Today, I want to focus on a different kind of product–something that, while sometimes referred to as a multimedia novel, is not.

The heart of the issue is this: A novel is designed to be READ.  When authors go beyond providing supplemental information in their multimedia elements and instead provide essential parts of the story so those multimedia elements must be accessed in order for users to get the whole story, that product is no longer a multimedia novel. It’s a hybrid.  In that realm, the text is not king and the creators must be as much producers/directors as writers. 

I see a lot of value in providing stories of this type and I think there’s a growing audience for it, but would-be content providers must remember always that such products, while having a value and audience all their own, will never meet the needs of users who want to experience a story through READING.

Instead, such hybrid products–somewhere between a novel and a podcast/video offering–will appeal to those who want to simultaneously and/or intermittently read, hear and watch a story unfold. It’s a completely different user experience and not one that all would-be visitors will want.

It’s important for content providers to keep in mind that even some potential customers who might appreciate the read-listen-watch experience as an ideal will not do so in the current world, where bandwidth restrictions remain an issue for a wide segment of web users. 

In making the decision about whether to create a read-listen-watch product, do so knowing that (1) not all potential customers for your story will want it in that format; and (2) not all potential customers who would like it in that format will be fortunate enough to have the bandwidth to be able to access it that way.

The best way to meet the needs of the widest potential customer base,  would-be readers as well as the reader/listener/watcher market, is to offer the story as both a multimedia novel (a textual story enhanced by supplemental multimedia elements) and a hybrid (a story that REQUIRES listening and/or watching in addition to reading).

I think it’d be great to be able to offer my visitors both.  I’m not there yet.  I’m still in the multimedia novelist realm, offering text with supplemental images, video and audio.  Sure, I could throw something up on the web as a hybrid, but I don’t want to right now.  Like most other writers, I lack the resources to do it well.  It’s a personal choice for me.  I’d rather not do it at all than waste the time and energy to do it badly.

Still, I can’t help but appreciate the efforts of those who are out there pushing the boundaries, putting their stories and reputations on the line to try to find out what works and what doesn’t, when it comes to the production of text-audio-video hybrids.

If you’d like to check out one content creator’s vision of what a hybrid product might look like, visit Unnatural States.  Nicola Furlong, its creator, calls it a Quillr ™, and she’s up-front in pointing out that bringing the story before the public took the efforts of quite a few people.

Feedback on Unnatural States and the Quillr concept has varied.  Some love it. Some hate it. 

Some who hate it express appreciation for the concept but point out issues related to this particular story and/or the execution in this particular product.  It’s clear from the comments of others, though, that they hate the concept.  I expect most of them always will.  For them, it’s a poor substitute for reading.

As I see it, there’s room for this new type of delivery method, the hybrid, which some users will love and others will never want. 

I hope to see growth in the offerings of both multimedia novels and hybrids.

I can’t see the hybrid significantly diminishing the market share for multimedia novels because, for the reasons outlined above, it’s a whole different thing. In fact, experiencing a story in one format might even make the user want to experience it in another, in the same way that people want to see movie versions of novels they’ve loved in print and want to read in print the novels that inspired movies they’ve loved. Multimedia novels and the hybrids are simply additional ways for people who love stories to experience them.  Date of availability and personal preference in terms of delivery method may drive the user when he or she makes the choice to first engage with a story but, if the story’s good enough, it may well be worth experiencing the novel/multimedia novel, the hybrid and the movie.

As these new storytelling vehicles evolve, it’s important for readers as well as content providers to refine their expectations.  It’s not just that a read-listen-watch experience isn’t your mother’s kind of novel.  The real point is, it’s not a novel at all. Still, if it’s just what you’re looking for, it can be a pretty cool experience.

I applaud all the creative authors experimenting with the publication of multimedia novels.

At the same time, I think it’s essential for web authors to carefully consider the elements they’re including in their online novels and excerpts. Otherwise, hoped-for masterpieces can become disasters. All those bells and whistles can get in the way of the story you’re trying to tell–and turn off your readers.

