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Creating character/storyboards
I'm just wondering whether anyone knows of a decent tool for Windows that would allow me to create character, location story notes. I'd ideally like something that's a kind of database that I could click a character or whatever and add some canon or thoughts relating to them. I've got a couple of ideas for several series of stories, but there will be some overlap between them and I don't want to go outside canon or forget a small detail that could prove an "eh?" moment later on (e.g Worgen Death Knights in World of Warcraft never really being explained).
I'm currently using a combination of Sticky Notes and Word to keep track of these, but it has a habit of going wrong quite a lot (although this is mainly down to Sticky Notes magically disappearing things). I've had a look at a few storyboard designers, but they seem to rely mainly on graphics (and I know that's mainly what they'd be used for having done a degree in multimedia design) so I'm probably phrasing it wrong.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I'm currently using a combination of Sticky Notes and Word to keep track of these, but it has a habit of going wrong quite a lot (although this is mainly down to Sticky Notes magically disappearing things). I've had a look at a few storyboard designers, but they seem to rely mainly on graphics (and I know that's mainly what they'd be used for having done a degree in multimedia design) so I'm probably phrasing it wrong.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Comments
Liquid Story Binder..its not free ($22.98 usd at the moment) but it is extensive and ideal if you are one to go deep into story and world building, timeline, adding images, dossiers etc
http://www.blackobelisksoftware.com/
yWriter5 is Free has basic features similar to the one above but not as extensive.
http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html
I use an outliner app on my Ipad for basic storing of ideas, to-do list, basic database tree-its called "Carbonfin Outliner" if you have an ipad? of course the downside is not being able to directly copy and paste any written content into a twine project.
But you can sync it with your iphone or ipod version of the same app which is ideal if you are out and about and strike up on an idea or want to work on your character building while on the bus or something.
Or if you don't have an ipad there is something similar I used to use a lot before i got an ipad and free.."Keynote" its a simple yet powerful outliner...if i remember correctly you can run it off a usb stick too on another computer https://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/
Update: Just checked out another outliner that seems really good..https://workflowy.com/ its browser based but also has an ipad app also.
Hopefully one of those will meet your needs?
Unfortunately I don't have an iPad and prefer Android devices so iPad apps weren't viable.
I decided to go with Keynote as it seems to do what I need and I can organise the structure so that I can have characters/places/items specific to a story, series or "universe". Also, the USB option is better because it allows me portability and I don't have to worry about sending any changes to either cloud storage or dropping them on the fileserver.
Once again, many thanks.
Looks like Twine supports annotation passages (a passage tagged with the word 'annotation') that can be used to hold notes within a story itself.
A good suggestion as I originally considered using a load of Twine passages, with links to other characters that had interaction or influence on the characters, as a separate file to collect the notes in as I like the 'grid' display. The problem was I saw that it could easily get unwieldy quite quickly. Annotations wouldn't really work for me because the characters and locations span several stories and not just the one. That would cause me a problem with keeping the annotations up to date with all of them if I added something relating to a character that would have an affect in other stories. It's easier for me to just create a "reference book" that I can scan through if I need to check something doesn't conflict with previous canon or lore.
It's a simple basic outline for a linear Virtual Story experiment. We didn't add any concept art as of yet, my wife is working on that currently and we'll add it later. We broke the story into "scenes" and then I simply created a linear progression through the story. Each scene contains elements for display, dialog and other notes. I posted it on my personal website so one of the other collaborators, who lives in Britain, could access the outline.
The upside was that it was very simple and quick to code, took part of a day once the story was "broken up" in Twine passages.
Cheers.