Writing program -- "Storylines"

[gategrrl]

This program was recced on janowrimo  by vitter  on this post: http://www.livejournal.com/community/janowrimo/17446.html

I'm finding it to be a very flexible, useful writer's program. I downloaded the demo from this site http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/ . The demo, is of course, more limited than the full version, but it does give you five story through-lines to set up and 30 cards to use for plotting.

It does not adhere to any philosophy of writing, unlike Dramatica or other similiar softward, and the only thing you need to learn is where things go.  You can import scenes you've written, and if you're the type of writer who likes to write out of order, it's fantastic for that. All you have to do is import that scene (if you've already written it), make it a note, and put it in the "pocket" or unassigned file.

I could go into deeper detail about it but all you have to do is check out the demo and see for yourself.  I'm not an agent for the folks who developed this, but I think it's a great little program for all sorts of writers, no matter what their style of writing is.

Comments

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Hee! Oh, please go into greater detail. I have never even heard of any writing program. What would I be looking for?

**off to see demo**

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

What do you think?

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

It looks really cool. I want it. ;-) I can see that it would be very useful for my style of writing. OTOH, I worry that the format wouldn't work well with my word processor. I use Word and you lose formatting with plain text files, so I'm curious about that. I also wonder what the learning curve would be for me. I don't like using programs that have an unfamiliar interface. I also wonder about compatibility issues.

I've never seen or heard of any software anything like it, though. I like the idea of it very much and this particular program looks like fun.

Do you have any software like this?

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

To answer your main question - do I have any software like this - I do have a copy of Dramatica, and one other "writer" program I forget the name of. The interface is similiar in style, with the buttons, etc that I can remember - but there is a great lack of all the long-winded definitions needed to get through those programs. There's another program out there called Rough Draft. Many of these programs are aimed at scriptwriters and you have to adapt the format to novel writing.

The learning curve on this program doesn't seem so bad. I'm the type that hates learning new, complicated programs on my own. But this one is pretty simple. There are features in it that I might not use, kinda like I don't use all the implements on a Swiss Army Knife.

It does look like that when you import what you've already written, you need to use .txt files, and not .doc files. What I've done to get a quicker idea of how it formats, etc, is I imported the start of a short story that I wrote and clicked on the "Reports" button to see what it would look like.

I use word also, but if you use a lot of bolding and italics and so forth, I don't know what would happen. I think if you do use that stuff...well, hold on. You CAN format on the card. Click on Card and then Content. Put some content in there. You can use italics, boldface, and underline.

The customer service is *fast*. I sent an email asking about a PDA version, and the next day I got an email back from the developer telling me he was working on that in 2006. So, I'd go ahead and email them and ask about the compatibility.

Good luck with it! I'm probably going to wait a couple of weeks before I get it. I haven't used up the 30 index cards you get in the demo yet!

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

To answer your main question - do I have any software like this

That's good because you have other software that you can compare it to.

I'd really like to buy this, but it might be a while before I can even afford it, but we'll see. :-) I do use Italics sometimes, so that's good to know that you can use that without losing the formatting.

I haven't downloaded the demo yet. I'm afraid I'll love it. :-) I should probably download it tomorrow today.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Interesting - I've been looking for something to help me storyline longer stuff because I hate having lots of bits of paper hanging about and this looks useful.

Thanks!

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Everyone has a different working style -- I'd love to hear how you use it. The more I use it, the more likely I think I'll buy it. But if it goes to PDA, THAT would be REALLY great!