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As a Storyist newbie who had some trouble figuring out what the hell is going on, I looked for a YouTube tutorial. All I found were a couple of old ones covering specific topics. What I was hoping to find was a beginner's Storyist for Mac video tutorial. Why don't you folks make one? Seems as though you could use something like ScreenFlow to knock one out in a couple of hours. Just take the point of view of a beginner who has no knowledge of the program and go through the steps of starting a project from scratch using the program features, one by one, meanwhile explaining the steps in voiceover. Actually seeing someone use Storyist as they narrate what they are doing and why would make everything so much more clear than just written instructions. You could do one for Mac and one for Windows. If you have a person there who knows the program well, is pretty good at explaining things to people and can use Screenflow and/or iMovie -- an afternoon's work, max! (IMHO)

Thanks to both of you for the help. I will work with what you have given me here and see what I come up with. For some reason, this program has turned out to work in a way that is very unintuitive for me. Probably says more about my intuition than the program. But I will go back and give it another shot.

Marguerite, thanks very much for this. Yes, I have Storyist for Mac. I went through these steps but got hung up at #5. These "characters, settings, notes" etc. that you can drag onto this grey collage -- where do they come from? I don't see where you drag them FROM. I worked with the program for a while this afternoon and accomplished nothing other than disappearing my test manuscript. I am pretty much at the point with it that I think I am probably better off just using Pages. I mean, with Pages, if you start at the most basic level -- choose a blank template -- you at least get a place to write. With Storyist, choose blank and you get an "Images" folder. The program just makes no sense to me. Obviously, it makes sense to thousands of people, so there must be some basic concepts I do not grasp. I'm not stupid and have been writing with computers since the early '80's, but I never could figure out -- or found any use for -- 90% of what Microsoft Word did either!

I am trying to learn to use Storyboard. I see my manuscript. I see the portions of it in the outline and I can fill in notes or whatever in outline, refer to them, etc. But when I go to the Storyboard (corkboard), there is nothing there under each section. If I go to My Manuscript in the Project pane, then there are index cards for each section -- prologue, chapter 1, chapter 2, etc. (Although I cannot write in them.) But then, I go to, say, Prologue in the project pane and I see it in the manuscript, I see it highlighted in the Outline view, but in the Storyboard, there are no index cards, just blank corkboard. When I use the little plus to add a card template onto the corkboard, then it adds a new section into the project (with a light bulb) and the manuscript for it is a text storyboard. I would like to be able to put notes, plot ideas, all kinds of stuff, for each section, onto a storyboard and then be able to change, re-arrange them, etc. As I would perhaps with real physical index cards, photos and a corkboard on the wall. I think this is possible but damn if I can figure out how to do it. It seems as though what Storyist is doing is WAY more complicated than what I want. (Maybe I was better off with just blank templates in Pages!) Apparently, the manual, which I have been reading and re-reading, just doesn't cover this on a level elementary enough for me. I wish there was a YouTube video showing somebody using it, going through the basics, but the latest ones I see are on specific areas and are at least 2 years old. Or maybe a Storyist for Dummies. Thanks --

Can't really find the right place to post this question. Anyway, is there some secret to upload a profile photo to replace that b&w icon? I go to Profile, click Use a Custom Photo, choose from file, it uploads, apparently, and shows file name but picture does not show up in frame. Thanks!

I did understand that the iMac was just another device. What I did not get was the SAVE location from the iMac in order for the project to sync. So, now I understand that I save it into that Storyist folder that has been installed on my iCloud drive. The iPad saves the project to there, the iMac does the same, voila, sync. When I created a project to see how it saved, the default was my "Documents" folder. I just have to send it to the iCloud Drive Storyist folder instead. All correct? Is there some reason why there is not a Preferences option or a "Save to" in the dropdown menu to designate where you want to save your projects? Thanks again -- -Gary

Thanks, Steve. I have read that page, more than once. I cannot find anywhere in there where it says that it syncs what I do on my iMac with changes I make on my iPad or vice versa. It just talks about IOS sync and tells how to set the IOS app for either iCloud or Dropbox. OK, now I have my IOS app set for iCloud. But would I not have to set my iMac app to also save in iCloud, in order to sync? Seems as though I would, but I do not find any instructions or settings for that. (I looked in Preferences for "save" location but did not find anything.) All I have read is that my iMac files are stored locally. So, I don't see how it syncs. I am probably just missing something. Please enlighten me. Thanks!

I am just getting started with Storyist and have just installed it on my iMac (El Capitan) and installed the app on my iPad (IOS 9.3.1). When I start my project I would like to be able to sync between the two as seamlessly as possible. Most of the time, I will work on the iMac but sometimes I may make a few changes or add something using my iPad and would like that to be part of the project the next time I open it on the iMac -- and vice versa. I have read over some related posts but did not quite find my answer. So, can I do that via iCloud? Or do I need to use Dropbox? Either way, exactly how? Thanks!