The purpose of this post is to share some things I think all would-be web novelists should know. Some, I’ve learned through (sometimes painful) trial and error, while others are included because they’re things that turned me off from the web projects of other authors.

Only you can determine the right balance of text and multimedia for your own story but I do want to share this hard-won bit of advice:

When in doubt, leave it out.

If you are not 100-percent certain that a potential element needs to be included within your web novel or excerpt, don’t put it there.  That doesn’t mean you can’t share it with your readers.  If you really want to share it, put it in an ‘Extras’ section so readers can check it out there.  Just don’t let it interfere with the story itself.

Here’s the list.  It’s by no means exhaustive, but I offer it up as a starting-point.

1. Follow good web design principles.

There are tons of books and websites out there on this topic.  Web Style Guide is a great place to learn a lot. If you want some examples of what not to do, take a look at Web Pages That Suck.

Here are a few points that are especially important for web novel authors:

• Make sure your text size is readable;
• Avoid fancy fonts; 
• Make sure there’s sufficient contrast between the background and the text to make for easy reading;
• Don’t use background images behind your text if you expect readers to stick around for page after page of reading. Background graphics make the reader’s eyes have to work too hard; and
• If you make the choice to run ads on the page, don’t allow flashing/changing ones.  They can distract readers’ attention from your story and, after awhile, they can hurt readers’ eyes. 

2. Carefully consider how detailed you really want to get in the renderings of your characters, settings, etc. 

For many readers, the joy of imagining characters, locations, vessels, and other elements of fictional worlds is half the fun of reading.  By supplying too much in the way of ready-made graphics as representations, you are stamping your own view into readers’ minds.  That’s fine if it’s what you really want to do, and certainly the author knows his characters better than anyone else ever can.  BUT what if the readers dislike what you’re portraying so much that it steals their enjoyment of the story?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen readers’ comments on web stories expressing their dislike for the supplied graphics.  The wrong pictures might send the wrong message right from the start and prevent readers from even giving your story a try.  Cartoony, anime-style character pictures can be great for some stories but, if you want your readers to envision your characters as real, live, breathing people, you may want to stay away from cartoonish renderings.  Too-real-looking character pictures can also turn readers off.  Don’t destroy a reader’s fantasy of your hero by offering up a less-than-heroic stock photo of a guy who’s trying to look sexy but may look… well… too silly/too hairy/too pretty/too whatever to a lot of readers. PLEASE don’t use photos of your favorite actors/actresses to represent your characters within your multimedia novel.  It screams amateur–and worse, amateur with delusions of grandeur–and opens up a whole bunch of usage rights issues.  Wait! You say you really are an amateur and you do have delusions of grandeur and you want the world to know it?  Cool!  Me, too.  So if you REALLY want to link your characters with actors and actresses, then put that in an ‘Extras’ section and provide links that will take users to actual webpages where those photos are legally posted. Make it clear to all readers that these are just your imaginings for character castings and in no way imply that the actors/actresses have endorsed these representations of them as your characters.

Generally, it’s better to use pictures to represent themes within your fiction rather than the characters and places themselves. Photos showing characters can work well if the characters are seen at enough distance away that the actual features are indistinct. If they’re dressed for the part, they can still ‘look like’ your characters from a distance even if they don’t up close.

If you really, really want to include lots of graphical depictions, then go ahead. It’s your story, after all.  But please keep the following in mind:

• Choose graphics that are in keeping with the overall tone of your story so readers don’t feel cheated OR sell your story short; and
• Try to include such graphics from the very beginning of posting online so you don’t suffer readers’ anger when you supply graphics they deem inferior to what they’ve already imagined.

3. Do you really want to include that audio/video?

Web users love a good multimedia experience–but not nearly as much as we hate a bad one. Including audio/video as a part of your web novel can result in a truly horrible experience for the reader.

Here’s some stuff to keep in mind.

