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Story Lite

New app out and new writing courses too

Notes Story Board writing app

Notes Story Board writing app is the latest version!

You are now visiting the site for the original 2010 version of Story Software, Story Lite.
This is the text only version, which is still the most popular. The Story Turbo version with image import, and a few other additional features, came out later.
And the most recent is Notes Story Board, which I made so there was a version with a keyword based name! Because what might Story Turbo be, help for fishes? Or drag racers? (Or drag racing fishes). (Yes I know turbot has a t at the end, this was a joke once).

By the way, there was also a Microsoft Office plugin, that was widely ignored from 2014-2016, so I retired it. So please be clear, we have too many apps. Notes Story Board is the most recent!

Story Turbo is here (it has a useful website with how to write articles) >

Notes Story Board is here >

I also do a writing advice site at Top Writing Courses >

There are also many Kindle how to write ebooks available here >

The courses there are short and to the point, unlike some others. That is why they are ‘top’ – short and sweet.

100% SAFE STORY LITE & STORY TURBO SOFTWARE – from here!

Reassurance 100% SAFE SOFTWARE – from here!

Virus Total 100% safe

Virus Total 100% safe click to enlarge

Please visit Story Turbo for 100% safe version >

I need your feedback – you are not alone!

I sent out a mail last week with the heading “You are not alone… in using Story Software”.

I am making a all new version 3 of Story Turbo and Story Lite, so I need some feedback.
The survey is here:

Story Software Survey – please spend a few minutes to help get a better app >

Version 3 will probably have a new name and have a mix of desktop and online activities.

If you have done it already and have further comments please use our contact form

I will be posting the results of the survey by next week.

Thanks
Geoff Davis

Back to life, back to reality: freeware writing software

I have discontinued Story Lite v2.2 as most people just went for the Story Turbo upgrade (new window) which is same but has Images too.

So the old Story Lite v1.1 freeware is back, this has fewer features but is very usable as a notes writing organizer.

Nag nag nag:
You just have to sign up to download the freeware Story Lite. It still has the old nag screen asking for your email for updates etc, just do that with the same email, will get merged. It is too expensive to recode just for that.

New price for 2013

Sale is over so price is going up to $3.95 or £2.50 – this is less than the start price last year. App prices are lower, so go with the flow.

Our other app Story Turbo is also going up to a similar amount. Turbo has image import as well.

Don’t forget to download the extras from the download page if you have not yet done so.

How to write using Story Software – mini-mini, Ku Klux Klan costumes and Burkas

You might wonder where this blog is going with a title like that. Well, in the modern way, I apologise to everyone before I start, for whatever, whenever, whoever. So there!

I was chatting to a friend about Story Software and he noticed that many so-called ‘for writers’ word processors (those aimed at serious writers) have a blank slate/screen, with few or no buttons, menus etc. This is basically a simple or minified UI (user interface) so people can concentrate on the task in hand and not get distracted.

As a biological example, higher animals have a complex and expressive area for sending/receiving information (the face) and a simple UI for mating. The intense relationship between the two might be about information processing in tiers, complex to simple, but that is getting into Rudy Rucker territory.

In the writing realm, consider the over-crowded and ever-changing UI of all-in-one software like MS Word, and a paper and pen.

So to focus, simplify the interface.

Story Software tip: use the shortcut Ctr-Shift-A to get your current text box or image to expand to full screen. This still has the toolbar at the top but I am adding a ‘minify the minify’ option to remove even that. This will be in v2.3 and called the mini-mini button.

It is actually easier to edit text at 100% so probably better to make your main typing box full screen manually but whatever, there are many ways to get the same result.

A simple user interface seems to be especially appealing to Mac users, so on the Mac everything will also go white, apart from the text, which will go whitey-grey.

NaNoWriMo

Last week saw the start of NaNoWriMo the November novel-writing sprint. I am starting a new graphic novel, this will be blogged about on Story Turbo.

How to write: ideas:

Talking of minimal UIs, in the area of costumes, there is the Ku Klux Klan’s white tent with eye holes, and the black burka with eye slot (I suppose, dominance and submission).

Story starter: two characters, one in KKK garb, other in a burka: ‘eyes meet across a crowded room’. Write a story to get to that point, without offending anyone (unless you really want to).

The above story starter could lead to tolerance, intolerance, racism, anti-racism (set in a Council office), aliens (for SF), student fancy dress party (for coming of age), spanking (if you want some sales), a graphic novel with black and white illustrations, perhaps a bit of grey…

Better, faster, more benefits for writing, creativity, productivity

New Story Lite v2.2 is out next week, the installer is made so I will put it online soon. I listed the benefits in the last blog, well OK, I listed the features.

NEWS: Live! To buy a Story Lite v2.2 license at sale price of 95c, go here >

Benefits are:

Easy to work with many boxes of notes and ideas because you can select and move around groups now, not just one box at a time.

This means you can make say a title box and a main text box, and drag them about, also clone them for repeats.

Neater line up of rows and columns, this will help you think since the brain works fastest with simple layouts. The snap to grid tool means you can set say 20 pixels as your grid.

Transparent text boxes and Z level, so you can make layered texts.

Instant shortcuts to zoom to boxes or view. Some of these are in the current version but there are more for power users.

Better paging system on the arrow keys, makes it easier to ‘paginate’ your layouts for presentations or slide shows.

Better web export, on a Publish button, and a link to ‘how to’ guides to get your work into Blogs, Content Management Systems (CMS) and Social Media, and anywhere else. There will be more on this topic later.
And in v2.3 (along later) the process will be automated.

You can lay text directly onto anything else, and control the layers – using the transparent text box feature, and the Z levels control. I will make an example of using this next week.

So, not long to wait.

Any ideas for new features just drop a line via Contact page.

More on new Story Lite v2.2 out this week

Story Lite v 2.2 is due out. We will go to v2.2 not 2.0 as we are adding more features.

  • Transparent box backgrounds
  • Z level – can layer boxes (z is height above flat page / screen surface)
  • More exports and accurate HTML Web

This is in addition to all the other new features we already mentioned, group boxes, snap to grid, 400% zoom, recent file list, many more functions and shortcuts.

This means you can do quite artistic text page layouts if you want.

Later we are adding many other exports to social media sites and blogs. This will be along in the next update due in a month.

Comments and feedback for new features welcome, as they might get in quite soon!