Here at MUO, we love writing and have always tried to bring you tools that will help with your writing, such as Nancy’s guide to inspiring apps for writers, Jeffry’s list of Firefox addons for writers, and Karl’s review of VocabGrabber. Today I’d like to offer an impressive open source application called Storybook, which can automate the entire writing process for you. This way, you can focus on what you do best – writing stories.

Writing A Novel With Storybook

What impressed me the most about this organizational tool is that it is capable of helping you sort out and organize even the most complicated novel with multiple storylines. The software comes loaded with tools to create, sort and connect the chapters of your book with individual scenes, your list of developed characters, and you can even “strand” together your scenes into a sequence that forms individual storylines that you can link together.

To get started, just click on New and name the novel or story that you’re working on. The main screen is divided into a left panel for the development of your strands, and the right panel where you can explore your entire story by individual elements like characters, locations and more.

To create a new scene (strand), just click the green plus icon, assign a date and title to the scene, and then write a quick summary of what you want that scene to entail. Don’t worry about the strand you’ve assigned the scene to – you can change it at any point, and you can also link it to other strands later.

You can create new characters and locations from the main screen, or from the individual strand creation window. Name your character and note all of the characteristics. The software will keep track of everything for you, so any time you need to remember how old your character is or what they do for a living, you can just go back to your explorer and click on the character.

For each scene, you’ll link together characters and fictional locations that are involved in the scene. This builds the storyline database that will help you keep everything organized. This way, later when you’re trying to remember if a certain character ever interacted with another character or visited a certain location – you’ll have a way to double check.

As you build story strands and link them together, you’re essentially building the outline of your larger story or novel. As the plot gets larger, this becomes an amazing tool that keeps everything organized for you so that you don’t have to rack your brain trying to keep everything straight. No more risk of inadvertently creating an impossible plot – for example, like having a character accidentally meet another character for the “first time”, multiple times in your story.

Of course, Storybook does provide the basics. You can form a general outline of each chapter by clicking on “New Chapter” from the menu and quickly describing what the chapter is going to be about. This is a good first step before you start digging into the plot and building your individual strands.

My favorite part of this software is the “Novel Explorer” bar where you can see every element of your entire story at a quick glance. Characters, locations, strands, chapters and even subsections of your chapters are all available from this one spot. This makes it a total breeze to research your planned storyline while you’re in the midst of writing your current chapter.

Another of my favorite parts of this software is the “idea” feature. Click on the lightbulb at the top of the main window and the “Ideas” tool will pop up. Here you can jot down a quick idea that you don’t really know what to do with yet. You’ll never forget a great idea again, and you can just come back later to figure out where you want to work it into your plot, and track the status of each of your ideas by moving them into the started, completed or abandoned categories.

You can really see the power of the software when you check out the charts and tools section. The software lets you see every aspect of your story in a chart format that connects characters and strands by date or scene. It’s an amazing thing. There’s even a Gantt chart for your characters!

If you’ve ever thought writing your own novel but were afraid the process would be far too complicated – you no longer have that excuse. Storybook takes all of the complexity out of character profiling, plot layout and creating your story outline. It’s the easiest way to manage the technical aspect of writing while you focus more of your time on the more creative act of actually writing the story itself.

Give Storybook a try and let us know if it simplified your writing process. How did you make use of Storybook for your project? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

Image Credit : Churl

I bet all of us have our own favorite stories from childhood. Most of us also have fond memories of hours spent in storytelling. The digital avalanche may have hit the generations that have followed us. They may be growing up too soon. But stories continue to hold their place in the imagination of a child.

Hollywood and Disney may also be coloring TV and the movies. But thanks to interactive websites, children’s stories have got a wider canvas to tell their tales. From classical literature to folk tales, and even modern children’s fiction, today’s child can take his pick to read, listen, and watch.

Storyline Online

Do you act out the stories to your child? Maybe you haven’t been able to yet, but famous actors from The Screen Actors Guild certainly can as it is their bread and butter. Actors (how about Elijah Wood or Hillary Duff) read aloud stories in their own voice and your child can listen in thanks to the streaming videos. The nicely designed interactive children’s story site is free and is a wonderful initiative made possible by the participation of SAG.

Mrs. P’s Magic Library

The magic of stories is in its storytelling. Kathy Kinney as Mrs. P really brings back the fun in “story time”. Most of the stories are targeted for children between the age groups of 3+ to 6+ with a few for 9 and 11 year olds. The books narrated by Mrs. P are all old classics across genres. You can check out the video selections and use the dropdown filters to select the ones you want to watch.

Storynory

There’s nothing like a good audio story played back for your child before he or she drifts to sleep. Storynory could be your download source as it has a huge bank of free audio stories and poems for children. You can choose from fairytales, classics, Bible stories, educational stories, and also quite a few original ones. Storynory is also available on iTunes in the Kids and Family Podcast section.

Story Cove (Classroom)

Story Cove brings you stories from around the world arranged under the names of the continents. You can open up the “story book” in your browser and let it playback the story for you. You can even play an animated version of the story. Teachers can download lesson plans and use the stories for some tutoring.

International Children’s Digital Library

The online children’s library has a single purpose mission of providing free access to children’s literature from around the world. The site is well organized and you can explore the library by searching for books by country, doing a simple search, or by using the many other methods listed. The site supports quite a few international languages. A free registration allows you to save favorite books, set your preferred language, and also bookmarks pages of books you plan to come back to.