• NEVER set your audio/video to automatically play when the page opens.  Let the reader click.
• Be mindful of volume settings.  For audio/video on webpages, it’s better to make the reader turn it up than it is to scare him half to death with too-loud sound.  If you’re going to include multiple audio/video elements, try to set them all at similar volumes.  That way, your visitors won’t have to keep fiddling with their volume controls.
• Make sure everything essential to your novel is in the text. DON’T put important scenes or parts thereof into audio/video elements and force readers to constantly switch gears between reading and watching/listening. Just trust me on this, okay? If a person has shown up at your site to read a novel, then let him or her read a novel. Audio/video elements should be bonus material… music that sets the mood… a full rendering of a scene that wasn’t essential to include in the text but would make a killer video… etc. If you want to tell the story through audio/video elements then consider doing a podcast or video instead of/in addition to the web novel posting, or go all-out and experiment with the creation of a text/multimedia hybrid–just don’t call that hybrid a multimedia novel. More on that in the next post. 
• If you want to make an audio/video rendering of a scene that *is* included in the text, that’s fine.  Offer it up, but make it clear to the reader that’s what the audio/video is so he/she doesn’t unnecessarily suffer the redundancy.  My own preference would be to leave that particular audio/video experience OUT of the novel scene itself, but maybe just put it in an ‘EXTRAS’ section with a link from the scene within the text.  If you do make videos of this type, consider posting them on video sharing sites with a link to your story as a way to bring in potential readers.
• If you can’t get good actors to make your audio/video, don’t make it.  Seriously. 
• If you can find one or two good actors, you might be able to expand their voice potential as a cast of characters by using voice manipulation software such as AV Voice Changer. 
• If you want to show characters acting out scenes and can’t get enough good actors, my only other recommendation would be to use a program such as MovieStorm.  I’ve also seen movies made with The Sims 2 and some of those are pretty impressive, but it takes a lot of work on the would-be moviemaker’s part to make game characters act like actors.  MovieStorm, being specifically made for movie-making, is a great deal easier to use for that purpose.  The characters there are a bit cartoony but your readers may be willing to forgive you since the technology is still so new. MovieStorm’s free to download but you need to buy content packs (for a few dollars each) if you want to do really fun stuff with it.

4. Remember that hyperlinks take readers *out* of your story.

As a web author, one of the things you’re probably hoping for is to get some readers hooked on your story.  You risk losing them when you keep sending them OUT of the story.

Use hyperlinks judiciously within your online novel text.

Hyperlinks are wonderful when you want to allow a reader to, for example, jump back in time to a previous scene that’s currently mentioned as background (just remember to make it easy to get back to the current page once the reader’s done with the previous scene).

Hyperlinks that go to places where readers can learn more about people, places and things mentioned in your story are a great way to enhance the reader’s experience BUT they direct the reader’s attention away from your story.  Sure, if the reader loves your story, he or she will probably come back, but if you offer too many hyperlinks too early, your reader might leave before he or she has had the chance to fall in love with your story. 

Better options than including external links within the text of your story are:

• Providing a list of links, along with some contextual information about them, at the end of each installment/chapter of your story; or
• Creating an ‘Extras’ page providing additional information about the topics for each installment/chapter as well as links readers can follow to learn more, then putting a link to the appropriate ‘Extras’ page at the bottom of each installment/chapter.

5. Have Fun.

Know that, as an author creating a multimedia novel or excerpt online, you are at the leading edge of a new realm of publishing.

The tips provided above are optimized to meet the expectations of today’s web novel readers and based on capabilities of existing authoring tools and user access methods. Nonetheless, I think they’ll serve most multimedia novelists well into the future. 

We’ve only begun to explore the possibilities for enhancing our novels. I think it’s important for us to remember, as we grow as novelists and our products evolve, that the whole purpose of a novel (online or print) is to meet the needs of those who want to READ. There is a growing audience for the multimedia novel, a textual offering enhanced by multimedia elements, designed to meet the needs of the READING public. No one knows what the multimedia novel of the future ultimately is going to look like.  You can help define it.

