Swingsprout Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Cheers, all. I'm totally new to Storyist, but I'm slowly warming to it. Still using it in Demo mode, but that will hopefully change. I've already mentioned to Steve that it would be very useful with character count (with and without spaces) to complement the present word count. In many countries, at least in Europe, the length of an article or book is based on the amount of characters (letters), and not words. Another thing that just struck me is the possibility of pasting images into the Manuscript section. I'm writing something that needs mathematical tablets, and I use to paste them as images into the Word document. I think that is a neat way to save stuff in the text file, and I'd hope to see it implemented in a future release of Storyist. The possibility to add sound and video is coming in the next update, I hear, which is good news. Finally: how about a real graphic presentation of the chapters or plots? Like an image where you could see the whole arc of one's story in a graphic presentation, with its highs and lows. Would be perfect for the hero structure, but also for all other stories. Looking forward to reading your comments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
codemer Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Welcome to the forums! Finally: how about a real graphic presentation of the chapters or plots? Like an image where you could see the whole arc of one's story in a graphic presentation, with its highs and lows. Would be perfect for the hero structure, but also for all other stories. Are you thinking of something like a preview of the contents? IF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve E Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Hi Swingsprout. Welcome to the Forum. Character Count did come up before (here for example) and I think Steve has it on his list. But it never hurts to remind him. (I've been bugging him about bookmarks for what seems like centuries. Where does he find the patience?) We've been kicking around the idea of a Timeline quite a bit. How do you envision "a real graphic presentation of the chapters or plots"? (My examples here.) -Thoth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
codemer Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Character Count did come up before (here for example) and I think Steve has it on his list. But it never hurts to remind him. (I've been bugging him about bookmarks for what seems like centuries. Where does he find the patients?) Or the patience? IF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve E Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Or the patience? Corrected. (Damn adjective forms!) -Thoth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marguerite Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Corrected. (Damn adjective forms!) -Thoth. And I thought he was referring to the beta testers.... Welcome, Swingsprout! M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swingsprout Posted February 11, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Hi Swingsprout. Welcome to the Forum. Character Count did come up before (here for example) and I think Steve has it on his list. But it never hurts to remind him. (I've been bugging him about bookmarks for what seems like centuries. Where does he find the patience?) We've been kicking around the idea of a Timeline quite a bit. How do you envision "a real graphic presentation of the chapters or plots"? (My examples here.) -Thoth. Thanks, Thoth and Marguerite. Here's hoping for the character count feature. As for the graphic presentation of the plot, I was more thinking of having an image like this implemented: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8grd-xuWyDo/RynU...0/StoryArc1.gif And you should be able to link the chapters or notes to this story arc, reaching them by clicking. You should also be able to shift the chapters or notes around directly from the graphic view. Of course, you should also be able to change the graphic view, adding highlights or lowpoints, cliffhangers, resolutions etc. It's not meant to be static. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve E Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 Thanks, Thoth and Marguerite... And Isaac. Mustn't forget Isaac. He is a delicate soul that gets ...um... temperamental (?) when overlooked. As for the graphic presentation of the plot, I was more thinking of having an image like this implemented:... Fascinating. A line graph of Time vs Tension. I don't think anyone suggested an actual line graph before. Are you thinking of applying tension values to Sections? But why limit ourselves? I can see other valuable metrics here: Action, Sadness, Body Count, Sex, you get the idea. We name our own axes for multiple graphs. And perhaps a line for each character. What do you think? Too much? I'm just spitballing here. And you should be able to link the chapters or notes to this story arc, reaching them by clicking. You should also be able to shift the chapters or notes around directly from the graphic view. Of course, you should also be able to change the graphic view, adding highlights or lowpoints, cliffhangers, resolutions etc. It's not meant to be static. This is beginning to sound like its own application program. Something for...I don't know...Storyist Version 3? Stay greedy. Steve likes greedy users. It lubricates the old imagination. -Thoth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swingsprout Posted February 12, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2009 And Isaac. Mustn't forget Isaac. He is a delicate soul that gets ...um... temperamental (?) when overlooked. And thanks Isaac. How could I forget you? Fascinating. A line graph of Time vs Tension. I don't think anyone suggested an actual line graph before. Are you thinking of applying tension values to Sections? But why limit ourselves? I can see other valuable metrics here: Action, Sadness, Body Count, Sex, you get the idea. We name our own axes for multiple