Hi friends, we've made it!
And today we're presenting Story Architect version 0.4.3 with a brand new module for prose writers!
Novels
- What a cool adventure it was!
- Yeah, yeah, yeah... — my brain, which had no rest for a week, thought.
Anyway, now you can open Story Architect and create a new project with a set of documents for a novel, or you can add it directly to an existing project!
The novel document set includes the sections you're already familiar with. You can customize the necessity of displaying each of them, as usual, in the novel's parameters.
Title page and synopsis
The title page and synopsis provide access to the text editors of these documents.
The title page uses a blueprint from the template you use, but you can modify it completely to your liking. Also, you can add additional pages that you'd want your novel to begin with, such as a dedication, technical information about your work, etc.
Outline
A novel outline provides an opportunity to sketch out the structure of your novel and describe the main points of the chapters and scenes, which you can then use as prompts for yourself as you work through the text.
Text and Cards
The next document is the actual text of the novel.
When working with the text, you may find such tools as the review mode (to add comments to the text) and the 'focus mode' for chapters and scenes (to leave only one chapter in front of you and completely focus on it) useful. These modes are activated using the corresponding buttons in the toolbar at the top.
In addition, the structure navigator is very useful for easy navigation and management of the structure of your writing. To activate it, either click on the arrow pointing to the right or double-click on the text document of your novel in the list of documents (on the left).
To activate card mode, use the mode switch at the top of the navigator (to the right of the menu button).
Statistics
In the statistics document you can see summary information about the novel, such as the number of pages, words, characters, and the ratio of parts, chapters, and scenes.
In fact, this module appears to be more detailed, but it's not yet clear what kind of statistical information would be useful to authors. If you have ideas, please reach out and we will implement them, improving the app for everyone.
Exporting
After the novel has been embodied, it's time to export it from the program to send it on its further journey.
To do this, you can use the Export menu item.
Choose what you want to include, customize the format (at the moment the program supports only PDF and DOCX, we plan to add EPUB and markdown) and additional options. For example, if you don't want to put scene headers in the final document, you can specify to have them replaced with decorative breaks.
Once all the settings are complete and the "Export" button has been pressed, all that remains is to select the folder to save it to and specify the name of the file in which your work will be saved.
What else has happened in the meantime
In addition to implementation of a new module, we have managed to simultaneously improve other parts of the app:
- the ability to configure the modules you use the first time you run the app is added;
- an automatic text correction option is added;
- a replacement of two dashes with an em-dash is added;
- banning of several spaces typed in a row is added;
- a possibility to specify story days for scenes is added;
- user experience with scene tags is improved, now when you add a tag, a list of already created tags is shown and you don't have to enter the tag all over again;
- two dashes can now be used as a scene time delimiter;
- the ability to set sequence descriptions in cards is added;
- a new area at the top and bottom of the scene / document lists is added, it scrolls the list to move the scene to the areas that are not currently visible on the screen;
- in the template parameters, an option of specifying a paragraph mark for block formats is added;
- the speed of the cards module is optimized;
- an issue with the width of the found characters/locations list dialog when searching for all characters or locations in a project is fixed;
- a crash in the comic strip module in some cases when updating panel and line numbers is fixed;
- an app crash in isolation mode when the format of the scene title block is changed to another one is fixed;
- an issue with displaying a blank uneditable page in front of a script/comic is fixed;
- an issue with deleting empty sequences in the script is fixed;
- an issue with displaying the scrollbar in text editors with some application theme settings is fixed.
That's how this update played out. We hope you like it and already think who you'll tell about it and which long-awaited novel you'll start writing :)
Share your impressions with your friends and us. And of course don't forget to create, friends!
We wish you a happy creative mood!