Hey guys, what's up? Welcome back to the channel. Today I am going to be talking
about what I think is one of the most heavily underappreciated writing tools
and that is of course (I'm sure you read the title so you already know I don't
know why I'm building it up) that is Google Docs. So I started out writing
Aletheia in word but Red River I have been writing entirely in Google Docs and
I have been loving it. It's so much better than word on so many levels and
I'm not even gonna talk about Scrivener. The UI of Scrivener drives me crazy I
can't use it. So I wanted to talk about Google Docs and why it is that I love it
and why I think more writers should use it. So first things first one of the best
things about Google Docs is it's completely free. All you have to do is
start a Google account and you're in. Next perk Google Docs is available
anywhere you have a device and internet access. If you're someone who has multiple
computers or you like to do writing on your phone and then sometimes on your
laptop it's always there, all you need is internet access and it's just a couple
clicks and you have the exact manuscript and version that you'd been working on
on your other device. I use this all the time. And if you're someone who doesn't
always have internet access and you need a way to write without internet access
there are ways to access the docs offline. For in browser on your laptop
there is a Google extension you can download just do a quick google search
you'll find plenty of tutorials on how to do that and I think in terms of their
phone app it's actually natively included, and then when you have internet
connection again it just resyncs up to the cloud at that time. Next perk of
Google Docs is something that is so important for writers and that is it
exists in the cloud. One of the worst things that can happen to you as a
writer is losing your work and with Google Docs all of your work is saved in
the cloud and if you ever feel like you need extra backups it's just a click
away to just download it and throw a copy on your computer for extra backup.
I'm paranoid so I definitely do that every few weeks, but generally speaking
cloud storage is the safest forms of storage and anything
you create in Google Docs is in the cloud. But that isn't the only way you're
protected from lost work with Google Docs there's also a trash bin to help
with accidental deletion. If you accidentally delete a file it's not
technically gone forever because then you have the trash bin you
can go into and you can restore that file. And then on top of that you also
have one of the greatest features of Google Docs which I love so much and
that is just autosaving. It's constantly Auto saving. If you type a letter it's
saving that single letter change if you get blue screen your computer completely
dies when you're in the middle of typing you might lose a couple letters and
that's it. And as someone who has lost so much work because I don't save often
enough this is such a key feature for me. And the fact that if you type a sentence in
a Google dog on your desktop and you open the same doc on your phone and the
sentence is already there and saved and constantly the same document across any
device you use. And that leads us straight into the next thing that I love
about Google Docs. history and version control. Because Google Docs doesn't just
save every single new letter as you're typing it, they also save the history of
all of your changes. And they also give you the ability to name different
versions which allows you to directly compare different versions in the
history section of the Google Doc. This is especially helpful if you're making
major changes to your manuscript like maybe you decided you want to try out
third-person, you just name the version that you currently have then you go and
make the changes to make it third-person, you name that version, and you can directly
compare the two versions. And if you change your mind and you decide that you
actually did like first-person better you can go into the versioning system
and just restore to it. It's all still there. Now it's probably a good idea to
download your file before you create a new version just in case for some reason
the system doesn't work but I have never had any issues with it not working and
there have been a couple times that the history
feature has saved me. I've gone in and made changes and then completely changed
my mind I decided I didn't want the plot to go that direction and the changes
were months old but it didn't matter because they have the whole history
section so I just popped into the history section and just reverted back
to that original version from months ago. It's so helpful, especially in a creative
thing like writing where you're not necessarily going to be able to
replicate that same great sentence that you created before. But with Google Docs
that doesn't matter because the way you were originally did it is still there
accessible to you. The other nice thing about history is Google Docs tells you
the last time your document was edited and seeing that date at the top telling
you when you last worked on your manuscript can really help motivate you
to come back more often. The next huge perk of Google Docs is the add-ons.
There's a whole add-on section that you can access where you can find all sorts
of neat things that can completely change your writing process, for example,
there's an add-on that completely structures your document in screenplay
format. There's also add-ons for things like
thesaurus and dictionaries so you can search those types of things without
ever having to leave the Google Doc and without ever risking accidentally
falling into Twitter. And there's just so many options for add-ons everything from
writing goals to taking notes. So if you guys would like to see a video covering
some of the best add-ons for writers let me know in a comment down below. The next
perk of Google Docs... I currently have Red River structured where each chapter is
its own document but one of the really nice things if you're writing your
entire book in one document is the outline feature. Google Docs has a
feature that picks up on the formatting of headers so if every time you start a
chapter you create a chapter with a specific header that says the chapter
name or the chapter number Google Docs automatically picks up on that different
formatting and knows that's a type of header. So if you click on the outline
drop-down all of your chapters are gonna be right there automatically. You don't
have to link anything up it's all done for you. And then you'll just click on
that chapter and you're instantly at that section of the document. You can
also use this to your advantage for other things like say you're working on
a specific section in the middle of a chapter and there's an edit you want to
come back to make later but you're not ready to make it yet you can just put a
specifically formatted piece of text right in the middle of it that says come back
to edit or something along those lines and that will then show up in the
outline. So then when you're looking at the outline overview you have an easy
way to instantly get to all the places where you need to do edits and then when
you're done you just delete that formatted piece of text and it's gone
from the outline. The next thing about Google Docs which I absolutely love is
you can share links to the document. The first benefit of this you might remember
from the Trello outlining video if you haven't seen that video yet go watch it
I'll link it in the description down below. It's a pretty great video I think.
