Clay's Site

Characterization: Put people in their place

Clay Moore — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:57:08 +0000

In our study of characterization we have looked at your character’s clothing. Now I want to put those character in their place. After the break a discussion of place and how it helps describe out character’s person. There is something that is just as important to help up draw out character’s personality, and that is [...]

Working with tables in Scrivener

Clay Moore — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:37:21 +0000

The Scrivener writing tool is more than an editor. It is a place to store backstory, character sketches, and other story information. I find articles on the internet related to whatever the project is about and put them in the research portion of my Scrivener file or folder. More about tables in Scrivener after the [...]

How to put DRM-free Books on your Kindle fire

Clay Moore — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:50:25 +0000

If you’ve been buying ebooks for a while chances are that you’ve bought some books without DRM(digital rights management.) As a book publisher OReilly has been on the cutting edge of offering their ebooks without DRM. The problem with buying your books this way is that it is not obvious how to get these books [...]

Using Windows Live Writer for Posting to your Blog

Clay Moore — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:12:00 +0000

In a move designed to cater to all of my readers I am covering the Windows side of things as well as the Mac side. Posting to a blog is something I do on a regular basis and I usually use an offline editor for making my posts. On the Mac side the best offline [...]

You can Judge a book by its cover

Clay Moore — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:47:12 +0000

As you can tell by the title of this post I will be showing you how to use clothing and adornment to reveal much about your character. Let’s look at the use of some of these techniques, and then I will have some homework for you to do. Clothing Think of someone Kingly. What came [...]

Roku 2 XS vs. Apple TV part II

Clay Moore — Tue, 01 May 2012 12:14:08 +0000

Yesterday we looked at the Roku 2 XS. Today we look at the Apple TV. Apple TV Apple maintains that the Apple TV is a hobby for them. For a Hobby it sells pretty well. Currently Apple TV is in its third iteration. I have the second iteration version. I have Apple TV for one [...]

Roku 2 XS vs. Apple TV

Clay Moore — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:39:38 +0000

For the last Year I have been without Cable TV. This is not because I could not afford it. It is by choice. I got a little tired of watching TV on the channels schedule. I know I could shift the programs time with TIVO, but that is a limited resource. Programming the thing was [...]

Two new Cloud Storage Systems: Google Drive and Microsoft’s Skydrive

Clay Moore — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:46:06 +0000

I’ve used Dropbox consistently for over two years now. For the last year I have had a 50 GB account for which I pay about $99. That is about $2 per GB I use. That was nice, and I loved the idea of having my files stored elsewhere, sort of a backup on the fly. [...]

Characterization: Bringing People to Life

Clay Moore — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:51:13 +0000

Our art is different from other art. Our art is highly collaborative. We depend on our readers to come with a set of abilities that no other art demands. We demand that our readers be able to read. They should have a common set of cultural ideals. They need to be able to understand us. [...]

How to filter records in a Bento Library

Clay Moore — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:46:09 +0000

Bento is an interesting database for the Macintosh. This is provided by the Filemaker people, which is an apple company. It is a single table database. I find that I am using it a lot for dealing with a lot of information I collect through my notes. The problem that I encountered was that I [...]

How to Build a Blog Ideas library in Bento 4

Clay Moore — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:35:00 +0000

When I take notes i use a note book, but there is a problem in keeping notes in a notebook. I sometimes loose my notes in a notebook. So I developed a workflow where I move my notes into an electronic format on a daily basis. Benot for mac has solved a few of these [...]

Be an Observer of Life

Clay Moore — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:20:56 +0000

In a previous post we talked about getting experience with the world, this is a time honored way to get the experience we need for verisimilitude. Often that is impossible to do. We cannot get the experience we need in just one lifetime to represent the characters in our stories. Then how do we get [...]

Selecting the cover page in Scrivener

Clay Moore — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:33:15 +0000

My next project is going to go out as an e-book rather than publishing it as a physical book. So, my tools needed to be able to produce the book as an e-book. That is why I was so happy when Pages got an e-book publishing upgrade. Then Scrivener got the same things, except they [...]

Fear of the number 13

Clay Moore — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:11:28 +0000

This is being posted on my site on Friday the 13th, a bad luck day. Fear of the number 13 is called Triskaidekaphobia. I think this is because, at least in the west, the Templars were arrested on friday the 13th 1307. The specific fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia. Just thought I’d share. Have [...]

Schedule your writing

Clay Moore — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:07:40 +0000

One of the tough things about being a writer is either finding the time, or actually doing the work. I have so many interests that it can be hard sometimes to get the work done. I’ve found a trick that helps me and I’ll share it with you after the break. I find that I [...]

How to use Networked Blogs to post from your blog to Facebook

Clay Moore — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:31:41 +0000

One of the ways that bloggers can let more people know about their blog posts is to cross post them into Facebook. I consider this as one more way to syndicate your posts. You can do this by hand, but why do that when there are some automation systems out there. Networked blogs is one [...]

How to convert videos using Handbrake

Clay Moore — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:03:16 +0000

If you used Quicktime to make screen recordings as explained yesterday, you realize quite quickly that it does not make the most compact file size. There is something that is a veritable swiss army knife of video conversion. That tool is Handbrake. It not just for ripping DVDs anymore. More on this after the break [...]

How to record your screen on a Mac

Clay Moore — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:13:00 +0000

As an Instructor I provide a service where the student does not leave the learning environment for an extended period of time. They can ask questions about the subject material as presented in the class for a period of time after the class. Sometimes I need to do a demo over again for the student. [...]

Verisimilitude: The Appearance of Reality

Clay Moore — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:45:12 +0000

Most new writer’s are given this piece of advice from countless people, most of them non-writers, “Write what you know about.” For most writer’s in the genre of speculative fiction this is an impossibility. How do you know what it feels like to go faster than light? I have some ideas on this after the [...]

Which Office Suite do I like?

Clay Moore — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:30:31 +0000

I got asked this in a class recently, and I thought I would answer it here. I decided that I would look at just three of the major office suites out there, MS Office, LibreOffice, and iWork. I am going to grade them according to usefulness, cross platform ability, and price. Then I will tell [...]