Three Ways Authors Can Get the Most Out of their Computers • Jonathan Emmett

I don't think I'd have made it as a professional author without a computer's help

A question children often ask me on school visits is “do you write with pen and paper or on a computer?”. I know there are some authors who swear by pen and paper, particularly for the first draft, and say that a computer would get between them and the story. For me it’s the other way around. I’m slightly dyslexic and doubt that I’d be able to make a living as a writer without a computer helping me to set down, shape and polish my stories.

I’ve just gone without my computer for a week, while a faulty hard-drive was replaced. This absence reminded me how much I’ve come to depend on my computer and prompted me to write this post.

Here are three ways authors can get the most out of their computers. My own computer is an Apple Mac, and I’ve included some detailed instructions for other Mac users, but these tips also apply to Windows PCs.


First and foremost …

1: Learn to touch-type

If you’re still pecking away at your keyboard with two fingers, you’re getting your ideas down on the page at a fraction of the rate you could be. Having been born in the dark ages, before computers were in every home, I taught myself to touch type on a mechanical typewriter using a Pitman typing book. These days, you can learn far more easily using typing-tutor software (you can find some recent reviews of some here. It’s never too late to learn. Touch-typing is an invaluable skill for anyone that uses a keyboard and I’ve never understood why it’s not routinely taught at an early age in UK schools.

Use ten not two! Touch typing is an invaluable skill for any author and it's never too late too learn.

2: Have your computer read aloud to you

It’s good practice for any writer to read their work aloud, but it’s essential for picture book authors as picture books are often read aloud to children by adults. Although I still read text aloud, I use my computer to do this most of the time. I'm not sure if this is linked to my dyslexia, but when I read something I've written aloud, my brain often glosses over errors and I read what I'd meant to type instead of what I've actually typed. However when I listen to the computer reading the same passage, the errors are immediately conspicuous.

Having your computer read aloud is particularly useful when writing rhyming texts. Reading aloud is the only way to check that a rhyming text scans well, but if you’ve written the text yourself, you will have preconceptions as to the rhythm of a line and which words need emphasis. Someone reading the text for the first time won't share these preconceptions so you want to make sure that a rhyming text will still read well without them. One way around this is to ask someone else to read your text back to you, but their patience may begin to wear thin if you keep asking them to re-read the same lines, with minor variations, again and again. And after a few readings they'll begin to develop preconceptions of their own. A computer has infinite patience and is incapable of forming such preconceptions. It will give consistently impartial readings with even rhythm and emphasis, putting in appropriate pauses for commas and other punctuation. Standard computer speech used to be very flat and American sounding, but has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years. Macs now come with a range of English Language voices pre-installed with yet more available as free downloads (go to System Preferences>Accessibility>Speech, click on "System Voice" and click on “customise” in the pull down menu to find them). You can find further instructions on how to use a Mac’s Text to Speech function here.

Macs can speak English in a variety of voices and accents, including Australian, Indian, Irish, Scottish and South African.

It’s worth taking the time to choose a voice you like and to adjust the speed. My favourite is “Serena”, who speaks with an English accent. You can use the player below to hear what she sounds like reading the opening lines of The Silver Serpent Cup. The software makes the occasional mistake, (its pronunciation of 'noisy' in the passage below is slightly out) and it can slip up with homonyms. However it can cope surprisingly well with made-up words and generally does a remarkably good job.

Today the town of Furryville’s a very noisy place,
Crammed with crowds of creatures getting ready for a race.
The air is filled with honking horns and engines revving up,
As racers take their places for THE SILVER SERPENT CUP.

3. Use software that suits the way you work

Most of the publishers I work with expect manuscripts to be sent to them as Microsoft Word files and when I first became a writer, I used to write directly into Word. However as the years have gone by, Word has become increasingly unwieldy to use, with half of its functions hidden away in a bewildering array of sub menus. There are now lots of cheaper applications available, some of which are far better suited to writing a book. About 9 years ago I started using Scrivener, an application designed specifically for authors. It provides a far cleaner, simpler interface than Word and allows authors to access and organise the myriad files, documents and web pages relating to their project through a single window instead of cluttering up the screen with half a dozen windows from various applications. And once you’ve finished a project, you can export it as a MS Word file to send to your publisher.

The Silver Serpent Cup in Scrivener. Scrivener allows you to open multiple text documents, pdfs, web pages and
images within a single application window. One of Ed Eaves' concept sketches is shown on the right.

I hope the tips above have proved useful. If you have any other computer tips for writers (perhaps you can tell Windows users how to get their computer reading aloud), please post them in the comments box below.



