#physical tools

[productiveandfree]

Starting a New Job? Here Are Three Ways to Get Organized

[wuxiaphoenix]

Characters: The Right Tool For the Job

What’s the one tool your character does not want to do without, and would possibly dive into a burning building to grab and roll out? Or at least spend considerable time and effort replacing after the place burned to the foundations.

Know what that is, and you’ll know what your character does - not just for a living, but as part of their reason for being. Maybe it’s a specific kind of pen for writing. Maybe it’s That One Knife that makes the difference, for professions as varied as coroners and butchers. Maybe it’s a specially designed plastic prybar for lifting label stickers off shelves, sparing your poor fingernails when you might have to do hundreds of them in a single day.

Humans - most intelligent beings we can imagine - are tool-using creatures. Tools make a difference. Tools are partly technological, partly cultural; people who thatch roofs with palm leaves are going to want very different tools from those working with slate, even if the same concept of make a waterproof roof is applied. And let’s not forget the varied and bewildering variety of tools we’ve created around cultural food - everything from bread knives to chopsticks to taco racks to the titanium spork.

(If your character has a spork, consider if they’re a tech geek, a long-distance hiker, or just someone who hates doing a variety of dishes. It matters.)

A wizard’s library? Tools. An alchemist’s lab? Tools. A detective’s investigation kit? All tools - many of which might be more normal items (like tweezers, tiny vials, and magnifying glasses) repurposed in a particular way. The Imperial Coroner makes interesting use of a very large spoon....

Tools are also important as a point of story contrast when your character doesn’t have them. (As happens too often in RL emergencies.) If your character doesn’t have the right tool for the job, what can they do instead? Do they improvise a replacement; steal plastic tubing for an emergency transfusion, for example? Do they take a different approach to the problem, blowing the hinges off when they don’t have a key to the door-lock? Or do they - gulp - just die, because when you’re dropped out of an airplane at 20,000 feet without a parachute your options are very, very few?

Note that dying is always an option for Faceless Mooks and supporting characters killed off to show how very Evil a Bad Guy is. It’s not a good option for main characters, though. Readers tend to empathize with them, good or evil, and they don’t want to see any of them go down without a fight. If you absolutely have to have a main character die because they were lacking One Specific Tool, you’d better show them trying to work around it to the bitter end.

...That, and play fair with the readers by cluing them in on how important That One Tool is. Though if the setting is space and the tool is a spacesuit, one would hope that would be obvious.

Know your characters’ tools. It’ll get them - and your story - into and out of more trouble than you’d imagine!

[wuxiaphoenix]

On Writing: The Right Tools for the Job

When it comes to writing, I think it’s like exercising: whatever is most comfortable for you to use, and stick to writing with, that’s probably what you should do. Writing takes enough concentration out of the brain as it is. You don’t need to be fighting the distraction of the wrong font size

or sparkle-pink ink on top of that.

Like anyone’s personal toolkit, mine is a bit idiosyncratic. For one, I prefer Bic Crystal pens - I can grip them very hard, and yet they won’t bend or wobble. When your mind’s caught up in a thrilling action scene, this is important. I also tend to scribble down stray ideas and rough drafts on scrap paper, just to get past the mental hump of “maybe this isn’t a good idea after all”. Then I type it up in Word, where I can shuffle all the scraps around, reword bits, and do bits of a very rough first edit as I pull it together.

...Most of the time. There are times my brain is being particularly sulky. Or when even a half-sheet of scrap paper seems like too much empty space to face. In that case, what sometimes works is pulling out the notepaper I ran across some years back, the stuff that’s made from sugarcane. It’s a bright paper, with a satin-smooth feel to it, nice on the hands; skin contact can help lure the brain into writing something.

(Not the cheapest paper, but I got a multipack of the small notepads a few years back and haven’t used them up yet. Usually a sheet or two is enough to get the writing gears going. Or suffices to hold what little I can get until I have energy to write more later.)

Don’t neglect the little physical aspects when you’re typing, either. Technology may allow files to transfer from phone to internet to desktop to whatever, but your physical reactions aren’t as fluid. You’re trying to get the words down without thinking about them as you write; a different spacing on the keyboard than you’re used to, different keys to hit, will slow down what you’re doing. And if you have to think too much, you may lose the writing thread.

Writing is a craft. Like any other craft - beading, carpentry, what have you - you must pay attention to your tools. Find what works for you!

[divisiongroupcertificao]

VA Tools That Make Work Easier

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[parcelling-yacht-parties-b]

VA Tools That Make Work Easier

Performance as a Virtual Assistant (VA) can breathe compared on route to being someone's personal assistant or secretary in terms relative to tasks and responsibilities. You basically filler seeing as how a secretary primrose personal assistant towards your client and do tasks that the client assigned forasmuch as you to originate. Bu what makes it different is that you discuss until work on your own and will unaccompanied be facing the analytical control unit and work in a virtual office. This is where online VA tools are greatly conducive, forasmuch as unlike inlet a algorismic delegation, you will need up mound efficiently without the physical tools and equipment. Here are some about the most important tools that you should pry out to know in transit to make dazzle as a VA a lot easier replacing you.<\p>

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