New user… I was surprised to see the "scenes" feature under WorldBuilding and not under Writing. Also, the scenes can't be organized in any way.
This is more about my expectation based on other writing tools, but it's also an inquiry: will the "Writing" section of Notebook.ai eventually include scene or beat-based organizational tools (outline creation, essentially) like StoryShop.io, yWriter, Scrivener, etc.?
Or does this feature exist and I'm just not seeing it?
Thanks!
Writing, in this case, is more designed for figuring out how to piece everything you create in Worldbuilding together, hence the documents, discussions, and prompts sections. Documents would be more of a catch-all for when you want to write things down, so if you wanted to write chapters or create your own outlines, then it would work for you. However, there is no outline tool currently on this website.
I think that the Scene tab is a bit bare-bones when it comes to fully creating a scene that you could insert into a book, but you can also create your own subcategories to fill out. If you want a thing to say "Who says this? Who does that?" you can create a tab for it, but I get the feeling that you'll need to make your own subcategories to fit how YOU write.
It's all kind of confusing (at least to me), but you can create your own writing tools in this website to help you out. Whether or not we get updates for things like an outline creator or a way to organize scenes both by Universe and chronologically is entirely dependent on the powers-that-be of Notebook.ai
Hope this helps!
Thanks, @Yamatsu. I'm just a little surprised there's no story structure / outlining feature on this platform, since I believe it was created to help folks complete NaNoWriMo. Maybe it's on the to-do list..? @andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer) could maybe shed a little light on that..?
This is a great question. The "Writing" section of Notebook.ai will eventually include more organizational tools, especially those using/integrating Scenes. What I've personally been doing is @mentioning scenes in outline documents so I can move them around, reorder them, and write quick descriptions, but obviously I want to do tons more.
What's on the to-do list right now is a plot-based organizer that lets you import scenes (and whatever other worldbuilding pages you'd like) so you can organize them with any extra information you'd like. I'm planning on then tying that plot outline to documents, so you can either import your outline into a document and write it all or have separate documents for each scene.
It's a pretty hefty project and hasn't made it to priority #1 yet (although I've made a few prototypes to test small pieces of it) so I don't have any estimate for when it will be done, but it is something on my radar that I want to make.
I'd love to hear any and all feedback/suggestions you have on the idea, how you'd use it, what you like/dislike from other platforms, and so on if you've got the time (here's a form if you don't want to use the forums, too) – it's super helpful for me in planning/designing the feature. I originally built Notebook.ai to help myself prepare for NaNoWriMo (and originally just had it open next to Scrivener while I wrote) and I can write code that works well for me, but feedback and suggestions from everyone else has been invaluable in making sure new features are helpful to everyone and not just me. :)
I'll give it some brain cycles for sure, @andrew (Our Supreme Lord and Overseer). I've used just about everything out there, and so I have lots of ideas about what comes close. I'll have more for you (or if you like, I'd be willing to get on a call with you) in a few days.
I think my dream would be something with the simplicity of Workflowy (my number one can't-live-without tool) and the flexibility / customization of Airtable (but without Airtable's lousy UX). Look at yWriter, too…
Anyway… more soon…
I appreciate the brain cycles. This is something I've been mentally working through the best way to implement for some time now also. I'm not familiar with Workflowy, but I'll definitely check it out. yWriter is nice but I'm definitely no expert on it yet. One benefit of being an online format is that we can iterate and improve as we go (instead of just shipping something and hoping it's perfect), so maybe it's about time to just put the pedal to the floor and start working on something to get a tighter feedback loop on it going.
Thanks for the prod. Sometimes that's all it takes to get the inspiration flowing and the code writing itself. :)