We found the package a bit intimidating at first. Even after reviewing the printed and online tutorials, the terminology and methodologies still seemed foreign and, to be blunt, oppressive. The screen tips that popped up didn't seem to explain what each of the numerous buttons did. A number of sample pieces offered some insight--Romeo and Juliet, Run Lola Run, and Huckleberry Finn were most familiar to us--although the biggest hurdle remained awkward navigation in the interface. The most helpful component was thankfully the Help menu, and after a quick review of the warmly written introductory material, we felt much better prepared to delve into StoryView.

Once we started plugging in our own plot, the package really blossomed. A basic knowledge of data hierarchy helped us quickly grasp the parent-child relationships that exist between acts, scenes, and beats, and, most importantly, how these can be manipulated. Color-coding of event blocks helped us quickly visualize where we had placed conflict, action, love scenes, etc.

The StoryView package seems most suited for commercial (or presentation) forms of writing--TV, commercials, movies, and the like that are time dependent. For writers of fiction, StoryView could best be applied in mapping out the story line and developing the interrelationships of the piece as a whole.

After entering most of our screenplay into StoryView, we played with the timeline, connections, and tracks. The timeline isn't only applicable to second-by-second commercial writing or movie layout, but can also be applied to any unit of time that you wish to use. The timeline lets the writer think beyond chronology and write beats in any order, be it plugging in a twisted ending or a car chase at the end of Act 2. Connections bind two (or more) units of a story together, ensuring that when you change or move one, the other is also affected. And tracks are the most enticing feature of StoryView: for authors looking to track a specific theme, relationship, prop, location, idea, or character throughout the story, setting up a track function will show you all instances where that element appears.

And if, like many writers, you like to see your work in hard copy for proofing, editing, and further reworking, you'll appreciate the reports available for output, which allow you to customize either the outline or timeline view on paper to include watermarks, specialized notes, timeline, and anything else you've seen onscreen.

Overall, StoryView brings a sense of direction and structure to even the most creative of spirits. --Emilie Herbst

StoryView lets you create the elements of your story and arrange them on a timeline. You see what pieces make up your story, as well as how much time (movies, TV, events) or how many pages (novels, other stories) each piece occupies. Zoom back for a full panorama of your entire story, or zoom in to focus on the smallest detail. Take spontaneous ideas and place them at any point in your story's timeline--even if you don't know what comes before or after that piece. You add the building blocks of your story in any order and immediately see any gaps.

Create virtual index cards that contain unlimited text: items can range from a few words up to hundreds of pages. Story elements are easily manipulated and rearranged, regardless of their length. Visually track almost any kind of information in your story, such as character and thematic development, or plot twists. Print a map of your story: you decide how many pieces of paper you want your story to fit on--from a single sheet to several sheets, depicting the timeline of your entire story. You can even print your story's timeline on a large, continuous sheet of paper using a large format printer (usually available at larger copy centers). StoryView also prints standard reports that show the text of your story in outline or standard text form.

My initial experience with the program was less than encouraging. I found the interface to be confining and more often than not confusing. The program's tool bars are stuffed with dozens of ill identified buttons. Believing I just was not prepared to tackle the project I took to reading all the features of "Storyview" after working through the online tutorial and reading the entire help index I tried the process again with similar results. Writing with "Storyview" is a frustrating process.

The examples provided were less than helpful. "Storyview" boasts being able to display ones entire story timeline, which is true but when you achieve any sort of detail the story elements become eye straining and text is presented in all different directions, inverted, If one wanted to insert a small scene somewhere two thirds of the way through the plot you would have to hunt for the place to put it scene by scene. I fail to see how this is an improvement over 3X5 cards. The problem being that the timeline is not an outline at all it is just a list of the narrative of the events in the story.

The largest insult is the fact that the brainstorming template is a largely a blank page with three areas for story points, character summaries and story events. Wow that was helpful.

In the end how did I plot out my story? With 3X5 cards.

For starters, I dispise index cards and all the standard approaches to organizing. Found them too limiting, and not in synch with the way I think. I'm more comfortable having all of my book related materials on my computer than I am having the manuscript on the hardrive and everything else tacked to the wall or whatever. Because that stuff never worked for me I tried not to use it. The result was a poorly organized folder of Word docs and several bastardized Lotus applications that never really got the job done.

Storyview gets the job done. It presents in a way I'm comfortable with and the features are incredible. I've gone from not being able to keep up with stuff I needed to know, to exploring and structuring in greater depth b/c the tool box is so full that I can't pass it up.

I use Storyview in combination with the companion software Dramatica and a competitor's product named Power Structure. Might be a tad overkill, and certainly isn't because of any shortcoming with Storyview. If you're on the fence; comfortable with software tools for your creative projects, but hesitant to invest in something that might demand your writing become a slave to its programing. Or if you are weary of buying some poor improvement on the jokes that were first generation writing programs, Storyview is an excellant test-the-waters intro to a new realm of tools.