Another super helpful tool for writers. But anyways, if you're using an external
outlining software like that you can just go ahead and comment the links to
the files you're referencing. The second benefit of this is that if you have a
critique partner or later on you have beta readers or an alpha reader it's so
easy to share the document with them and you can change the level of access they
have. So you can set it so that they can only view it, you can set it so that they
can comment it and make suggestions on it, or you can even set it so they have
full edit access and can make changes. And that leads us straight into the next
thing and that is the suggestion feature. So you can send this link to your
critique partner or your alpha reader with it set for them to be able to
comment, this means that if they find something they want to bring up they can
just leave a comment on it but also this means that they can just make changes
directly to the document. If they find a typo they can go ahead and fix it but it
doesn't just change the document it puts it up as a suggestion so then you can go
through it later and you can either accept the edit or you can reject it. And
the comments aren't just for critique partners or alpha readers they're also
for you. Maybe you're reading through, you're doing an edit or you're just
full-on writing and you see something that you need to check back on later, for
example when I was writing recently I came to a point where I couldn't
remember which of Jason's two eyes has the bigger
blotch of brown so rather than needing to make a separate note somewhere I just
highlight that section and leave a comment. So this is a really great way to
mark things without even needing to put text into the document that could later
accidentally get left in. Also worth mentioning is that Google Docs does have
all of the standard features its competitor has such as spell checking
which they actually just literally a week ago updated their spell checker to
include more kind of overall grammar type corrections like on more of a
sentence level I think. I haven't experimented with it a lot because it's
literally just changed, but from what I've seen it's now catching more errors
than it was two weeks ago, which is great. Another great feature is my tasks. If you
look at this sidebar here right on the edge you have direct access to my
calendars, but also Keep where you can take notes, and my tasks. So you can use
my tasks so you can check off your progress as you go. This gives you just a
very visual way of seeing your progress and seeing what's left you can do that
for edits you need to make or chapters you're revising. And again you also have
access to calendars. I know some writers use calendars a lot for maybe tracking
the word count for that specific day. And then again you also have Keep. The nice
thing too about this Keep option is that's for note-taking but you can go
ahead and just highlight any piece of text in this doc go ahead and
right-click it and just scroll down to this keep option and that instantly
takes that piece of text you had highlighted and puts it in that note. So
if you want to write a note about a specific quote or specific piece of text
that's a very fast way to do it. And last but not least we have some features I
haven't explored and these I think would be most useful to writers who maybe have
a Patreon especially a larger Patreon kind of following or people who have a
very open sort of process or do a lot of kind of live writing sprints with other
people, that sort of thing. And that is that you can share a view only link with
your readers and they can watch you in real-time writing. I personally don't
think I could handle that because the anxiety of knowing someone's watching me
writing would make me not be able to write properly at all but I know some
writers are into that kind of thing. This also
has the additional feature of these readers who are watching being able to
actually chat with you. Again that's not something I personally can do because if
someone's trying to chat with me while I'm writing I get horribly distracted
but I know a lot of writers that do that so this incorporates that straight
directly into the Google Doc itself. And one extra little perk that kind of falls
into the same category is an extension called draft back. Again as I mentioned
before, Google Docs tracks every single change you made. So the extension draft
back takes your history and replays it at a kind of sped up pace so you get
this sort of kind of speed writing little video thing that you can share
with people. So this is especially good if you have Patreon maybe you just want
to share with your patrons how your last writing session went. So again these
aren't things I've tested out myself I'm just not the right kind of person
for these specific tools, but they are tools that I think could benefit a lot
of writers. And that was it for this video! Let me know in a comment down
below what application or software do you currently write in? If you found this
video at all helpful make sure to give it a thumbs up and a share and of course
subscribe and hit that bell. If you're interested in new adult dystopian
post-apocalyptic novels, Aletheia is still available in hardcover paperback and
ebook, you can find it on Amazon and all sorts of other places. Links in the
description down below. Thank you guys so much for watching, as always I will see
you in the next video!