Today was the last day of David Farland’s Writers Death Camp, and at this point, my brain is a bit mushy, but I’m super excited to get home and really get back to a semi-normal existence. I learned a lot. My writing, and my understanding of my writing and writing stories in general improved significantly.
Because of my new understanding, StoryBox will be getting some features that I have decided are essential to continuing to improve my writing. These will include some outlining tools, editing tools and brainstorming tools, and plot construction tools. These tools will be added on, and for the most part, you won’t be required to change your current work flow if you like what StoryBox does now.
When I am done, no other writing software will have the combination of tools that StoryBox will have, and I think these tools will provide users of StoryBox an absolutely huge advantage over users of other pieces of writing software.
Wow, I’m excited! I’ve been testing/using a few different programs during NaNoWriMo this year (including StoryBox), trying to decide which of them — if any — are useful tools for the way I work.
One particular program that used to be Mac-only went into beta for Windows (you may have alluded to it several posts ago), and I had been waiting for it for years. So far I’ve been a little annoyed at it, though I understand it’s a beta and not a demo.
StoryBox is just more stable. It runs a little slower (load times), but it works well. Otherwise it compares very favorably in just about every way, though I find it easier to work with reference images in the other program.
The fullscreen mode in StoryBox is just fantastic. Thank you for making it both beautiful and customizable. My eyes are saved!
Those brainstorming and outlining tools sound great. I’ve been using XMind (the open source version) as my brainstorming software, which is great, but a little irritating sometimes.
The writer’s camp sounds really interesting; I’ve never attended anything like that. Hope you can share some fun tips you picked up.
Good luck with StoryBox and your writing!
Really glad to hear you’re liking StoryBox.
I would love for the startup time to be quicker, but I chose to use .Net for a couple of reasons. Development speed, being the first one, stability the second. One of the downsides is slower start up times.
Reference image features are on my list of things to get done. That list is huge now.
As for dropping tips from the workshop, it will probably be a while before “I” drop tips. You can sign up for Dave’s Daily Kick at http://www.davidfarland.net and get much of the material he discussed delivered to your email on a daily basis. I don’t like speaking about things I don’t feel I’m an authority on. Until I’ve proven myself by getting some books sold, I’d have to qualify everything and I don’t like doing that.
Thanks for the reply! The startup times are really a non-issue the more I think about it. How many times am I going to start/re-start StoryBox each day? Not that often. I think you made a good decision to use the .Net framework. (But eh, I’m no developer!) Hey, it’s faster than Word!
I’ll sign up for Dave’s Daily Kick, thanks for the link.
As someone who writes non-fiction business stuff for a living (ugh), but who wants to write a fiction novel one day, I’m just excited to have a great software option available on Windows. Seems like Mac had all the really good stuff.
Best wishes! I look forward to reading your book one day.
I’m so excited about the plotting thingamajig whatever it’s going to be. I cannot tell you how much I love plotting stories. I swear, I love plotting more than the actual writing.
Now I’m worried you’ll spend all your time plotting and not writing 🙂
That could happen. I’m doing the NaNoWriMo thing and half the time I should be writing, I’m thinking about replotting my other [incomplete] manuscripts.