"You write a hit play the same way you write a flop!"
—William Saroyan

If you were to ask the guys at Screenplay Systems, Inc. about their latest product, StoryView, they would tell you that "It's a remarkable new visual outliner that lets writers brainstorm, create, structure, and organize their ideas." Usually, I don't buy into the software developers' self-aggrandizing hype; but it turns out they are being modest. For writers, this program rocks!

StoryView is a highly developed think pad for writers to lay out and organize their thoughts and ideas on a limitless virtual corkboard. The program is designed to let you be illogical in a logical manner and to think nonlinear in a straight line. You don't have to be a techno-geek on a computer, and the program takes up no wall space.

Compared to other outlining methods, such as 3x5" index cards or post-its, StoryView is a roadster with a turbo-powered Bell-Jet Ranger Helicopter engine. This program is so rich with features it borders on "over-load." The first tour of StoryView feels like going rabbit hunting with a missile launcher. In the beginning, it's somewhat disconcerting and disorienting. But once you understand the ethereal concepts of the program, you can track your most creative impulses and map them.

The best way to explain how StoryView works is to look at the movie Pulp Fiction written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Pulp Fiction is a film in which time is reshuffled non-sequentially. The opening is really the beginning of the final act where two customers (Honey Bunny and Pumpkin) in a coffee shop decide to rob the place. The middle of the story is really the end for Vincent Vega when he gets killed. The final act brings Vega back to finish the story which began at the opening of the film in the coffee shop.

In a very sly move, the StoryView developers use Pulp Fiction as their tutorial model which, in essence, is a metaphor for the program's application. Pulp Fiction mirrors StoryView's ability to reorder events. The premise of StoryView is based on the notion of a timeline. A screenplay, for instance, can be laid out in minutes; a book, in pages. However, the program is designed to work in a variety of media such as television, radio spots, industrial video scripts, speeches, magazine articles, and anything that can be measured in either time (minutes/seconds) or space (pages/lines).

As a highly advanced outlining program, StoryView uses a system of hierarchies called "events and elements." Think of it as parents with children. Let's say a screenplay is broken down into three acts: beginning, middle and end. The screenplay's hierarchy, or the parents, would be the "act." Below that are the elements, or the children, called "sequences." The children's children, called the "scenes" follow them. Each scene can be comprised of yet another element called a "beat." Conceivably, the beats can be reduced into smaller elements; and so it goes.

Using the Pulp Fiction model for our example, the first event, Act I, has the heading of "Vincent Vega & Marsellus Wallace's Wife" followed by some body text that describes what happens in the overall act, i.e. "we follow the story through VINCENT VEGA's eyes that centers on his relationship with hi boss's wife MIA…"

The next element down (the sequence) is titled, "Vince & Mia's Date" with the description "Vince prepares himself for the worst before meeting the boss' wife Mia. He's high on heroin when he meets her…"

But wait, Tarantino didn't open the story with Vince and Mia. He started with Honey Bunny and Pumpkin discussing quitting the life of crime. Then they proceeded to rob the coffee shop.

I don't know if Tarantino wanted to start Pulp Fiction with the robbery. More than likely he came up with the idea after a) he wrote the entire scene of Honey Bunny and Pumpkin robbing the joint only to discover that there were two other hit men in the restaurant which leads to a classic Tarantino 4-way standoff. Then b) he thought about breaking it up and putting the beginning of the scene at the front of the movie and c) playing the rest of the scene in the last act. Whichever way he came to that conclusion, he did so by shifting and reordering the events until he found a through line. If he had used StoryView, he might have found moving the scenes of his story much easier.

Sounds simple, right? But there's more. Screenplay Systems added a monitoring device called "tracks" to keep tabs on any piece of information within your story. It gives you the ability to track anything from the practical: characters, locations and plot points–to the esoteric: actions, emotions and relationships. The Pulp Fiction example tracks every character in every scene, from Vincent Vega to "the Gimp."

Screenplay Systems seems to inherently understand that all of us have our own unique way of doing things. Some of us like to work from front to back, and others like to work from back to front. StoryView is adaptable to just about anybody's learning style. There are various buttons, toggles, and keyboard commands that allow you to manipulate, add and subtract events and elements to your story. There are also horizontal and vertical scale bars that stretch and shrink your timeline with the performance of a slinky.

Like Tarzan swinging from vine to vine, you can work inside one element, then go clear across the entire breadth of your timeline to another element. Once you get the handle of these slider bars, they become your best friends. With just a couple of mouse clicks, you can go from "Vince & Mia's Date" to "The Bonnie Incident" where Vincent and Jules have to dispose of a dead body. StoryView customization capabilities are awesome. The program starts you off with a variety-pack of simple templates which can cover most common uses such as screenplays (various formats), novels, teleplays and stage plays. But you can easily design your own templates in about two seconds. What is notable, however, are the variations on the theme. If you're developing a TV spot or a corporate video which uses a side-by-side format, you can lay out the audio and the video as separate events. Included in the application's examples is a Tiger Woods television commercial that is an excellent model to demonstrate how to set up a template for your personal needs.

Currently, I am writing a book about screenplay writing because the world needs another book on the subject. It's called I Can Write A Better Movie Than That. My book will contain chapters of grave importance on the art of procrastination. There will be fun exercises to do and even a sample script. I created my own template breaking down each section into chapters and each chapter into paragraphs. After laying my book out in StoryView, I discovered that I had lots of practical info but plenty of gaping holes.

What I got most out of the StoryView experience is a new way of writing. In the past, I usually worked up some sort of rough outline in a Word file, then broke the outline down into 3x5" scene cards which were pinned to a wall. As I played around with StoryView, I did not fully realize the size and scope of the Pulp Fiction tutorial model until I imported it into Word. It was freakin' 45 pages of detailed description! It was then that I appreciated StoryView's true brilliance. This program lets you explore concepts no matter how far-fetched or unrelated to one another, and twist them around in a plethora of combinations. You can work up as many ideas and be as descriptive as you want. When you want to finally write that screenplay or book or speech in a work processing form, a lot of your work is already done. The StoryView file simply transfers itself into a rich text format (rtf) and can be read into any word processing program.

Like me, Screenplay Systems is also shameless with its self-promotion. Dramatica, their story development software program, can be imported into StoryView. Although it easily (albeit grudgingly) lets you export a StoryView document into any screenwriting program such as final Draft, it has a dedicated button that will take you directly into its own Movie Magic Screenwriter 2000.

It does take a little getting used to the inner-workings of the program. It can be somewhat clunky at first. I think the developers should have offered two levels of performance: Idiot and Tarantino. It is not that the program is so complicated. It is fairly straightforward, and one could go from idiot to Tarantino in a heartbeat. However, the learning curve of the user does take some adjustment.

The hardest part of writing is facing the blankness of a page. StoryView is an incredibly flexible creative tool that allows you to brainstorm within the vast regions of your imagination without constraint. You can leap from notion to thought, marry image to vision, and fold concept into reality. What StoryView does best is help you get it together.


As published in scr(i)pt magazine, March/April 2001