Screenshots is a regular feature by Simon Groth, highlighting a project, app, or other resource of interest.

Beemgee
An online authoring tool

Beemgee is a web-based tool designed demystify complex narrative, breaking it down into its components, and step its users through the minutiae of storytelling, one concept at a time. Essentially, it is a storyboarding tool, using a card-based interface to provide a broad overview of a project. It guides its users through the often mechanical processes writers undertake—character profiles, switching between chronology and narrative order—cleverly integrating them into an engaging visual design. Beemgee’s bet is that these tasks can be approached step by step, like baking. Maybe they’re right. But storytelling is an idiosyncratic process and the inevitable assumptions all tools such as Beemgee must make are unlikely to suit all writers. Having said that, this tool’s real value may yet lie not so much in the creation of new stories, but in the breakdown and analysis of existing ones.

As a web- based tool, it also comes with built-in caveats. Using an app within a browser window is not for everyone. Even widely adopted apps like Google Docs have always felt to me like swimming fully clothed. It also raises concerns about the long-term storage and accessibility of its data. But Beemgee does bring a fresh and well-thought-out approach to the tricky business of story planning.

Beemgee is available to try for free online with the option of a subscription for additional features.

When I read Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid, I always flipped to the end to see which route through the story allowed me to escape violent death, and made my choices accordingly. This obviously messed with any sense of narrative coherence or forward progress. It also meant that, my choices never had consequences, not really. So when I came to write interactive fiction, I was glad to do it on a platform that wouldn’t allow massive cheats like me to game the system – and so distance themselves from the story.

Enter Fiction Express For Schools. This publishing start-up is one of those very simple ideas that you can’t believe someone hasn’t done before. The company offers serialized, interactive stories to its subscribers ­– primarily junior schools, mostly in England, but also available to English-speaking schools around the world.

Chapter vote and a winning cover designed as part of the logo designing competition.

The readers interact by voting online for the path they’d like the story to take, as well as via the Fiction Express Blog, and through competitions that also help shape the story.

I started writing for them last year, and it’s not like any writing experience I’ve ever had before. Faster, scarier – because you’re handing over a large degree of narrative control to a bunch of tiny strangers – but also much less wracked with self-doubt. When there’s no time to agonize, there’s no agony.

Here’s how it works. Each week, for five weeks, you write a chapter, giving a few possible paths for the story to go down next. For example, you might ask “Does the heroine go into the dark cave, or explore the mountains above”, though usually it’s a choice with more at stake, morally speaking, than that. The readers then vote online, and whichever path gets the most votes, wins. Basically, it’s Choose Your Own Adventure meets The X-Factor.

The “live” element of it means the reader is forced to wait for the next installment. I can’t help feeling this is part of the pleasure for the readers, allowing anticipation to build. There’s something frustratingly enjoyable about being denied instant gratification when you’re used to it – with books or videogames, say, that you can pick up or put down whenever you like.

The writer’s in the same position as the reader – until the votes come in on a Tuesday, after the chapter going up on the Friday – you have to wait to find out what’s going to happen next out of the options you’ve provided. Sometimes those options are life or death.

One thing that really surprised me was how kind the children were in the choices they made. Perhaps I’m cynical, but I’d expected them to want to put the characters in peril, to make their lives hard, to make them, well, suffer. But actually, they often made the choice that seemed (at least in the short term) to protect the character and get them out of trouble.

This often turned out to be the most interesting narrative choice, as it usually meant taking the quick fix out of trouble that brought even more problems down on the character’s head in the long run.

Of course, while the readers vote for where the story will go next, it’s still within a structured context. Having run a lot of writing workshops with kids, I know that if you give completely free rein their stories can spiral into beautiful but baffling chaos, introducing new characters and changing location with the dizzying pace of a Bollywood set piece. With Fiction Express, the writer is the readers’ puppet,  while retaining enough control to give the story shape and drive it forwards.