Smories

It’s not a problem putting kids in front of a camera and telling them to read out stories which other kids can listen or watch. Smories is a just that: original stories for kids, read by kids. On this site, you can expect to get stories that won’t be found anywhere else. There’s also a special version of Smories for the iPhone and iPad. Here’s a more detailed look into this nice children’s website.

EPubBud

This site gives you shelves of books you can download or read in your browser. Most of the books are for children of various age groups. You can download books in many formats starting with the basic epub type. Options are available for iPad/iPhone, NOOKcolor, Literati/Kobo, and devices like Amazon Kindle and Android phones.  You can even use this website as a publishing platform for your own children’s books.

Aesop’s Fables

Aesop’s fables have been traditionally used to teach kids about morals. This site perhaps houses the largest online collection that you can read or listen to. There are 655+ fables, some with illustrations and audio.

Magic Keys

The site has books for young children, older children, and young adults. All books are illustrated and some have embedded audio. Check out The Farm Animals which is a “˜Click-a-Word Talking eBook’ of animal sounds.

MeeGenius

MeeGenius is a reading application for the iPhone, iPad, iTouch, Google TV, Google Chrome Web Store, and the Web. The iPhone/iPad app is free as are the introductory books. The collection of free ebooks, just six strong, are a reading pleasure. The books are superbly illustrated and the site can read them out to you or you could read it yourself. To make them easier to follow, audio playback comes with word highlighting. You can also personalize the book by giving your own names (or your child’s) to the characters in the books.

In this age of pixels, it might be a tall order to tell children about pixies and fairies. But a good imagination flowers with a developed reading habit. The web isn’t a book but it has cool resources for children like the ones we have covered earlier :

How to Publish a Children’s Book with StoryJumper ““ Beth
Put Your Child Into The Middle of A Story With Story Something ““ Saikat
7 Online Magazines for Kids That Are Worth a Read – Saikat

Do your children prefer digital stories to the ones they hold in their hands?

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Many of our greatest authors have also inked memorable short stories. O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) is a personal favorite of mine. He even has an illustrious award for short stories in his name. Isaac Asimov is another.

Short stories are not only great writing practice for the beginner author, but it’s the same for the child who can be put on a diet of classic reading through short stories.

The best thing is that you can try out a variety of genres and writing styles in the time it takes to do a bus commute. So, pick your favorite flash fiction from the ten websites mentioned here.

American Literature

A short story site that has been worth a visit since 1997; you can check out the huge alphabetical list of literary stories, most of them classics in their own right. The site has more than 2000 short stories on its roster. You will find Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, P.G Woodhouse, H.H. Munro, Gabriel García Márquez and more of the greats here. The site also picks a Short Story of the Day from its large lineup. The first thing though that welcomes you to the site is the riddle where you have to identify an opening line.

365 Tomorrows

From the classics, we come to a short story website which is a collaborative project that presents readers with a new piece of short science and speculative “˜flash’ fiction each day. The stories hover around sci-fi related topics and the world of tomorrow. The collection at the site is the work of motley of in-house writers and reader submissions. The site also has an active forum. The other thing of interest is the podcasts of the stories.

East of the Web

East of The Web features stories on crime, fiction, non-fiction, horror, humor, romance, sci-fi, and children’s. There’s an entire section on interactive stories too. The stories are rated and you can arrange them according to the ratings they enjoy. Complementing the short stories is a section which has enjoyable word games. A teacher resource section might be worth a look into if you are interested in study materials. And if you really enjoy short stories and want to read them on the go, download the free iPhone app.

Classic Reader

Classic Reader publishes out of copyright books online. So you can turn virtual pages of a lot of full unabridged classics. You have a short story section and the site says it is the largest and fastest-growing section on ClassicReader.com. You can search through the site by using the Author Index and Title Index. You have authors from Louisa Alcott to Oscar Wilde to choose from.

Classic Shorts

The site says in its introduction that today, fewer and fewer people read short stories. So, the short story resource makes a small attempt to rectify that. You can search through the site by author and title. The collection is small but it’s worth a read because of the classics.

Five Chapters

Five Chapters publishes a short story in five parts every week (Monday to Friday). The archives list about 242 stories by 222 writers. All the stories are by contemporary authors. Stories are in the range of 5000 and 10,000 words. You have to follow the stories daily as the five parts are presented like a series.

Story

The short story matters. Using this comprehensive short story website you can read and submit short stories. Enter events and competitions and also use the tips on how to become a better writer. You can read the stories by downloading them in PDF format. The Story website is supported by the BBC and the BBC National Short Story Award.

Flash Fiction Online

Flash fiction is a “˜short short’ story that’s even briefer than a short story; though the distinction is a bit vague. The site represents the genre well by bringing to us a wide variety of flash stories. Each story is told in 1000 or fewer words. You can also catch the audio versions in the podcasts.

Fictionnaut

Fictionaut is a neat little site which caters to short fiction and poetry. The site is built around a community of writers and short story enthusiasts. Fictionaut also allows you to showcase your work and get some exposure. You can go through the stories which are recommended or most read. You can even download them in PDF format.

Adam Maxwell’s Fiction Lounge

It’s the design which caught the eye. The site brings short stories and Flash Fiction, detective whodunits, and podcasts for your reading and listening pleasure. You can also get stories by email. The stories are mostly authored by Adam, so this is more in lines of a personal site. The author describes his work as “˜surreal or at least the very least weird’.

Creative writing finds expression and practice thanks to the art of short story-telling. These ten websites are just a sample of the ones readers and creative writers can try out. Tell us about the ones that aren’t on this list.

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