Storyist At MacWorld

[Steve E]

So Steve, when you get the chance, could you tell us how MacWorld is going? How is Storyist being received? Got any new ideas for features from the audience?

 

(I won't ask your impressions of MacBook Air and Time Capsule. I so knew Time Capsule was coming.)

 

-Thoth

[Steve]

So Steve, when you get the chance, could you tell us how MacWorld is going? How is Storyist being received? Got any new ideas for features from the audience?

 

(I won't ask your impressions of MacBook Air and Time Capsule. I so knew Time Capsule was coming.)

 

-Thoth

 

The show is going great! The booth has been packed solid for two days straight and Storyist is very well received (some would say gushingly so).

 

We've met a lot of talented people (50/50 screenwriters and novelists) and enthusiastic editors/reviewers from some of the major Mac magazines.

 

I'll post a more thorough update after the show (at the moment I'm trying to locate a land line somewhere near the show floor for an InsideMac radio interview tomorrow--not so easy), but there are some interesting new requests and some old favorites.

 

As part of the demo, we visit the forums, so if you want to give a shout out to the people at the show, go ahead and post a message.

 

I've put a couple of photos of the booth up (taken after closing) so you can see what the booth looks like. I'll try to get some more tomorrow to give you a sense of the area and the interest.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steveshepard/...in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steveshepard/...in/photostream/

 

More later,

 

-Steve

[Steve E]

As part of the demo, we visit the forums, so if you want to give a shout out to the people at the show, go ahead and post a message.

 

A Big East Coast Shout Out To Our Friends At MacWorld.

Welcome To Storyist.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steveshepard/...in/photostream/

And who is this lovely couple?

[Steve]

And who is this lovely couple?

 

Your truly and my lovely wife Christina.

[Steve E]

Your truly and my lovely wife Christina.

Awww.

Your faces are going into my Storyist Character set.

 

Looking forward to hearing more about MacWorld.

 

My best to your better half.

-Thoth.

[Steve]

Update 1:

 

This is cool: Long time Storyist user Dave Strom posted a video of part of the Storyist demo on YouTube.

 

 

Thanks Dave!

 

-Steve

[Steve E]

This is cool: Long time Storyist user Dave Strom posted a video of part of the Storyist demo on YouTube.

This makes me wonder if Storyist could break some new ground here: A Video User's Manuel for a WP. I remember that my original copy of Illustrator came with a video (on VHS, believe it or not). But in the Web Age it should be on YouTube so it could also function as a sales device. Or it could be on Storyist.com if (copyright) control is a problem.

 

Frankly, I wish my screen was as big as the one in the demo.

-Thoth.

[Steve]

Update 2:

 

Some more links from around the net:

 

Heather Kelly from Macworld magazine stopped by an posted this:

 

http://www.macworld.com/article/131658/2008/01/creative.html

 

Jason Hsu, blogger and reviewer for CNET Taiwan, posted this (includes video):

 

http://www.augama.com/social_entrepreneur_...--storyist.html

 

Michael Gaworecki, freelance writer and blogger for Mac Forums, posted this:

 

http://www.mac-forums.com/macworldexpo/hoo...the-show-floor/

 

Videomaker, a popular magazine and website dedicated to, well... making video, posted this:

 

http://videomaker.com/community/blogs/vide...world-round-up/

[Steve E]

Heather Kelly from Macworld magazine stopped by an posted this:

http://www.macworld.com/article/131658/2008/01/creative.html

Heather Kelly: "It takes aspiring writers by the hand and leads them step-by-step through the writing process, MadLib style." MadLib style? I think not. Clearly she wasn't paying attention. But as long as they get your name right...

Jason Hsu, blogger and reviewer for CNET Taiwan, posted this (includes video):

http://www.augama.com/social_entrepreneur_...--storyist.html

I liked Hsu's video. A pity you don't speak Chinese. (Market, market, market.)

Michael Gaworecki, freelance writer and blogger for Mac Forums, posted this:

http://www.mac-forums.com/macworldexpo/hoo...the-show-floor/

Michael: "The most interesting application I discovered today was Storyist..." Yea! But WHY wasn't she willing to plunk down the asking price? Too big an investment in the Dark Processor, perhaps?

