StoryView: Thumbs UP or DOWN?

[WinterMuse]

I've been playing around with this software recently and it seems pretty cool. Anyone using it? Anyone tried it and hated it?

[Pencey]

I think it's a good piece of software. Frankly though, I only use the outline view. I find the timeline view to be too chaotic, and because of this I haven't really attempted to properly learn how to use it.

The outline view though will give you everything you need to draw up your stories on and store ideas for future ones. It might be too many bells and whistles for some people but not for me. Of course, if you're not careful you can wind up tinkering with things instead of getting your writing done. This is because you can customize almost anything to your liking.

Basically, the outline view's strength is allowing you to divide up your thoughts and ideas into sub-categories and use branches and colors to seperate everything. Because of this, when you go to look for your thoughts, it's very easy to see or remember where they are. Try doing this in a word processor or using Final Draft or something to organize everything. Not fun.

Storyview isn't groudbreaking by any means but it's very slick looking and does what it sets out to do to almost perfection.

[WinterMuse]

I've only spent an hour or two with it, going through the tutorials, and like you it seems to me that the timeline view is too chaotic to be of much use.

However, is the outliner by itself worth $100? I currently use bullet lists Word's to outline, and while the beats aren't collapsable, it's a pretty effective and straightforward way to organize thoughts. I'm wondering what StoryView will add to that.

One thing I do like about it is the slickness of the program; it looks great, it's got nice toobars -- a very well made piece of software.

[GroundlingCom]

It's supposed to integrate well with other software from the same company too, but I have no firsthand knowledge of that.

[Pencey]

Winter,

One other thing they're working on is adding bookmarks to the program so you can bounce from your story notes to your treatment in one click. Other than that though, I honestly can't see how the outline view can be improved upon. It really does give you all you need to write your notes, outline, and treatment with. In my opinion, the branches and colors are very useful for dividing up my thoughts into neat, little piles. I find it to be a marked improvement over storing notes in MM.

You may never need to buy another program for these tasks. Now what's $100 for years worth of use?

[WinterMuse]

Pencey, I agree that $100 isn't much in the scheme of things. I spent twice that on Sophocles and would happily pay another $500 for that little miracle.

It's just that I finally developed a nice system for outlining in MS Word using that program's bookmark feature (which I didn't even know existed a couple weeks ago) so I need to see if StoryView really offers much more. I'll play around with it for abit. Any tips on how to best use it?

[Pencey]

BUMP

[GroundlingCom]

Well ... add me to the club.

I just went out and bought StoryView.

I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, so I can't give any specifics. I recently read one of Bill Martell's tracts on outlining and became convinced that may current hit-or-miss approach wasn't sufficient for what I wanted to acheive. I was playing around with several outliners -- this one is integrated with Dramatica and MM. I hope to make good use of it.

[WinterMuse]

Actually, I'm not really sure about Storyview. I bought it, and started using it, but then switched over to Ecco for my outlining. I think Storyview may be too focused on pretty colors over simple usability. At the moment it's gathering dust on my hard drive.

[GroundlingCom]

Their manual is dang-near incomprensible. I should check for an online version, since it appears to be woefully out of date.

Still, that said -- I'm very much impressed. Don't underestimate "pretty" colors either, hehhe. The idea is to be able to visualize things after all.

I'm still waiting to hear back from anyone on the interoperability with MM and/or Dramatica.

Pretty much meets my needs. I left a message on their board suggesting some sort of FTP-based save function (for safe back-ups). Outside of that, I'm pretty impressed. Moreover, I haven't read a bad word about it.

[Pencey]

Well, I agree with the wonderful pretty colors. After all, using different colors make it easier for your brain to distinguish between things.

What's this Ecco proggy, Winter? I don't know how it could be better as an outliner than Storyview.

[wintonimo]

Ecco is the best PIM ever made, and it also doubles as an excellent outliner. You can see a simple screenshot here:

john.redmood.com/pict563gif.html (http://john.redmood.com/pict563gif.html)

It's an incredibly flexible program that I've started using for all aspects of screenwriting. Note the tabs along the bottom of the page; you can create as many separate pages as you like, so as I'm working I have tabs for my Outline, for Notes, for Characters, for Dialogue, and then I schedule my writing on the calendar. I find the visual simplicity to be easier to work with than StoryView's fancy presentation; after all, we're just dealing with words here.

Ecco is, actually, the best application I've ever used. And it's free. You can learn more here:

www.scaevola.com/eccobasics/ (http://www.scaevola.com/eccobasics/)

[Pencey]

Damn, you weren't kidding. This Ecco proggy kicks ass.

I'm gonna stick with Storyview to outline my scripts but I'm definetely using Ecco as my calender and daily notetaker. Thanks for sharing. :)

[wintonimo]

It really is amazing. The last thing I wanted to do was start using an abandoned 5 year old program, but it's so good I couldn't help myself. There's an excellent yahoo group supporting it, and the guys there will answer any questions you might have.