(A great many) Rules can be broken with great success–just know why you’re doing it and make sure it’s the best thing for your story.  That being said, if you break too many of the rules above, then what you’re creating is not a multimedia novel.  It’s something else entirely.

More on that in the next post.

The best I’ve found for Windows is Mindola Software’s SuperNotecard.  There’s also a version for Mac.

SuperNotecard is packed with features and, at only $29, it’s a real bargain.  Once you’re ready, you can export your work to Rich Text Format (RTF) and then refine it in most any word processing program.  If screenwriting’s your thing, you can get a SuperNotecard version that exports to Final Draft for $34. 

Even if you prefer to do your actual writing using a word processor or screenwriting software, you still might want to use SuperNotecard to help you organize all the related information. 

You can get either version as a free trial to find out whether it complements your style.  If you download it, be sure to open up the sample project because that will give you a good sense of the kinds of things you could do with it.

SuperNotecard can support both fiction and nonfiction writers with features to capture people/characters, locations, bibliographic references, and more.

With SuperNotecard, you can put your text onto cards and use colors, categories and tags to help you organize them.  You can add flags to indicate sections of your work that you want to revisit to clean up, expand, etc.  You can stack the cards however you want, even forming piles within piles within piles.  SuperNotecard supports a rich outlining framework so you can go several layers deep in your organizing, if you want, but still be able to see the project overview at a glance.  From that overview, you can quickly drill down to the details. 

The developers wisely steered clear of trying to make the software ‘too helpful’.  It doesn’t try to write your document for you.

What it does do is take care of some of the grunt work that’s tedious for humans and can be handled efficiently by machines.  For example, if you create a character and give SuperNotecard the keywords that relate to that character, SuperNotecard can automatically give you a clickable list of all the places that character appears within your notes.

If you’ve ever wished you had an assistant to help you keep all your stuff straight while you’re writing, you’re really going to appreciate SuperNotecard.

This information’s great for those of us who want to write our entire manuscripts within single files rather than breaking them into tiny elements the way a lot of the tools for writers expect us to do.  The beauty of this approach is that you can define what your final document’s going to look like even as you’re writing it. 

Just go to the blog and look for the links.  They’re in the upper left corner of the main page. 

She covers topics like creating a manuscript template and making use of styles and the document map.  She’s written the instructions in plain English so you don’t need to be a technical type to make sense of them.

Even better, she gives you the information you need in order to tailor the instructions to suit your own preferences.

I use a similar approach to Tia’s, though I go back and forth between the Document Map and the Outline views a lot, depending on what I’m doing.  It’s really easy to move stuff around within the manuscript from the Outline view.

I also take a similar approach for my styles, though I don’t name my scenes.  Instead, I just separate my scenes with # (since that’s the character I want to use in my finished manuscripts to designate scene shifts) and I define an extra style for ‘Scene First Paragraph’ and apply it to each scene’s first paragraph.  It’s formatted just like other paragraphs in the manuscript, but it’s one level up in the document structure so I can see these lines when I look at the Document Map or Outline.  It makes for quick scanning to find just the scene you’re hunting. 

I define an additional style called ‘Critical Event’, which is at the same level in the structure as ‘Scene First Paragraph.’  I primarily use this to flag the things I’m going to want to highlight when I go back to write my full synopsis.   So my structure, once there’s some writing there, looks a lot like this:

Chapter

     Scene First Paragraph

          Scene Text

     Critical Event

          Scene Text

Chapter

That structure works for me, but with Tia’s help, you can come up with just the right structure for your own work. 

Happy writing!

If you’ve already got data in Excel spreadsheets, etc., Zoho Creator’s easy import functionality will let you add it in seconds.

It’s really designed for ease-of-use.  Seriously, anybody can do it.