Videomaker, a popular magazine and website dedicated to, well... making video, posted this:

http://videomaker.com/community/blogs/vide...world-round-up/

Well, of course Videomaker likes the script writing aspect of Storyist. Odd there wasn't a video.

 

Anxiously awaiting Update #3 and you feature feedback from the masses.

-Thoth.

[Steve]

Heather Kelly: "It takes aspiring writers by the hand and leads them step-by-step through the writing process, MadLib style." MadLib style? I think not. Clearly she wasn't paying attention. But as long as they get your name right...

 

Heather obviously had a lot of ground to cover at the show and was gracious enough to spend a fair bit of time at the booth listening and taking pictures, but I was a little discouraged to see her description on her blog.

 

I loved MadLibs as a kid, but anyone evaluating Storyist with the expectation of being led step-by-step with the fill-in-the-blank simplicity (not to mention humor) of MadLibs will be sorely disappointed.

 

I'm guessing that the customizable fields in the story sheets gave her that impression. I'll follow up with her to set the record straight.

 

-Steve

[Steve E]

Heather obviously had a lot of ground to cover at the show and was gracious enough to spend a fair bit of time at the booth listening and taking pictures, but I was a little discouraged to see her description on her blog... I'm guessing that the customizable fields in the story sheets gave her that impression. I'll follow up with her to set the record straight.

Discouraged? You are a gentlemen, sir. But busy or not, she has an obligation to her audience to be accurate. Perhaps she'll write another article correcting herself. But let's face it, bloggists seldom do that. Some have even been known to be a bit vengeful when corrected.

 

[Purple-flower] is a [colorful-adjective][feminine-noun] who is [active-verb] to [place-name].

-[Greek name of an ancient Egyptian god].

[Steve]

Another nice link.

 

In "Small firms release many good products for Mac", Justin Williams of the Evansville Courier and Press says "Storyist is the application I was most excited about on the show floor." Read more.

[Steve E]

Nice. I think Mr. Williams captured the product well: "When you're writing a 300-page novel, it's a great way to organize your thoughts and plot ideas." Exactly. If he had mentioned the style sheets and templates too it would have been perfect (given the space allowed). Still, you can't fault "Storyist is the application I was most excited about..."

 

Better and better,

-Thoth.

 

Let's hear from some of the "normal" people. What did the customers (actual and potential) have to say?

[Steve]

Let's hear from some of the "normal" people. What did the customers (actual and potential) have to say?

 

We didn't really talk to many "normal" people. We DID talk to a lot of bright, creative people such as you'll find on this forum.

 

The screenwriter/novelist split was about 60/40. The screenwriters loved the index cards and their number one feature request was to be able to color code them. They also wanted to be able to print them, both to the Avery stock (5388) and to N-up sheets of paper. Somewhat surprisingly, almost none were interested in the outliner alternative to the index cards. Many screenwriters were looking for replacements for their existing screenplay formatting packages and were interested in what Storyist had that the more established packages didn't. For the production-oriented folks, MOREs & CONTINUEDs and revision tracking were the top requested features.

 

We talked to several guild members about the strike (Christina and I were wearing "I stand with the writers!" and "What if editors was on strike too?" buttons), and of course everyone thought that the Producer's stance that the future of internet distribution was unclear was, shall we say, disingenuous. We also talked to people from the animation departments of several studios, some writer/directors you might recognize, and, of course, a number of aspiring writers.

 

We talked to several published novelists, a couple of editors, and a HORDE of NaNoWriMo participants. As you might expect, their requests matched the ones we've collected here in the forum already, with widow & orphan support being among the more popular. Many people also want a smooth path to print-on-demand, and were asking for more typesetting features and support for jacket design. A number of children's authors (and a couple of graphic novelists) were interested in image support in the manuscript.

 

There were a lot of Education folks at the show. The index cards and the project manager piqued their interest, and they left thinking about non-fiction uses of Storyist for term papers and magazine articles.