[whistlelock]

How is that better than a note book?

[wintonimo]

Lots of ways. For starters, you can copy your entire outline and paste it into your screenwriting software. Bingo, you're off and running.

[xPapaJohnx]

Wintonimo:

Thanks for the info on Ecco.

I'd never heard of it before, but I have it now and it looks like a wonderful little program.

[markie g]

Yes, the pretty colours offer the chance to while away HOURS in what I like to think of as creative avoidance, but I'd be doing that with felt tips and reams of paper anyway, so why not sit at my desk and do it?

When I first bought Storyview I used it mainly as an outliner, and to be honest, it doesn't offer anything more than Word if you're prepared to fiddle about with that monster for a few weeks to coax the necessary flexibility from it.

However, I've recently started working on a TV serial, as opposed to the single long form dramas I've worked on before, and suddenly the timeline is becoming fantastically useful. Using those pretty colours I can see at a glance whether I'm spending too much time on the C line, whether I'm hitting the part break hooks, whether the various subplots' turning points are ideally spaced, etc.

I think that to use it solely as an outliner is to miss the main point of the program, and what really sets it apart from the competition, which is how it helps you visualise the story as a whole. It's really about shaping your material after the initial outlining process, and for its terrific.

Already pleased with what was basically an impulse buy, I now consider it an essential part of the crafting process. I'm already looking forward to using it in the rewrites!

Which doesn't mean I won't be trying out Ecco. Anything that helps capture those fleeting ideas as they shoot past has got to be good...

[Pencey]

Good to hear that timeline is so useful for you. If it didn't look so damn chaotic to use, I'd probably be using it myself by now. I'll have to give it a chance and explore it more.

I absolutely love the outliner now. I don't give a rat's ass whether or not you can do the same thing in Word. I think the program is great and $99 spent for years of use is worth it to me.

[markie g]

Go on Pencey, give that timeline a swing!

I forgot to rave about the tracking facility in the timeline view in my last post. It's obviously great for seeing which characters are where very quickly (essential for a multi-strand precinct cop show!), but my latest ruse worked a treat too.

Set up three 'action' tracks - High, Med, Low - and give each sequence or scene an action 'rating' by linking to one of those. Print it out on a single sheet, fill in the track dots and shazam - an instant visual representation of action peaks and troughs flowing from scene to scene, part to part throughout the script.

Fab. I'm so enthusiastic about Storyview because it's the first time I've come across ideas creation/outline software that allows you to shape word-based material in a visual way, and it feels like the product I've been looking for years.

Far better value than the ludicrously overpriced and largely unnecessary script formatting software that's out there, and I say that as a long-term Final Draft user. If people spent more time using this kind of software, and less on worrying about how many millimetres to indent dialogue, I suspect the life of a script reader would be a more fulfilling one (speaks the embittered ex-script reader).

$99? It cost me £99 (about $150?), and I consider it a bargain.

[WinterMuse]

The problem I had with the timeline view was I couldn't read anything. Good idea, poor execution. Also, it's rather difficult to know exactly how long a scene will play until you've written it. I can see this being useful for TV writers, who have very strict time limits, but for spec features, not so much.

[richmcc]

"The problem I had with the timeline view was I couldn't read anything. "

This is something we are hoping to improve. Unfortunately when try fit a large number of events in a visually small space readability is a problem.

There are some quick ways to view items in the timeline mode.

One way is the use of the Scaling tool which allows you to zoom in and zoom out by dragging the mouse while holding down the X key.

Another is by using the Zoom tool. Which you can activate by pressing the Z Key. Once in Zoom mode you can.

* Press the left mouse button to zoom in.
* Press the right mouse button to zoom out.
* Press and hold the left mouse button while dragging to zoom in using a bounding box.

One of my favorite ways to zoom in on an event is using the <ALT> click to select an event and all of its "Children" then use the Fit to View (Ctrl 3) command to zoom down to view the selected events.


"Also, it's rather difficult to know exactly how long a scene will play until you've written it. "

There is an Auto-Estimate feature that will calculate the length of your script in either time or pages by the amount of text written. With this feature enabled, events will increase in size in the timeline window automatically.

[WinterMuse]

Why not just use a mouse-over effect, where the text pops up in a separate window when the mouse is over it?

[richmcc]

That is something that will get strong consideration in the next release. I was disappointed we could not get it in this one.

[markie g]

I agree with WinterMuse's point about the emphasis in the Timeline view on entering beats/scenes/seqs with a set time in mind.

This isn't particularly important when laying out a rough or first draft of something like a spec feature, and can make it seem unduly restrictive. This may be a consequence of the way the manual is written, which constantly reinforces the notion of establishing a duration for scenes. At the outline stage, that's not a major concern - after all, a sequence could run for three or twenty pages, yet the important dramatic beats be summarised in a few sentences.