graphs. And perhaps a line for each character. What do you think? Too much? I'm just spitballing here. Yeah, it sounds too much. What I'm looking for is a graphic overview of the story, linked to the chapters and most imporant characters. This is beginning to sound like its own application program. Something for...I don't know...Storyist Version 3? It's not the least complicated. I've done such a graph for good old Acrobat Reader, where I use the yellow Post It notes to build up the story. It simply struck me it would be cool to be able to link those notes directly to my writing software. And then I stumbled upon Storyist, where a graph like that would be ideal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steakpirate Posted February 12, 2009 Report Share Posted February 12, 2009 And thanks Isaac. How could I forget you? Yeah, it sounds too much. What I'm looking for is a graphic overview of the story, linked to the chapters and most imporant characters. It's not the least complicated. I've done such a graph for good old Acrobat Reader, where I use the yellow Post It notes to build up the story. It simply struck me it would be cool to be able to link those notes directly to my writing software. And then I stumbled upon Storyist, where a graph like that would be ideal. Character count might make the bottom bar a little crowded, but it would probably be reasonably simple to select one or the other using the preferences menu. I don't know about fancy graphs, but it would be useful to have the ability to associate characters / settings / notes, etc. with sections, especially in a visual way—so long as there's a way to turn it off. (Even if it's just a listing of character links and setting at the beginning of the section.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marguerite Posted February 12, 2009 Report Share Posted February 12, 2009 I don't know about fancy graphs, but it would be useful to have the ability to associate characters / settings / notes, etc. with sections, especially in a visual way—so long as there's a way to turn it off. (Even if it's just a listing of character links and setting at the beginning of the section.) You can do this now, although verbally, not visually. Character development points link a character to a section, and you can see in the character sheet all the sections to which that character is linked (and alter the order in which the points are displayed). You can link all those other things either through the fields in the section sheets (characters, settings, plot points) or through Wiki links (notes--these can also be in the manuscript, if you don't mind blue underlined text showing up amid your prose). If you need more info, there's a post somewhere (thought it was in "Using Storyist" but can't find it and don't have time to look further right now) that explains how to define your own fields. Process is probably in the Help files, too, since they've undergone a thorough overhaul since I wrote that post. If you meant that you know you can link things but would love to see a large graphic illustrating the links, see the request someone (Calli?) made for mind-mapping capabilities under feature requests. Best, Marguerite Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swingsprout Posted February 13, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 13, 2009 Character count might make the bottom bar a little crowded, but it would probably be reasonably simple to select one or the other using the preferences menu. Crowded? Depends on how big your screen is. ;-) Yeah, all I'm asking for is a reasonable simple way to get the info, from a menu or whatever. And yeah, sure, the graphic presentation of the story should be optional, of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steakpirate Posted February 15, 2009 Report Share Posted February 15, 2009 You can do this now, although verbally, not visually. Character development points link a character to a section, and you can see in the character sheet all the sections to which that character is linked (and alter the order in which the points are displayed). You can link all those other things either through the fields in the section sheets (characters, settings, plot points) or through Wiki links (notes--these can also be in the manuscript, if you don't mind blue underlined text showing up amid your prose). If you need more info, there's a post somewhere (thought it was in "Using Storyist" but can't find it and don't have time to look further right now) that explains how to define your own fields. Process is probably in the Help files, too, since they've undergone a thorough overhaul since I wrote that post. If you meant that you know you can link things but would love to see a large graphic illustrating the links, see the request someone (Calli?) made for mind-mapping capabilities under feature requests. Best, Marguerite Verbally is nice, but I'd prefer it be a full fledged feature, so that the end user has to do less fiddling. I'm not a big fan of fiddling, which is probably why I didn't know about a good number of features until I started trying to break the beta. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted February 20, 2009 Report Share Posted February 20, 2009 Character count might make the bottom bar a little crowded, but it would probably be reasonably simple to select one or the other using the preferences menu. My plan for that bottom bar is to make it configurable, so if you want to see character count (or pages) instead of or in addition to the word count, you will be able to. -Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swingsprout Posted February 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 24, 2009 My plan for that bottom bar is to make it configurable, so if you want to see character count (or pages) instead of or in addition to the word count, you will be able to. -Steve Sounds great, Steve! Looking forward to the second edition! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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