Planning a piece of writing like this involves a lot of diagrams, a lot of “If X then Y” plot thinking. Necessarily it means a lot of roads not taken, too; a whole host of ghost paths that you never got to write, and the readers never got to read. There’s also an element of seat-of-the-pants improvisation of course – sometimes, a new idea emerges from the choices the readers have made, which leads the story to a whole new place you never envisaged.

As well as the voting, the readers interact directly with the author, via the Fiction Express blog.  Alongside the stories, I blogged here, as do all the Fiction Express authors. I’d write about what was happening in the story, I’d ask questions, I’d post doodles and “what ifs”. The readers came to the blog to ask questions, discuss the story – saying what they liked, what they just didn’t get, what made them angry – and post their own ideas for stories.

Often, in class, they’d write their own versions of the paths not taken. But they also helped to shape the story in ways other than voting. For example, while I was writing my second Fiction Express story, we ran a competition to design a school emblem for the main character’s school. This was then folded back into the story, as part of the last chapter. Different Fiction Express writers interact in different ways, but I think what the kids really enjoy about it is the opportunity to get one on one attention from the author, and to feel part of the process. To feel like they’re in the inner circle, I suppose.

The business side of things:

For an annual subscription of £199 + VAT, a school gets 12 interactive e-books as well as comprehensive weekly teacher resources to help them guide discussions about the stories and do spin-off classroom work such as creative writing, art and comprehension exercises. Each book is written “live”, so no cheating is possible for the readers. They make a choice, and they’re stuck with it, though pupils often write the paths not taken as stories of their own. Over 350 schools are signed up, which means thousands of pupils reading the same stories at the same time around the country and abroad. This publishing start-up was the brainchild of CEO Paul Humphrey, who previously founded, and still runs, book packager Discovery Books. Laura Durman is the managing editor of the project. The authors are all professional, published authors.

Ah, tools. Such a seductive word, with that tactile, workmanlike ring. And such seductive implications. Accumulating tools feels like the very opposite of time wasting. Tools promise to transform us into humble, brine-browed word-carpenters, conscientiously whittling our masterpieces in brain-workshops full of sunshine and space, while topless, and grunting. In short, tools rule.

Of course, as a writer, any tools other than your mind, your fingers or voice, and a basic recording device, are entirely superfluous. Browsing the app store, watching little download circles rotate and fiddling with complicated settings are all byways, not highways, to becoming a laser-focused sentence-whore. In fact, reading articles about good online productivity tools for writers is one of the best ways to feel productive without achieving a damn thing. Close this tab! Go! Write!

Still here? Okay, I have to admit that from deep within the towering dung-heap of procrastination-friendly digital shiny things, I have managed to uncover a few gems that consistently make me write more, and very possibly better. Enjoy, argue, pass them on, and don’t be shy about suggesting a few of your own.

Scrivener

From the first day I tried Scrivener, “the first and only word processing program designed specifically for the messy, non-linear way writers really work”, I knew I could never go back to the plodding constraints of Word or even the sensual pleasures of paper and pen. Like many who grew up with screens, I write in a highly architectural way, and Scrivener brilliantly anticipates exactly what my chaotic brain needs.

An independent piece of software developed by an aspiring writer who couldn’t find a way to order his research and his notes, Scrivener has won numerous awards for its ingenious system of folders, corkboards, notes and composing windows, which allow you to keep all your references, drafts, notes and inspirations in one place and instantly navigate between them; tag, categorise and search for super-specific elements; track character arcs or themes; and eventually, download the whole manuscript in the auto-format of your choice, from Kindle eBook to screenplay. Normally a manual hater, I strongly recommend completing the on-screen walkthrough, which will help you understand all sorts of clever shortcuts, details and customisations to get the most from the software. In practice, I spend most of my time in the simple ‘blackout’ composing screen, which focuses your text in the middle of clean, distraction-free black page. But I would be lost without the ‘snapshot’ function, which allows you to capture and store the current version of your document at any time, and the synopsis panes, which force me to summarise each chapter succinctly as I go. A no-brainer. Download it now.

