, from a doubled letter, is missing from a word, right? You have to know the word 'millennium,' right?