I wouldn't dream of using the Timeline view to actually start outlining a rough draft - as Wintermuse says, it's too unwieldy. Where it sings is in helping to visually analyse and structure the raw material, which I still think is best entered via the Outline View.

Love the 'mouseover view' suggestion - looking forward to it!

If we're talking wish lists, how about adding the ability to print out track information (numbered, ideally) as a report option? I'd love to be able to do an instant which-Character's-in-which-scene report on a separate sheet.

[richmcc]

"I wouldn't dream of using the Timeline view to actually start outlining a rough draft - as Wintermuse says, it's too unwieldy. Where it sings is in helping to visually analyze and structure the raw material, which I still think is best entered via the Outline View."

I absolutely agree, we added the Outline View in StoryView 2.0 just for that purpose.

If we're talking wish lists, how about adding the ability to print out track information (numbered, ideally) as a report option? I'd love to be able to do an instant which-Character's-in-which-scene report on a separate sheet.

I think that is a wonderful suggestion. If you have other suggestions, the best place to post them is at StoryView Suggestions (http://pub24.ezboard.com/fscreenplaycommessageboardfrm7)

[Pencey]

Wow, they're raising the price back to $199...

[ComicBent]

I am thinking about buying it before the price goes up. Anybody think they are about to come out with a new version and they are trying to unload inventory of their old version?

I also just downloaded ECCO tonight. I thought I would check it out. Anyone have any thoughts about it, since the earlier comments in this thread?

[WinterMuse]

Ecco now runs my life. Best. App. Ever.

[Pencey]

Yeah, they're due for Version 3 anytime now so that's probably what's going on. I doubt if I'll upgrade unless they've totally re-vamped the timeline view and made it more user-friendly. I only bought it for the outline view which serves me fine.

As for Ecco, I use the calender daily because it's the best free one I've found out there. The notes feature is helpful too for on-the-fly cut and paste, but for data storage I have another PIM that I use which has an explorer view instead of that tab view that Ecco uses.

[diehardatthegetty]

first, Wintermuse - you can get collapsible outlines in Word by using the Outline View (under View menu), it's best if you use the Heading styles that are default for each level.

This talk of Storyview has got me curious now:
I understand the Outline fxn, but what does the Timeline do, does it track your storylines by character?

Certainly, I see how what has been discussed is applicable to the planning/writing angle, but what about the rewrite perspective?:

if you import your first draft/last draft from Movie Magic, can Storyview AUTOMATICALLY assign tags to all your different character names etc, so you can track how often they appear in the 120 pages, at what intervals etc....

Can you keep going back and forth like this between to the two applications - sort of like an advanced Index Card View and script view?

sounds very intriguing...

[Pencey]

Hey Rich...can you increase the "recent files" number in Storyview's "File" tab to more than 4?

[Pooks]

I was all primed to love Story View sight unseen just from reading this thread, until I discovered it doesn't come in a Mac version.

So I'd have to buy Virtual PC to even give Story View a trial run, which is annoying.

Somebody with a Mac -- tell me what you think.

[rougetaureau]

diehardatthegetty,
StoryView has one big big problem, and it is exactly this: going back and forth between MMScreenwriter 2K and StoryView is a mess. You WILL lose your tracks' connections, you color-coding and many other things when you go back to StoryView to prepare your next draft!
Some threads discussed the subject, with participation from the guys at Write Bros. They hinted at a big improvement for the next release.
Excellent program, with one big flaw.

[ScreenwriterGuy]

Well, I'd say the one timeline that needs to be completely re-vamped is the one on the walls at Write Bros. :lol

In 2003, Pencey posts a belief that they're due for verision 3 "any time now" (above). More than two years down the line, let's hope that statement isn't even remotely based upon a statement from Write Bros.

Because if it is, that puts the Richmcc statement from august 2004 about being in development of the next MMS (here (http://p083.ezboard.com/fscreenplaycommessageboardfrm40.showMessage?topicI D=73.topic)) into a whole new perspective.

Let's not hope "soon" equals "not for another two years at the least"... |I
And let's all pray that they do the only logical thing, and combine MMS and StoryView into one single program.

[rougetaureau]

And let's all pray that they do the only logical thing, and combine MMS and StoryView into one single program. They agreed that it was the thing to do on some previous post.

[ScreenwriterGuy]

Really? I didn't know that. Cool! 8)

[WinterMuse]

Yes, they're going to have it in stores by 2012...

[diehardatthegetty]

rouge, almost missed your post, but thanks. exactly the info I needed.

[Pencey]

Yes, they're going to have it in stores by 2012...

Maybe I should seal myself inside a cryogenic chamber now so I'm still alive when it comes out...