If you get started with Zoho Creator and decide you need a more flexible and robust solution, then you can easily graduate to the free Zoho DB & Reports.

While you’re there, check out all the other Zoho offerings at the Zoho Main Page.  It might save you from spending money on software to do things you could have done for free with Zoho. 

Zoho offers a full line of office capabilities pulled together with one-stop access.  And free.  Does it get any better than this?

• you hate having to constantly move desktop windows out of the way to see other ones;
• you sometimes wish you could save your current set-up of files, webpages, etc. for easy access;
• you ever want to share your current desktop files or webpages with someone else.

Tabbery lets you do all that and more. Here’s a snippet from the Tabbery website:

Tabbery lets you organize your work into virtual desktop tabs, which can be saved, shared with others, or posted online. Each desktop tab is saved as one small file, capable of re-launching the entire desktop and its contents - on any computer! Best of all… it’s free!

In its current form, Tabbery is one of those tools I think individual users will either love or hate.  It likes to sit at the top of your screen, where it hides until you move the cursor into its area.  Then up it pops.  As an alternative, you can run it undocked, but then other things jump in front of it so you lose its primary benefit - convenient access to all your stuff.

I liked it a lot better once I edited Personalize -> Behavior and chose the option to have it simply appear rather than slide down.  It got even better after I verified I could left-click at the bottom of it and drag upward, reducing the amount of space it took on my screen. 

It looks like they’re still taking requirements for further development, so maybe future iterations will offer even more customization options.

There’s a short video on the Tabbery website that will give you enough information to decide whether you want to give it a closer look.

Basically, when you highlight a word or set of words, KallOut adds a little icon above the highlighting.  You click on that and it gives you a menu of available places to search.  It comes with a menu of search locations already included but, if you want, you can use KallOut Options to set up your own KallOut and specify the search location you want to add to the menu.

Visit KallOut.com for more details.  There’s a short product tour that’s well worth the time.

Okay, I’m done.  Now, go get KallOut!

If you’re considering using song lyrics in your work of fiction, you may want to come up with a back-up plan. Here are some things you should know:

• you or your publisher may be able to get rights to use the lyrics–or maybe not
• it’s probably going to cost you (typically a small fee per copy you make, but that can add up)
• your publisher may decide the lyrics aren’t worth the time/effort/money required to use them.

What about ‘fair use’?

Fair Use principles weren’t put in place to cover fiction.

You could claim fair use if you were writing, say, a nonfiction piece looking at U.S. cultural shifts over the last fifty years through the lens of Top-10 lyrics.  To write such a work, you’d clearly need to reference some lyrics.  But if you tried to get permission and pay for every single song, those barriers would jeopardize your ability to produce the work.  Fair use would allow you to quote a few lines from each song to help make your point as you presented your analysis.

Putting lyrics into your fiction is something else altogether.

You’ll read a lot of pages online that talk about lyric printing as ‘fair use’, etc., but that’s a stretch of the fair use doctrine and completely unreliable when it comes to novels and other works of fiction. 

What’s the worst that could happen?

I’m not a lawyer.  Personally, I think the worst that would probably happen is that someone would see you used the lyrics and sue to make you pay.  You’d have to pay the usage fees, plus maybe some punitive damages and court fees.  All that could add up to a great deal more than it would have cost to get the rights in the first place. 

I further think rights-holders’ attorneys’ time would be better spent going after web sites that publish lyrics and musical arrangements in their entirety. 

If you have a bestseller on your hands and make millions, though, you’re going to be putting yourself into a whole other class of rights violators.

Shouldn’t the artist or songwriter be pleased I love their work enough to include it?

Don’t take it personally; it’s business.  Artists, unless they wrote their own songs or bought the rights, don’t really have a claim to the lyrics.  The songwriter does unless he or she sold them all.  But the person you need to worry about most in this equation is typically a music publishing company.  That company probably paid money for the rights to control publication of those lyrics you want.  They’re highly unlikely to get warm fuzzies because you want to use lyrics under their control.  Even if they do, they have to pay people (such as the songwriter) for that usage.

