The program lets you view scene and plot point descriptions as virtual note cards, yet their default appearance makes those descriptions unreadable expanding them to full legibility makes the cards enormous. The Fine Print: Storyist’s virtual notecards aren’t much help-even when expanded to fill most of the screen, the text is barely readable.Storyist was polished and useful on the whole, but I found a few minor aggravations. According to Storyist, word goals are planned for version 1.5, which should be out by the time you read this full-screen editing should be part of version 2.0, expected in January 2009. There’s no full-screen editing mode, and no built-in ability to set word-count goals for a given document or session, although you can approximate the latter by editing the Scene template to include the current word count. Despite repeated efforts, I couldn’t use the Import Wizard to open an RTF file the regular Open command worked fine.įor a program that costs at least $15 more than any of its major competitors, Storyist lacks several of the competition’s higher-end features. While I appreciated the simplicity and thoughtfulness of the Import and Export Wizards-including the option to automatically convert straight quotes to curly (and vice versa)-I found the importing process frustratingly spotty. The program uses Automator workflows to import and export files in a variety of common formats, including RTF, HTML, Word, and Final Draft. An additional “hero’s journey” template lays out the steps of a heroic quest, as defined by scholar Joseph Campbell’s analysis of mythology. The novel template’s sample text discusses basic formatting for novel submissions and explains how each of the program’s categories works the screenplay template does likewise via an amusing mock movie script. In addition to a blank template, the provided novel and screenplay templates come with preset extras to assist you. You can edit the specifics of each of these styles and save your own custom style sheets. Storyist automatically formats your work according to industry-standard margin and typeface rules for novel or script submissions-one of the program’s greatest strengths. Writers who prefer to plan ahead will probably appreciate them more. Storyist lets you minimize and ignore all the categories if you like, but I still found them a distracting temptation. I appreciated the flexibility these categories offered, but often felt hemmed in by an obligation to work up full descriptions of who my characters were and where they were going before I started writing. Once added, photos and videos cannot be resized-one widescreen video I added was squashed into an incorrect aspect ratio. Those last three formats can’t be added on their own instead, you must drag them onto a new blank notebook page. It also provides a notebook for jotting down text or inserting PDF files, links to Web pages, photographs, or video. In addition to the chapters and sections of your manuscript, Storyist can create files with descriptions of individual scenes or sections, plot points or threads, characters, and settings. Storyist assembles all the elements of your novel or screenplay into a handy file list on the left side of the main program window. But more freewheeling authors may find that this elaborate scaffolding distracts them from actual writing. Writers who plan carefully before putting words to page will likely enjoy its neatly organized slots for each element of a novel or screenplay. If your writing desk overflows with setting notes, character sketches, and plot points, Storyist can help you whip your stories into shape.
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