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Storywriter Pro Quickstart Guide
Welcome to the Storywriter Pro Quickstart Guide. Expand the topic you want to learn about.
A Quick Overview
Storywriter Pro has three main areas. You’re moving left to right and each choice you make gives you different options in the next area.
1: Navigation
Here you can choose between your document, your characters, statistics, and settings. At the bottom, you have a help icon. If you click it, you’ll get a popup with a list of shortcuts.
2: Chapters, scenes, groups, characters, sprints, settings
The middle area changes depending on what you’ve chosen in the navigation. Your document will have chapters and scenes here, the character icon will have your groups and characters, the statistics icon will have your sprints, and the settings icon will have your settings menu.
3: Work area
This is where you’re writing your story, taking notes, writing outlines, and creating character bios. Under the statistics icon, this is where your story stats will be.
Chapters, Scenes & the Writing Area
Add chapters and scenes
Option 1
- Select your document (1)
- Click the plus sign (2)
- Choose whether to add a chapter or a scene
All chapters and scenes added this way will go to the end of your story.
Option 2
- Select your document (1)
- Right-click any chapter or scene card (3)
- Choose to add either a chapter or a scene above or below the clicked chapter/scene card
Hierarchy of chapters and scenes
Scene cards belong to the chapter card above them. Chapters end at the next chapter card – or the end of the story.
You can start by adding scenes or you can start by adding chapters. As long as you understand the hierarchy, you can start and build your story any way you like. With the drag and drop feature and the different ways of adding chapters/scenes, you can always add structure to your story later in the process.
Renaming chapters and scenes
When you add a new chapter or a new scene, they’ll automatically be named ‘New chapter/scene’. To rename them, right-click the chapter/scene card (3) you wish to rename and choose ‘Rename’. Type in your new name/description and click enter.
Drag and drop
Click and hold the chapter/scene you want to move and drag it to where you want it.
When you drag and drop a chapter, you’re moving all the scenes inside the chapter as well.
Deleting a chapter/scene
Right-click the chapter/scene you would like to delete. In the menu choose ‘Delete chapter/scene’. (3)
When deleting a chapter, you also delete all the scenes inside the chapter. If you want to keep any of the scenes, move them out of the chapter before you delete it.
The writing area
There is a difference between the writing areas (4) of chapter and scene cards.
The writing area of a chapter card is just a blank page. You can use this to take notes and add plot/outline information for the chapter.
The writing area of a scene card has two separate writing areas: One for your story (Three lines icon) and one for your outline (Bullet points icon)
Important: What you write in the story areas of your scenes is what’s going to be exported. This is your story. Notes and other text written in your chapters writing area or in the outline areas of your scenes, will not be exported. These areas are only there to help you plan and outline your story.
Characters
How to add groups and characters
- Select the character icon in the navigation bar (1)
- Click the plus sign (2)
- Choose whether you want to add a group or a character.
Just like with chapters and scenes, you can also add groups and characters by right-clicking an existing group or character to add a new group/character above or below.
Naming your characters
Right-click the character card you want to name. Choose the option ‘Rename’. Type in the name and press enter. The name on the character page attached to the character card will automatically change as you change the name of the character card.
Creating your character bios
Click the plus sign on the character page (3). Choose ‘add field’. This creates a field for you to fill out (4). The grey box – or field heading – is for your category of information (Age, description, strength, weakness, moral compass, etc.). Below that, in the field content area, you can fill in the specific information for this character. Eg. ‘Age’ and ’47’.
You can add as many fields as you like.
Using templates
There’s a good chance your story will have more than one character. Instead of creating character bios from scratch for each character, you can use templates.
Add all the fields you want and fill in the field headings with categories (Age, description, strength, etc.). Then click the plus sign and choose ‘Save as template’ (3). Give your template a name and click ‘save’. You can have up to 5 saved templates at a time. Maybe you’ll create one for ‘Main characters’ and a different one for ‘Minor characters’.
If you’ve already created a character bio with information and all but now want to save it as a template, don’t worry: Only the field headings are saved as a template.