UPDATE 26 Sept 17 : Text to Speech Instructions and image for Tip 2 updated for Mac OS Sierra 

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Jonathan Emmett's latest computer-assisted picture book is Fast and Furry Racers: The Silver Serpent Cup illustrated by Ed Eaves and published by Oxford University Press.

Find out more about Jonathan and his books at his Scribble Street web site or his blog. You can also follow Jonathan on facebook and twitter @scribblestreet.

See all of Jonathan's posts for Picture Book Den.

My Illustration Style – A Brief History – only not so brief, sorry. . . by Jonathan Allen

As an illustrator amongst a gaggle of writers I guess I'd better post something about illustration. So here goes.

I'll write about influences, subject matter and how I came to be doing what I do another time, OK? If you don't know my work, (gasp! is such a condition even possible!?) I draw appealing, funny animals in a simple 'cartoony' (for use of a better word) style.

Today I'm going to talk about my drawing process and how it came about.

This is a rather ropey but fun little video I put together of my current process in action. Dig the music ;-) Sorry it ends rather abruptly, this vid making lark is a bit of a learning curve.

Some history - I started off drawing simple outlines of said funny animals and background trees, windows etc, truncated by the edge of the frame. Colouring the resulting shapes with flat poster paints in bright colours straight out of the pots. It looked quite nice, in a bold, abstract, graphic sort of way, and I got a commission to do a couple of cards for Gallery Five in this style while I was still at college, which was encouraging.

This kind of thing, though these were done a few years later

But this flatness became very limiting, so by a process of good old trial and error, the flat colour evolved into a more subtle watercolour/gouache wash in naturalistic colours over/under the same simple outlines.

This was pretty good, but not quite right, so by dint of further trial, error and evaluation, the addition of cross hatching with a finer pen - to help define form and texture, was settled on. This worked well and after a touch more refining, became my 'style'. Phew. . .

This was one of my first illustration jobs, for Gallery 5

My procedure was this, I started off with a pencil rough, which I either copied or traced onto artboard. I added wash to that, then, when it was dry, I drew a pen outline using the ubiquitous Rotring pen. I then added the cross hatching using a thin version of said rotring pen. This was Ok but the pen would clog frequently, as anyone who used rotrings and their ilk would affirm. Still, it worked and was successful so this was my preferred method for years.

From my first picture book, 'Guthrie Comes Clean', 

published by J.M Dent, way back. . 

Until the mid nineties. . . drum roll. . . swiss roll. . . iced bun. . .

It was then that I became attracted to the idea of using a computer to make my artwork on, as this had just become possible at a more or less consumer level. I didn't want to use it to make computery looking fancy stuff, (that was SO naff, even then) but to draw and paint directly into the computer in my usual style, using a graphics tablet and a bit of software called Painter, which imitated 'natural media' such as water colour, digitally. It sounded interesting, and, well, I just liked the idea for some reason.

So I took the plunge and bought a Mac (a 7100 I think it was called. I still have it in the attic. No idea why. . . ) a Wacom tablet and some software, and thus equipped, set to work learning how to use it all. It was fun actually. I like working things out. Usually. My work is essentially coloured-in drawings as opposed to painterly creations utilising the characteristics of the medium, so the computer could get pretty close to my fairly unexpressive line and wash style.

From 'Fowl Play' one of the first books I did on computer for Orion

The advantages were that unlike 'real' artwork, everything was editable. I could change the size of things, tweak the colours and thickness of line, etc., which was great, especially when working out page layouts, etc. Also, artwork didn't need to be scanned, which was nice for me because it always annoyed me that a scanner would show pencil lines that as far as I was concerned had been erased as they were invisible to the naked eye. Publishers always defended this by saying that the scanners were so 'good' that they picked up everything. A strange definition of the word 'good' I always thought. So good they can pick up things you can't even see! . .. fah!

The disadvantage was that nobody in the publishing industry knew what the heck they were getting or what to do with it. I wasn't exactly an expert either. The main point of contention and concern was that as the artwork only existed on screen, the colours varied according to what screen it was being viewed on. Calibration was important. Everyone had to be confident that they were seeing the same colours as each other as there was no actual bit of artwork to compare the printers proofs to.

I wasn't ever so popular ;-) But we got there in the end. The publishers and printers knew that the repro industry was well on it's way to being digitally led and that they had to adapt.

Baby Owl, conceived and created on computer

I've worked on computer ever since. A lot of artists now scan their work in and modify it in Photoshop. And a lot of artists use Adobe Illustrator, which lets them produce resolution independent images, funnily enough using flat colours and simple outlines like my ancient poster paint images did. It's just normal now but I remember those pioneering days. . . One day I shall sit my grandchildren round the fire and tell them tales of the days when men were men and a megabyte was something significant. And they will fall asleep in seconds flat. . .