Evernote

Inspiration usually strikes in places where it is difficult to whip out a notebook – on the tube, on the toilet, in a work meeting, at the gym. I always loved the idea of carrying a beautiful personalised Moleskine and fountain pen wherever I went, but in practice I would forget, or spill coffee on it, or run out of ink, and when I returned to my scribblings they were not only illegible but impossible to organize into a coherent structure.

Evernote is the best digital note-taker I’ve come across. This free, simple app allows you to capture notes on your phone via text, audio, video and photo, then synchs them across all your devices, such as your laptop and tablet. You can search by tag, keyword or even text within an image, and easily transfer notes to another application such as Scrivener. Using your online Evernote account, you can also access them from anywhere in the world, safe in the knowledge that they are always floating in the cloud, and that you need never again lose that perfect opening sentence that you scribbled on a paper napkin with eyeliner. Oh, that sentence. You still mourn for that sentence, don’t you?

Shareist 

Fresh out of beta, Shareist is the quickest and easiest tool I’ve found for capturing and organising the research and inspiration I find on the web. An evolution of the old bookmarking platforms, Shareist provides you with a button for your browser which will capture any webpage, blog, video or image; allow you to title, tag and comment on it; and then turn it into an entry in a private ‘notebook’, which you can edit, format and even export as a book or a blog post.

The key feature here for me is the privacy. Online bookmarking has traditionally been seen as a social facilitator, whereby you display, share and discuss cool stuff you’ve found. Shareist, on the other hand, is geared towards helping you create and curate your own personal treasure trove. It allows you to move more quickly through the glittering mines of the web without getting distracted by individual nuggets; just chuck ‘em in your Shareist bucket, and return to them when you have more leisure for Gollum-like fingering. The free version only allows you to create one notebook, which can be a pain if you’re working with multiple projects or themes, but it’s definitely worth a try. 

Lulu 

You’ve finally finished your first draft. First, you need a drink or twenty; then, you need some perspective. After months spent nose to laptop, it’s hard to read your story with fresh eyes, so take a week off, sign up to Lulu.com and turn your draft into a proper book. I have heard more good word of mouth about Lulu than any other self-printing platform. It is clear, easy and quick to use, offers competitive pricing and allows you to order just one copy. A 300 page black and white paperback will set you back around eight quid, and will be shipped within 3-5 days from whichever global print operation is nearest your address, so with a good wind you could have your embryonic darling on your doormat within a week.

This is not an encouragement to consider your first slew of brain diarrhoea as a finished product – nor an excuse to spend hours mocking up cover art complete with ‘Booker Shortlist 2013’ sticker (don’t pretend you haven’t); but it will help to de-familiarise your work. Your Lulu book should be approached as a single working copy to scribble all over, not a mass order to share. Read it through once without making notes to experience the overall flow and only then pick up your red pen. You won’t want to print off a full new copy after every draft, but after the marathon of the first, it really helps.

Quit

We don’t need scientific research to know that the Internet is turning us into goldfish. When I finally, properly committed to writing my novel eighteen months ago, I found myself having to entirely rewire my behaviour. At first I could only manage a few sentences before I cast around for a link to click. I was sure that I could physically feel my brain fluttering like a moth trapped in a jar. With practice, it has calmed considerably, but a ‘quick email check’ still has the ability to turn me into the writer’s equivalent of Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth, dashing breathlessly from Pinterest oubliette to Facebook bog while the great social media Bowie-god in the sky waves a hardback in front of me with a mockingly raised eyebrow.

I’m not a big believer in online ‘nanny tools’ such as Cold Turkey or Chrome Nanny, which forcibly shut down timewasting applications or restrict your web access.  I am, however, a big fan of the rewarding sensation of self-control. So acquaint yourself with that unfortunately Americanised little menu-option called Quit. Yes, turn shit off. Close your email application. Shut down your browser. Deactivate Skype and MSN. Don’t just put your phone face down on the desk, tuck it in your bag and do up the zip. Promise yourself a ‘check-in session’ every ninety minutes. I still sometimes find this really difficult; I recommend meditation as an effective accompaniment to keep your focus muscles lean and mean.