Copywriter & the Chamber of Secrets: 7 Muggle Tools for Writing
Fantastic Tools and Where to Find Them
April 25, 2017 | Singapore | By Jeng
I’m a Hogwarts graduate working under the disguise of a Muggle Copywriter, thank you very much.
Department of Muggle Studies,
Mad Hatter J.
4 G.Drive
Writing is a beast. And Muggle writers have the formidable job of hatching them, growing them, taming them and sometimes jinxing them out of existence, into an alternate dimension known as The Bin.
On good days our writing fly.
On dismal ones we get toasted alive.
From my field study, Muggle writers are experts at getting stuck. They exhibit signs of distress when they meet these challenges:
- Creative block (Oh, they’ve not seen the Room of Requirement or tried Felix Felicis)
- Writing headlines (I think they might enjoy the Headless Hunt)
- Writing for something called “The Web” (Apparently, Muggles follow spiders too!)
- Writing for something called “Social Media” (Not sure how a piece of plastic can be social)
- Writing something called “On the Go” (Like how we use our wands on the go?)
- And of course, Dementors known as “Clients” (They too, feed on Muggle happiness)
For the uninitiated Witches and Wizards, here are 7 Muggle tools I secretly use for Muggle writing.
Magical rating:
⭐ — Gets the low-value job done
⭐⭐ — Helps you get the higher value job done (i.e. write better)
⭐⭐⭐ — It’s magic, you should totally use it
1. Where I Secretly Write: Evernote
Magical Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ — It’s magic, you should totally use it
What they say: “Capture what’s on your mind. Collect, nurture, and share ideas across desktop and mobile platforms with Evernote. Your thoughts are always with you, always accessible, always in sync.” — Evernote
Why I use it: Evernote is the only mobile app I trust for writing on the go since 2010. I’m talking about the basic, free account! Here are a few reasons why I swear by it:
- Reliable way to write on the go — Muggles work on the go. They write on the train and even as they walk. Evernote is how I clock in some writing time on my Muggle smartphone — offline. You can redo and undo changes, and synced your notes online before accessing it from desktop! When syncing goes awry, Evernote detects a “note conflict” and duplicates your work so you can compare different “versions” of them and decide which to keep.
- Write in style
- Write conversationally — Muggles often make small talks online. They call it “texting”. If you want to sound like a conversational Muggle, I suggest writing your first drafts on mobile!
- Save web articles as notes — Muggles have the bad habit of having too many digital bookmarks i.e. web browsers, Facebook. On mobile, I use Evernote to turn an online article into a “note” through its sharing function — this means I can now collect interesting articles and reread them on Evernote.
- Create notebooks — You can compile notes into a notebook. You can also tag your notes for searchability!
- Search Bar — I have 612 notes and I know where to find them.
2. How I Secretly Make Rhymes: RhymeZone
Magical Rating:⭐⭐ — Helps you get the higher value job done
What they say: “ A language arts reference tool and comprehensive search engine for words. Includes the functions of a rhyming dictionary, thesaurus, and spelling checker…” — RhymeZone
Why I use it: Witches make spells, Muggles make rhymes. But hey, a good rhyme sticks, just like a good tagline!
What rhymes with “witches” and “wizards”? Run a search on RhymeZone and you’ll find “glitches” and “gizzards”.
You can even find rhymes categorised by syllables, and words and phrases that “almost rhyme”!
3. How I Secretly Sort Things Out: The Alphabetizer
Magical Rating: ⭐ — Gets the low-value job done
What they say: “Alphabetical order is easy using this free online tool! Sort video, movie, and television titles, alphabetize by last name, capitalize words, and ignore articles with …” — The Alphabetizer
Why I use it: As a social media editor, I use The Alphabetizer to sort hashtags like a boss. Considering how hashtags don’t begin with a letter at all, this brilliant tool gets the job done.
4. How I Secretly Make the Things Count: Character Count & Letter Count
Magical Rating:⭐ — Gets low-value job done (it’s a tie between both, just that the former rank first on Google search)
What they say:
- “Useful for Snapchat and Twitter, lettercount.com offers a free character counter for journalists, students, writers, researchers.” — Letter Counter
- “Character Count Online is an online tool that lets you easily calculate and count the number of characters, words, sentences and paragraphs in your text.” — Character Count Online
Why I use them: Muggle writers have to deal with all kinds of word and character limit. Typing on Twitter isn’t the best solution, even if Twitter sort of expanded it’s character limit. These two Muggle tools get the job done!
5. How I Secretly Do the Title Caps: TitleCap
Magical Rating:⭐ — Gets low-value job done
What they say: “Automatically capitalize your essay titles, blog post titles, email subjects, and more.” — TitleCap
Why I use it: Imagine having to reformat a business deck full of horribly formatted titles with random title caps. Muggle shit gets real.
6. How I Secretly Stay Positive: Positive Word Search
Magical rating:⭐⭐ — Helps you get the higher value job done
What they say: “ This positive words list will answers to your searches for: positive words in English, words of encouragement, inspirational words, positive phrases, positive…” — Positive Word Search
Why I use it: It’s hard to stay positive when you’re stuck with Muggle technology. But fear not, this list will make you happy — so you can write active and cheery copy for your Dementor clients.
7. How I Secretly Test Headlines: Coschedule
Magical rating: ⭐⭐⭐ — It’s magic, you should totally use it
What they say: “Free headline analyzer that will score your overall headline quality and rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value.” —Coschedule
Why I use it: Okay, this used to be a free headline analyser tool with no Muggle strings attached. Right now, you’ll have to surrender your email for them to convert YOU into a lead.
Shortly after signing up you’ll receive a message like this #inboundmarketing:
I use this headline analyser time to time to write better Muggle headlines. Let’s test this Daily Prophet headline shall we?
Well, looks like this headline has failed the Wizarding World. But you get what I mean — it’s quite kickass when you get an opinion on your headline, isn’t it?
According to Coschedule, some of these headlines will make weaker impressions on my Muggle readers. Looks like length isn’t the key to better results?
Owl Mail to Readers
Dear Reader,You're the best writing machine because you aren't one. Keep writing and let the words flow.Cheers,
Mad Hatter J.
Every surgeon needs an assistant, and hopefully these will make your life a bit easier when you are hard pressed for cognitive resources!
Mischief Managed
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