Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share The Writer's Toolbox
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
The Writer's Toolbox
This week, Bad Lit Friends gets all practical-like as we whack our way through the writing tools jungle: the good, the bad, and the ones that should absolutely come with a content warning.
Up for dissection are the big hits and some notable misses across the full writing ecosystem: platforms, organizational tools, and book formatting software. Google Docs, Scrivener, and Vellum all get their moment, along with some tools that are doing genuinely useful things (we love you, Calibre!) and a couple that have made some deeply questionable choices about sticking your creative process into their Easy-Bake AI Oven. What, you didn't want to sit back and let your writing app take the drafting wheel while you get your nails did? Are you some kind of Luddite? (Actually, you should totally be some kind of Luddite when it comes to this.)
And in Hot Goss this week: the Heated Rivalry fanfic community on Archive of Our Own (AO3) has been rocked by a 25-page PDF naming writers accused of using Claude to draft their fic. What followed was predictable and ugly, and raises some thorny and uncomfortable questions about spell check, translation tools, hypocrisy, and where exactly everyone falls on the AI spectrum. Also: bullying people off the internet is bad, full stop. Don't do it, or we'll talk about you on Hot Goss.
Welcome to Bad Lit Friends. We're glad you're here, even if none of us know what we're doing.
Bad Lit Friends was created and is hosted by Meagan Thompson-Mann and Kirk Rafferty.
Show email: [email protected]
Bluesky: @badlitfriends.bsky.social
Threads: @badlitfriends
Instagram: @badlitfriends
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BadLitFriends
Website: badlitfriends.com
Show notes:
Scrivener
Dabble (hit Meagan up for a coupon code on Bluesky -- a completely overhauled Dabble 3.0 is dropping 7/13/26!)
Reedsy Studio
Calibre
Vellum
Atticus
Kindle Create
Adobe InDesign
Novel Crafter (boo hiss)
SudoWrite (boo hiss again!)
Freya (boo hiss redux)
Archive of Our Own (AO3) (huzzah!)
View all episodes
By Bad Lit FriendsThis week, Bad Lit Friends gets all practical-like as we whack our way through the writing tools jungle: the good, the bad, and the ones that should absolutely come with a content warning.
Up for dissection are the big hits and some notable misses across the full writing ecosystem: platforms, organizational tools, and book formatting software. Google Docs, Scrivener, and Vellum all get their moment, along with some tools that are doing genuinely useful things (we love you, Calibre!) and a couple that have made some deeply questionable choices about sticking your creative process into their Easy-Bake AI Oven. What, you didn't want to sit back and let your writing app take the drafting wheel while you get your nails did? Are you some kind of Luddite? (Actually, you should totally be some kind of Luddite when it comes to this.)
And in Hot Goss this week: the Heated Rivalry fanfic community on Archive of Our Own (AO3) has been rocked by a 25-page PDF naming writers accused of using Claude to draft their fic. What followed was predictable and ugly, and raises some thorny and uncomfortable questions about spell check, translation tools, hypocrisy, and where exactly everyone falls on the AI spectrum. Also: bullying people off the internet is bad, full stop. Don't do it, or we'll talk about you on Hot Goss.
Welcome to Bad Lit Friends. We're glad you're here, even if none of us know what we're doing.
Bad Lit Friends was created and is hosted by Meagan Thompson-Mann and Kirk Rafferty.
Show email: [email protected]
Bluesky: @badlitfriends.bsky.social
Threads: @badlitfriends
Instagram: @badlitfriends
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BadLitFriends
Website: badlitfriends.com
Show notes:
Scrivener
Dabble (hit Meagan up for a coupon code on Bluesky -- a completely overhauled Dabble 3.0 is dropping 7/13/26!)
Reedsy Studio
Calibre
Vellum
Atticus
Kindle Create
Adobe InDesign
Novel Crafter (boo hiss)
SudoWrite (boo hiss again!)
Freya (boo hiss redux)
Archive of Our Own (AO3) (huzzah!)