Bottom line: Lyrics are intellectual property.  They’re worth money.

But isn’t this like free advertising for them?

In a way… maybe… if your story causes a bunch of people to rush out and buy the sheet music.  But that’s not likely.  At best, it might cause readers to buy the song.  That’s covered under altogether different rights–performance and recording rights, etc.  Someone, somewhere might be pleased.  Depending on how things are set up, a little of that money might even trickle to the music publishing company.  That prospect, however, is not likely to cause that company to let you use the lyrics for free.

So how much does it cost?

Basically, to use the song, you’ll need to enter into a contract with the rights-holder.  That company will tell you how much it wants for the usage you’ve described.  A lot of factors go into the cost, including the portion of the song that you’re intending to use.  If you’re only using a line or two, you may be looking at only a few cents per copy you make.  Or it could be a lot higher.  There generally are different fee schedules for hard-copy vice online use.  You won’t really be able to gauge the potential cost until you ask.

If all you want is a few lines from a single song, it’s probably affordable.  If you want to start each of thirty chapters with a line from a song, your cost and hassle will multiply.  You’re going to have to pay for each of those lines.  Getting permission may entail going to not one, but several, different companies.

How do I get started?

Basically, you start the process by writing to the entity that manages the rights. 

If you’re an author in search of a traditional publisher, it won’t do you much good to ask early.  If, however, you plan to disseminate copies of the work while you’re on your way to publication, the safest thing to do is to request permission from the rights-holder.  Often, the company is willing to let you use the lyrics in this way for free.  For example, I’ve been able to get permission to use sets of lyrics in online writing workshops for free because I wasn’t making any money from the work and because only a few hundred people would visit the location where it was posted.   

If you don’t intend to share the work with others prior to publication, it’s best to wait until you’re a little closer to publication to request permission.  In considering your request for rights, the company is going to want to know how many copies will be published and what format, as well as other things you can’t tell them.  You and your publisher can decide how to handle the request–if your publisher’s even willing to deal with the issue at all.  Some small publishers just don’t have the resources to deal with the usage requests and the required follow-up. Your publisher may just tell you to scrap the lyrics.

If you’re going the self-publishing route (hard-copy or e-book), then you should be in a position to give the rights-holder the details it wants.

How do I request permission?

Generally, you write to the music publisher.  Try Googling the song name and the term “sheet music”.  There are lots of places that sell sheet music online for a few dollars, and you can download it right away.  I often find the answers I need for this at sheetmusicplus.

Check the details for the song to make sure you’ve got the right one.  Sometimes the same song will end up in different arrangements, published by different companies.  And sometimes multiple songs will share a title.

The sheet music will reveal the publisher and its address information and, in some cases, will even tell where to go for additional permissions.  If it doesn’t, the publishing company’s webpage probably will.

If you’re unable to determine the music publisher, you might find some hints by checking the songs in the databases of the entities that handle performance rights. 

• ASCAP    
• BMI   
• SESAC   

Once you get the music publisher’s contact information, you can write to the company (some even have online forms) and tell what you want to do and what lyrics you want to use.  Make sure you tell them what you want is a *print license*.  Most of the publishing houses have guidelines on their sites for what they expect in a license request.  After that, they’ll probably write you back and/or send you a proposal contract with their terms.  It’s probably going to include a lot of details that make no sense to you, unless you’re a lawyer; if you’re not, you might want to talk to one about that contract so you understand what it is you’re signing.

By the way, there are companies online who make all this easier, if you’re willing to pay them to do it for you.  They’ll track down the info., handle the paperwork, etc., but most authors I’ve talked to don’t think those companies are worth what you’d pay. 

What are my alternatives?

Ditch the poetry.

Write your own poem.

Find a poet or songwriter who’s fighting to make a name for himself; he might be willing to let you use his material for free, if you give him proper credit.

