Style requests (lots of)

[green_knight]

Firstly, let me say that I love Storyist. I discovered it on the NaNoWriMo boards, and from the moment I opened it I was all 'where have you been all my life?'. I'm using it not just for my own writing, but to edit fiction for clients, and I've already saved a lot of time and trouble by being able to create character sheets and group them etc.

 

That said, here is my wishlist:

 

- getting rid of hardcoaded defaults. Whenever I create a new manuscript, I get the standard Storyist template in Courier with the inbuilt text. I want my own template styles and contents. Whenever I create a new notebook entry, it's in Helvetica. Every. Single. One. And every single one of them has a default style that is the appliction's default, rather than the default styles I've set for my template/document. Changing defaults gets old very quick.

- get rid of Helvetica, full stop. I hate sanserif fonts and find them difficult to read. I have trouble reading a thin yellow text on a white background - this is the unchangable style used on the character etc sheets. This is an accessibility issue, and users with visual impairments - including those who need different colour schemes, font sizes etc - are going to struggle with the stylesheets - please enable the opportunity to change the style on those sheets to whatever the user feels comfortable with. The ability to change the default headings and default text would make me even happier; though that's more of a cosmetic issue - the lack of styling impedes usability

- please change the way field lists are handled:

- there's a long list of fields that I will never use and can't get rid of

- I can create a new field but not delete it

- I cannot change the type of the new field - if you choose 'character' and then decide that it doesn't serve you well (because you might want to use descriptors rather than actual character names) you can't turn it ino a text field, and the now useless field remains in your project until eternity.

- I want groups of fields that I can save and share between projects. Instead of going through the fields one by one, I want to simply tell Storyist 'use group 'location' (a general setting, like a town) or use group 'place' (a specific room or building) - yes, I use all of the stylesheets in more than one collection, because I find it darn handy to, eg, be able to track 'the fellowship' instead of only its individual members.

- I also want a 'things' stylesheet - whether it's mysterious McGuffins, magical rings, or James Bond's car collection: sometimes you just want to be able to track a thing, and having a stylesheet with a separate category and all the features of the other stylesheets would make life a lot easier.

- copy and paste between documents. If I create a character in one document, I don't want to have to copy every field across, I want to be able to select the character stylesheet, choose 'copy' and paste them into the new document, etc.

 

Last but not least, please change the defaults for when Storyist opens. At least 80% of the time I want to work on a previous project, so neither 'new from template' (close, choose project from 'open recent') or the template chooser which then makes me click a button and navigate to the file I want are practical. 'do nothing' and 'last opened' as preference options would be very welcome. Also, there's no 'new from template' - if I want to change templates, I need to change from default template to template chooser, and then create a new file an then change it back again... that's a lot of effort to create a new file from a different template, and it's faster (but more dangerous) to open the template and use 'save as')

 

That said, I really love Storist, and a shoutout to Steve for the quickest bugfix I've ever seen. 2.3.6.b1 is stable and running fine.

[whirlybird]

 

 

That said, I really love Storist, and a shoutout to Steve for the quickest bugfix I've ever seen. 2.3.6.b1 is stable and running fine.

 

Green Knight,

 

Am I missing something? I thought 2.3.5 was the latest update.

 

-Whirlybird

[marguerite]

It is, Whirly, but Steve put together a new beta just to fix Green Knight's bug (yes, he really does that!). It's available to GK and to beta testers but not to everyone, yet.

 

Welcome back. Glad you had a nice holiday. Mine was pleasant (and, alas, fattening), too.

M

[whirlybird]

It is, Whirly, but Steve put together a new beta just to fix Green Knight's bug (yes, he really does that!). It's available to GK and to beta testers but not to everyone, yet.

 

Welcome back. Glad you had a nice holiday. Mine was pleasant (and, alas, fattening), too.

M

Hi M,

 

Thanks for the cheery welcome back. Glad you had a pleasant holiday too. Can it be good without being fattening? I'd have to say no.

 

Thanks also for the heads up about the new beta for GK. At least I know I'm not standing on the dock while everyone sails away on a new update.

 

-W

[green_knight]

Adding to this thread rather than opening a new one.

 

So, I've been using Storyist for a while now for various projects, and I love it. It's making it tremendously easy to track continuity issues, (how does this charcter refer to her mother, which verbs are used with [futuristic technology]), and it's making me a better editor.

 

That said, I am now preparing to launch into the revision of a major project, and one of the things I want to do - that I want Storyist for - is to track the plot, using the plotpoin and characterpoint features. A number of issues have arisen during this:

 

- the character and settings fields in sheets are just too damn sensitive. I like the way that a new character/setting is created merely by typing, but a new one is created for every typo-and-backspace, aggravated by the fact that sometimes the computer is just lagging a bit and creates a new item when I'm halfway through a term, or several entries in a row. I'd really like to commit only when I type a comma or hit return. This has been so problematic (I don't want five choices for autocompletion for every single one I keep) that I've turned the character etc fields off - but of course I still have to keep the old ones around, because fields, once created, cannot be deleted

- the menu for editing links is overly complicated. I don't need to plow through the whole services, I just want the 'open, copy, edit, remove' bits at this point.

- Under 'edit' I want a tree of appropriate things - I group, say, characters, and may have thirty of fourty, and just as many settings, and a stack of notes, and hundreds of plotpoints... and they're all in a single unordered list. This is already driving me bonkers in chapter one. (and all the default things like boy meets girl are hanging around - everything that was ever created is in that list.)