To load up a saved template, click the plus sign and choose ‘Use saved template’ (3). Select the template you want to use and click ‘load’.
You can still add or remove fields once you’ve loaded up a template. They just give you a quick starting point.
Deleting a template
If you want to delete a template – maybe you’ve used up your 5 slots and want to replace one of them – click the plus sign and choose ‘Use saved template’ (3). Select the template you want to delete, then click the ‘x’. Confirm you want to delete the template.
Sprints & Statistics
Click the statistics icon in the navigation bar to get to the sprint and statistics page.
Sprints
You can run two types of sprints: One based on time and one based on a word count.
Sprint based on time
Type in the amount of time you wish to do a sprint for and click ‘Start sprint’. If, for example, you wish to do a sprint of an hour and a half, type in 1 3 0, which ends up being 1h30m.
Sprints based on a word count
Select the word count option in the sprint setup. Type in your target number and click ‘Start sprint’.
Active sprints
Once you’ve started a sprint it will show up as an active sprint below the sprint setup. Time-based sprints will count down towards zero. Word count-based sprints will count up towards your target number.
You can only have one active sprint at a time.
To delete an active sprint, click the ‘X’ on the sprint and confirm you want to delete it.
Completed sprints
Once you complete a sprint – time runs out or you reach your target word count – you’ll get a pop-up showing you how many words you’ve written and the time you’ve spent.
Story stats
On your story stats page, you can see several different stats about your story. These stats are word count, characters, chapters, scenes, estimated reading time, and estimated pages.
All these stats are story stats. In other words, only what you write in the story areas of your scenes will be part of these statistics.
Settings
Click the gear icon in the navigation bar to access your settings menu.
Exporting
You can choose between PDF or DOCX when you wish to export. Click the option you want, choose a location to save your file, and then give your file a name.
Important: Storywriter Pro only exports the story areas of your scenes. The software compiles all these areas into one document. Scenes in the same chapter are separated by an empty line. The first scene of a new chapter starts on a new page.
If you want to export to PDF, but require more styling options than Storywriter Pro offers, you can always export to DOCX, style your document, and then export to PDF from there.
Color Scheme
Choose between light- and dark mode. The system option simply means that if you have a setting on your computer in terms of light- or dark mode, the software will follow that setting.
Editor font
The editor font is the font you write your story with. You can choose between 4 serif fonts and 4 sans-serif fonts.
This is a project-wide setting. This means changing this setting will change the font of everything in your document.
Font sizes
You can change the font size of the normal text and the different headings.
This is also a project-wide setting.
Default text alignment
You can change the default text alignment of your project. If you’re writing a novel, you probably won’t use this setting.
This setting is for all text in your project. If you want to center a single line of text, maybe a chapter heading, use the alignment option in the toolbar (cmd/ctrl + t).
Activation options
You can use this option to deactivate your license from your computer. After that, you can activate the license on a different computer.
Shortcut Keys
The list below are the special shortcut keys you can use in Storywriter Pro. Cmd + is for Mac users and ctrl + is for Windows.
cmd / ctrl + t = toggle toolbar visibility
You can show or hide the toolbar with this shortcut key. The toolbar is where you find the options of bold, italic, cursiv text. It also have the options of local levels of text alignment and lists.
cmd / ctrl + . = scale editor up
This will scale up your writing area. There’s an indicator in the top right corner showing how much you’ve scaled up or down. 100% is the default setting.
cmd / ctrl + , = scale editor down
This will scale your writing area down.
cmd / ctrl + j = previous chapter or scene
Using this shortcut key lets you jump to the previous chapter or scene in your document. This also works while in fullscreen mode.
cmd / ctrl + k = next chapter or scene
This lets you go to the next chapter or scene in your document. This also works in fullscreen mode.
cmd / ctrl + l = toggle between story and outline mode
Jump between the story and outline mode in any of your scene cards. Works in fullscreen mode.
Esc = exit fullscreen mode
Closes down fullscren mode and returns to normal mode.
cmd / ctrl + f = toggle fullscreen mode on and off
Fullscreen mode makes your writing area fullscreen for a fully focused writing experience.
