Making a writing web app

[Aosto]

I've been thinking of building a website where one can organize their writing. I need suggestions from fellow writers on what you'd like to see in a site like that. It'll be free to use initially. If it becomes popular I'll take donations to cover operating costs.

 

[Scribble]

Steerpike posted a link to Scriptito, a Chrome extension similar to Scrivener or yWriter. I would look at this one, to see what works well, not well.

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-resources/9140-scriptito-chrome-extension.html

Here are some wild and wacky feature ideas based on how I "story-build", perhaps a great programming challenge too!

I like to make relationships between entities: characters, antagonists, items, events, places, etc... I draw a lot of bubble diagrams when I brainstorm. Whenever I look at these software, I feel like I lose the wealth of my story-building, which are the relationships between them. For me, it's the relationships between entities that start to create the story. I have stayed with spiral notebooks because I have it all in one place.

I would like the ability to have multiple Relationships between different entities, of different types and add text to flesh them out.

Let say I have John, Fred, and Mary.

John ------ conflict (competing for same job as lead scientist ) ------ Fred
John ------ conflict (both have a crush on Mary ) ------ Fred
John ------ history (they went to high school together ) ------ Fred
John ------ history (he lived there for 10 years ) ------ Pittsburgh
Mary ------ conflict (John and Mary had an affair, now working together) ------ John
etc...

It would be great to see all the conflicts, history, etc... listed by entity. One tab could show a list of all John's conflicts, with start and end date/times, with the ability to click the link to the related item to view that.

I would also love to have a Timeline. A visual timeline where I can link Events, Plot Points, & Scenes/Chapters. Events are things that happen, but not necessarily within a scene. They may be Scenes are where characters have experiences, they may occur during Events.

Threads would be a neat feature. You could have a Timeline view that shows Threads in parallel. So, if you have elements on the Timeline, you can visually sort out when things are happening. This may highlight problems with multiple POV... characters in Thread A aren't spending the night in a mall that was overrun by zombies earlier that day in Thread B. Also, if Location X is halfway across the world, characters in Thread C shouldn't be able to rescue characters in Thread D, unless they have teleportation.

Perhaps a limit of two Threads per "story" in the free version? That's an incentive if people want to write epic fantasy with it.

You should be able to label Entities as you like. Not everyone likes to call a thing what you think it should be called. What I call Scenes someone else could call Chapter. For me Scense have a main POV, a setting, characters, maybe items, etc... whatever artifacts I need to assemble. I like to work with scenes, and I don't even think about chapters until later. A tool for people like me to organize Scenes into chapters, or even split them out over the edge of two chapters for a cliffhanger would be neat, but not necessary. A split-scene/chapter function/wizard might be a nifty PRO feature. It would duplicate the elements, making a copy, but you choose a point in the text at which to split. Kinda fancy!

Back to relationships, I would like to be able to tag Relationships with start and end date/time linked to the Timeline, where appropriate. If there is a history item, for example, when John and Fred graduated together, that had to be in a particular year. So, if this is a novel where dates need to be kept tidy, I may need to know when they finished school, versus. So if Event "Zombie Uprising" happened over a week in September, you could coordinate where characters are, and when other events happen.

Here is an example of how multiple Threads could relate to a single Timeline visually.

 

[Aosto]

All very good ideas, most I think wouldn't be to difficult to implement. I'll jot these down and work on them in modules.

If anyone has any other suggestions, post here or pm me. In Tue coming months I'll get it online and get an open beta going.

 

[Devor]

I learned to write in a chatroom playing D&D online, and for me I sometimes miss that atmosphere. There's one piece of that atmosphere which relates to a writing program, and it's the input-box.

In a chatroom, you type a paragraph into a single-line box, so you can only see the last nine words or so you've typed until you hit enter and the paragraph pops on screen. The thing about this limitation is that it gets you typing and not editing. If I type garbage I can backspace, but for the most part I only see enough of what I'm typing in the current paragraph to finish my sentence. That was really helpful, to me, for getting the words out and not over-thinking them.

I've looked for writing programs that let you have a single-line input box, but I haven't seen any. I assume it's too counter-intuitive to ask for.

 

[Scribble]

Gives me an idea for a Scribble box!

One of the problems I have with these software is that, I have ideas, but I don't know yet what to do with them. I have a stream of ideas, some of which are cool, some are vague ideas, whatever occurs to me.

Tari wears her father's goggles. She says she is going to become a pilot, but she is afraid to fly.
Bean stops a group of transport guys from taunting a lone artilect. He feels guilty?
The city is laid out like a seven armed octopus, with trenches for dirigibles to dock, and three arms into the sea for ships/subs
Alien life form evolved with trilateral symmetry
a hat that steals your memories

I would love to be able to Scribble things down, and Sort them out later. A single line box would be great for that, AND EVEN BETTER... accept SMS text messages with Scribbles. You walk around town and text ideas to your writing app, then you log in and sort it all out!

You come into a list of Scribbles and deal with all your musings. Click on an item, and save as an Entity, in a Story, or as a note on an existing Entity. Or, as a new Story.

Yes, Scribbles will be trademarked.

 

[Aosto]

I see your point. I could implement a blind type mode. Let you select the size of the input to help resist the urge to edit. I like that idea.

 

[Steerpike]

You might take a look at Yarny as well, just for some ideas on what they've done.

 

[Scribble]

Oh yeah, a Scribble app for iOS... when connected, it can send all your Scribbles to your app.

PRO future feature... download a read-only copy of your story ideas to an App for offline perusal, add Entity notes to be synced when connected. For example, you review a character or a scene, and just add Notes to it.

 

[Aosto]

Thank you steerpike. Another feature I'm thinking of is one of community. You can select snippets and mark them for review. They'll go into a showcase section where others can review and comment.
I'm not looking to profit from this, so it'll likely be free to use unless you want more space, then I'll have to charge.
I want an all encompassing app. One where you don't have to leave the page. Or use different sites because they have different features.

 

[Scribble]

A research scrapbook tool would be great. Add links to web pages, add images, etc... Right now, I have bookmarks, folders, and notes all in separate places.

 

[Devor]

A research scrapbook tool would be great. Add links to web pages, add images, etc... Right now, I have bookmarks, folders, and notes all in separate places.

Have you looked at Evernote?

Aosta, I don't know how serious you are about designing an app, but if you're serious, the thing to do is figure out the one need your app fills in a way that others don't, and for everything else, integrate with the other tools that are out there.