- There's no way to attach a plotpoint to both a scene sheet *and* a section sheet, and I want a hierarchy for my revision: much more freedom in how I use the section/scene sheets and the plotpoints. (For instance I would like to track plot threads: Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy and add all those plotpoints to it. I also might want a 'Trip to Darbyshire section, and add some of the same plotpoints to *that*. So a many-to-many relation rather than many-to-one.)

- I want a simple drag and drop, because I might create the plotpoint before the section sheet, or change my mind. Right now, the process of adding plotpoints isn't intuitive (it works differently from the plotpoint and the section ends.

- Again, the 'add to section' menu a) contains ghost entities like 'Formatting your manuscript' which were deleted a long time ago and is unordered. I dread getting to the last scene of book four, because at that point it will have become utterly unusable. Why can't I simply drag the plotpoint onto the scene in any view?

 

For the moment, I'm fudging things by simply adding the plotpoints in the corkboard view, which brings me to another niggle - there's no way of resizing a group of things. I'd be happy enough if I could change the original size to the small one and then simply resize the section (I want a large card at the top and a series of smaller ones next to it. Just being able to pick a custom 'size 1/size 2' would make life so much easier, because right now, they're all slightly different. .

- Also, it would be nice to be able to add a whole set of plot points to a scene view at once.

- I also want a setting that allows me to add new things in the format of my choice. Having to change every single plotpoint to an index card will grow old long before the book is finished.

 

Unrelated to the above:

- I'd like the ability to edit comment style, and it would be useful if a comment could be attached to a section of text rather than just to the icon. (I comment a lot.)

 

And then I ran into a bug where the standard view was just turning into a surrealistic nightmare - ending halfway down, two scrollbars to the right, fields vanishing if you ran your mouse over them, typing a single name created three new characters and I got very frustrated indeed. I've restarted Storyist, so I'm ok, but I still have a ton of random things hanging around, and the easiest way to deal with them was to fix the template and create a new project.

(Also I snoticed that every now and again the command-return shortcut for creating new objects refuses to work; which is a shame as it's such a useful feature.)

 

All that said, I am really excited about tackling the revisions in Storyist. I feel much more in control of the story than I have with any tools used previously. It's simply wonderful to have all the story elements, the text, *and* the plot-point-by-plotpoint outline side by side; this makes for very smooth working

[marguerite]

Hi, Green Knight:

I second most of your requests. May I point out two features that already exist in Storyist that may make the revision process more bearable?

 

1. To order the link menu (accessed through Edit > Insert > Link), click on the word "Type." That lists all your characters first, followed by Plot, Settings, etc. Unfortunately this doesn't work for contextual menus accessed by clicking in existing fields.

 

2. To remove old items from the lists (which do become unwieldy), empty the Project Trash. Storyist will remember every section, etc., ever created until you do (and you may have to close the file and reopen it after emptying the trash before it notices that the sections are gone). To empty trash, go to the Project menu or click on the little icon that looks like an envelope between the + and the gear, then click on Empty trash.

 

On being able to link plot points to more than one scene/section and on a simpler way to link in general, absolutely! That would be great. Something like the pull-down menu you can get by clicking on Unassigned in a plot point (but ordered to match the manuscript, not random). I'd also appreciate rather less sensitivity in creating new characters, etc., and the ability to delete fields I created but no longer need.

Best,

Marguerite

[green_knight]

 

 

1. To order the link menu (accessed through Edit > Insert > Link), click on the word "Type." That lists all your characters first, followed by Plot, Settings, etc. Unfortunately this doesn't work for contextual menus accessed by clicking in existing fields.

 

Hi Marguerite, and thanks for replying.

 

That works - but the order is not saved. I also cannot use the 'keep display value synchronised' value, and right now, choosing a different element to link to does precisely nothing. For the time being, I've given up using the autofill fields and I'm sticking to linking manually - or simply scrolling to the characters in the left pane.

 

I really think that arranging the items as a tree - ideally with the same structure as I'm using in the project (tons of subfolders to keep things organised) would make life easier.

 

 

 

2. To remove old items from the lists (which do become unwieldy), empty the Project Trash. Storyist will remember every section, etc., ever created until you do (and you may have to close the file and reopen it after emptying the trash before it notices that the sections are gone). To empty trash, go to the Project menu or click on the little icon that looks like an envelope between the + and the gear, then click on Empty trash.

 

 

Oh, thank you. The existence of a project trash had eluded me. That makes life a lot easier.

 

 

On being able to link plot points to more than one scene/section and on a simpler way to link in general, absolutely! That would be great. Something like the pull-down menu you can get by clicking on Unassigned in a plot point (but ordered to match the manuscript, not random). I'd also appreciate rather less sensitivity in creating new characters, etc., and the ability to delete fields I created but no longer need.

 

I have confidence that these things will be ironed out.

 

On the positive side, I've added about a quarter of the book - 30K - to Storyist yesterday. With previous tools that would have taken me several days, and I feel that - thanks to being able to keep each scene *with* plotpoints *and* their synopses in view at the same time - my ability to gain control over the story is much improved. It's not as if I hadn't revised this one, but I can see its weaknesses much better. Storyist is an immensely powerful tool, and the longer I use it, the more useful it becomes to me.