If it’s really, really got to be that song, then consider just giving its title (surrounded by double quote marks) and don’t use the lyrics.  Because there are only so many words that can be used, song titles can’t be copyrighted except under really stringent conditions in which they can be treated as entities unto themselves — like if the song title comprises a whole line from the song or if it’s a made-up word that the writer himself created or something like that.  Usually, it’s not so much copyright as trademark protection that comes into play there.  But that’s a really rare situation and so for general use, song titles are thought of as fair game–sort of like book titles.  Still, the safest thing is to double-check (either through checking on the web or contacting the lyrics’ rights-holder) to make sure your song name isn’t one of the few exceptions. 

If you’re just posting your writing on the web, without charging for it, then you have another option.  Include the song name and a link to the song at a music-sharing site.  I personally like IMEEM because it’s reported to have contracts with the big recording labels so that all the appropriate people get paid when the songs are played.  Plus the player has a link that your reader can follow to buy the song, so this really is a way for you to give free advertising to the song you love. 

Imeem is free and ultra-easy to use.  The page for a song gives you code that you can just drop onto your blog or webpage to play the music.  Some of those are limited to a 30-second play, but that’s usually enough to convey the essence of the music, remind the reader of the song, etc., and if the reader wants to hear the whole thing, he can always follow the link to Imeem.

A word of caution:  I’ve only looked into IMEEM for noncommercial usage.  I assume they mave different rules when it comes to works for which you’re actually charging.  If your readers have to pay to access your work, you’ll need to contact IMEEM to find out whether your usage falls within their license terms. 

Where can I get more information?

Check out the Intellectual Property Law Server.  The forums — you can search them — are really helpful.  The worldwide intellectual property link at the bottom of the page is especially useful.

Writer’s Digest published an excellent article on this topic.

The University of Texas compiled some great information on this topic.

Today’s Woman published an interesting article on this topic.

Writers at AbsoluteWrite had a lively discussion on the use of lyrics in manuscripts.

For the last few months, I’ve participated in the beta testing of a site called TWINE.  As of today, it’s open to the public.  If you get a chance, check it out.

TWINE’s a great way to pull together research material from various sources.  It’s both a social networking and a web content bookmarking capability.  Even better, it’s powered by semantic (relating to the meaning of words) technologies, which makes it great for discovering information you might miss in a standard Google search.

Below’s some more information, taken from the TWINE “About Us” page.

People use Twine to keep track of their interests. Twine is a new way for you to collect online content – videos, photos, articles, Web pages, products - and bring it all together by topic, so you can have it in one place and share it with anyone you want.

That is the beauty of Twine. It helps you collect information in a new, highly personalized, convenient way. You can use Twine alone, with friends, groups and communities, or even in your company.

And Twine is smart. It’s powered by semantic understanding, which means Twine gets to know you. It automatically learns about your interests and makes connections and recommendations tailored to you. The best part: The more you use Twine, the more useful it becomes.

I’ve had fun with TWINE and I’ve learned some things along the way.  Whatever your interests, you’re bound to connect with others who share them.

They get a little better each time I revisit them because I know more about writing than I did the last time I was there.

Taking this approach works for me and probably for a lot of other writers.  I’m in a different mindset when I’m in first-chapters, surgical-precision mode than I am when settling in for a long-haul, full edit.  I see things differently.  I find things that need changing and can’t believe I didn’t see them before.

One way I try to improve my first-chapters skills is by studying the opening chapters of my favorite books, trying to enhance my understanding of what it was those authors did that kept me reading.  This type of learning by example is a great supplement to all the how-to material on this topic.

I pull out books on my shelves or I look online.

There’s a great page at NovelPro (thanks, J R Lankford!) that lists sites you can visit to get links to published books’ first chapters.  It’s fun to browse them. 

Now and then, a writer manages to hook me, and I end up ordering the book so I can find out what happens to the characters that the writer, in just those few pages, made me love.

That’s the kind of characters I want to create.  That’s the kind of writer I want to be.