 

-Steve

[Steve E]

It sounds like you've had some good interactions. Certainly enough to keep you busy planning for a while. Are you really thinking about straying into more elaborate graphic support? You might want to first consider a more elaborate import function for graphic files: the basics like BMP, GIF, JPG. PDF, PIC, PNG and TIFF, etc,; and the more complex like Photoshop, Canvas and Illustrator, etc.. Of course the more complex ones can all export to most of the basic ones so it might not be too big of a problem. (Then again...)

 

Personally, I find the outline view far more useful than the index card view. But that may be because of my screen size (20"). I can't really read the index cards very well without a lot of fiddling with zoom. I am curious about the color coding. There have been times when I've wanted to tag Sections in some easily accessible way but I've settled for notations in the Section sheet's note section. But I can see how I'd want to color code cards with "Keep This" and "Re-work This". This makes we wonder what the screenwriters you've met have in mind for their color codes.

 

I can definitely see Storyist being used for book reports and term papers. My brief stint teaching has shown me that students approach them like short stories anyway. But for a serious (i.e., ~100 pages) term paper you're going to need a more formal approach to Table of Contents, Footnotes, End Notes, Bibliography, Glossary and Index. The "Five Functional Must Haves" according to some of my old college professors. But all stuff I think we've talked about a bit.

 

Food for thought.

-Thoth.

[marguerite]

Personally, I find the outline view far more useful than the index card view. But that may be because of my screen size (20"). I can't really read the index cards very well without a lot of fiddling with zoom. I am curious about the color coding. There have been times when I've wanted to tag Sections in some easily accessible way but I've settled for notations in the Section sheet's note section. But I can see how I'd want to color code cards with "Keep This" and "Re-work This". This makes we wonder what the screenwriters you've met have in mind for their color codes.

-Thoth.

It's true, the index cards are difficult to see without zooming in. I like having the visual display on the right, though, so that I can just worry about clicking from one area to another of the Project Pane without also thinking about shifting the storyboard from visual representation to outline mode.

 

I didn't expect to use the index cards (remember the poll?), but I have to say I find them very helpful, and being able to move them around gives me a sense of creative freedom. (I know, you can move outline headings, too, but it's not as visually effective.)

Marguerite

[Steve E]

I didn't expect to use the index cards (remember the poll?), but I have to say I find them very helpful, and being able to move them around gives me a sense of creative freedom. (I know, you can move outline headings, too, but it's not as visually effective.)

Marguerite

The index cards definitely give the product more sizzle. And moving them around on a big screen looks cool (or as M says, visually effective). Back when Windows was just a interface for DOS, everyone seemed to think it had more sizzle than the Mac. But when pressed for exactly why they thought that way their only answer was that silly 1/8th inch shadow added to rectangles. People buy things for funny reasons (the color of a car for example) but they stick with them for functionality... usually. The cards are cool, and flashy, but I'm at a loss as to how to make them more useful. Color coding? Dog ear marking? I don't know. But I fear that if the index cards become Storyist's main attraction, then sooner or later some non-user is going to point out that they are hard to read and that will be that. Think I'm kidding? A little bad publicity can kill a product faster than a lot of good publicity can save it. Then again, Microsoft is still in business.

 

-Thoth.

[Steve]

The screenwriters loved the index cards and their number one feature request was to be able to color code them.

 

As of 1.4, you can color code index cards.

 

-Steve

[astillac]

Is is just me, or can you only color code the lines on the index cards?

[marguerite]

Is is just me, or can you only color code the lines on the index cards?

Hey, Calli--

Nice to hear from you. No, you should be able to color-code the background of the index cards. Control-click/right-click on a card and choose your color.

 

That's how it works for me in the Tiger version, anyway.

 

Just a couple of weeks to the big move, right? Are you ready?!

Best,

Marguerite

[astillac]

Ooh, I see now. I was trying to change the color on chapters. >__<

 

- Calli

PS - I'm not ready!! The garage sale is tomorrow, and I'm supposed to be putting prices on everything right this second... You know, garage sales are fun when you want to get rid of excess things - not when you have to get rid of your whole house simply because you can't take it with you.