CornerScribe

Storylines Review

I’m back and feeling better. Work has been especially stressful this week, but I can’t really talk about that, more’s the pity. It’s rather an interesting story, if you don’t happen to be embroiled in it!

What I can talk about is giving you the review of writing software I promised. Well, the first review, at least. I’m looking at Storylines, which is overall a very nice piece of software.

I like the index card motif used here. You can type a brief scene description for the card, and it’s placed on a worspace where you can move it around and arrange your scenes. It’s even nicer that the card can hold the entire text of your scene, and it gets moved around as you move the cards. By generating a report, you can then see the re-arranged version of the novel.

Storylines also supports script-writing, so you have formatting tools to allow your script to look appropriate.

It’s also very easy to use. I looked through a brief introduction and was working in it in a matter of minutes.

One problem that I’ve run across so far is the inability to bring in formatted text. I’m doing a copy/paste from openoffice, and I’m losing the italics in Storylines. That is a problem, and if I don’t find a way to solve it, it may be enough to keep me from purchasing it.

I plan on spending a little more time with the software, trying to solve the italics issue. I’ll post another update and let you know how I like it after a little more use.