So I’m a web developer, but I’m also a writer and a problem solver. I want to make something that would help writers like myself. Not for the writers who have “made it” (The Stephen Kings etc.), but for the rest of us so I wanted to get other perspectives on things other writers find frustrating or wished existed when it comes to writing related sites or web tools. I’ll go first:
Traction: Any site where you share work (WattPad, fiction.net, Royal Road etc.), getting any kind of traction is basically luck. Especially if your writing doesn’t conform to “the trends” or fit perfectly in “one box.” Oversaturation, crappy search algorithms, there’s a lot of reasons why these sites just don’t work for most writers.
Free Resources: A lack of free WordPress themes (or other popular CMS skins) for writers to share and build the lore of their fictional worlds. I threw together a bare bones wiki for my universe, a local HTML site, but it made me think, why isn’t this a thing? The wiki themes I’ve looked up are not only ugly, but pricey.
Version control. This is more of a developer term, but in essence, developers can work with something called Git while they write code. It’s basically like creating isolated “sandboxes” of your work, and each of these sandboxes can have their own revision history that you’re free to go back to for reference or if you screw something up, you can go back to that point in time. Technically, you can use Git as a tool for your writing if you wanted by creating a private repo on Github for example, and instead of pushing code, you’re pushing your writing docs, but that’s not non-developer friendly. I wish there was something like this that anyone can use.
I think the biggest problem that I want to solve is getting reader feedback. Especially for dopamine-starved writers who are also dopamine-driven, I realize this is the key to me finishing a long story versus not. It doesn’t have to be hundreds of followers and loads of comments. If I know I have at least one dedicated reader who is genuinely interested and leaves reactions of any kind, it’s enough to motivate me. Writing can be discouraging and isolating enough. We need all the positive and constructive criticism we can get.
Scribophile tries to resolve this, but their Karma system sucks. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, it ends up being a system where you put in a lot of time and effort to review other people’s work only to be rewarded a scant amount of points to post one of your pieces of work for feedback. It’s not balanced. If I’m reviewing a chapter that’s 3k words, I shouldn’t get the same amount of points that I would if I reviewed a poem that’s 15 lines. The “exchange” is not worth it.
I enjoyed Scribophile when I used it. If you want to skip the line so the speak, you could always use their subscription - at least back when I used it.
The only thing I’m really missing is more ‘community’ features. I love OhWrite, but it tends to be quiet. I wonder if a forum-y type place instead of the chat would help people arrange sprints etc, or more open sprint groups instead of just the global one. On-Together has been useful to find sprints too, though it’s hit and miss given the nature of the game.
Hello, fellow developer! I have a ton of AI-related things I want, but if I start talking about it now, it’ll be night by the time I finish. I’m bookmarking this topic, I might make a list sometime soon, and use this as reference for people who have their own requests.
WOAH! I have had the same idea for a few months now. I love how we both converged onto the same plan. But yeah, I’ve been thinking of hosting my writing on GitHub as well, each chapter allotted to a different file.
This would be especially valuable to projects with multiple authors, especially since you can add worldbuilding documents to the same file.
I wonder if GitHub Copilot will be able to parse my writing. It may even start predicting my story plots. That’d be one of the points on my list.
Something like scrivener without the saving glitches and steep learning curve
I’ve had too many incidents where the one I was using it just saved NOTHING. all my work went poof and scrivener has the same amount of horror stories about it. So I’ve never gotten it bc I’m soooo scared lol.
That’s my beef with Scribophile and a lot of other platforms – which I understand because people running these sites have to make money somehow, but that system gives writers who have the means an advantage over writers who don’t. I’m a firm believer in, if you have a free version of something, but that something isn’t truly functional at a basic level until someone is forced to upgrade to a paid version, then that product is a failure.
A product should function and solve a core problem. Any “advanced” features that enhance what already exists, can be added for money. It’s like, if you purchased a car without tires or a car without seats inside. Sure, you can technically still drive it that way, but it’s not recommended and makes driving (the original problem) that much harder. Why do I need to pay more money just for the car to be functional?
I haven’t heard of those communities. I’ll check them out.
Gonna be honest I’ve been a diehard Scrivener user for the better part of 2 decades and never heard of anything like that happening o.O The only issue I had with it was during one of the bigger upgrades, I ‘lost’ my chapter summaries. They were still there but invisible for some reason. Weird, weird bug.
It definitely is annoying! To me it’s fine because it just lets you do the same things without giving back to the community first. I haven’t used it in a long time, though. Nice place, nice community, but it did nothing for me in the long run.
Github makes sense, right? I like the idea of being able to version control my novels and the commit messages can help note progress or things I’ve changed. To be able to compare diffs of my novel in various states. It also means that I don’t need 10 different docs for every draft of one novel. I can create the main branch to be what will eventually be the final novel, then feature branches can be drafts. I’m honestly just wary of posting my messy drafts online, but I guess it’s the same danger if I post my writing on WattPad.
I also don’t want AI to predict my writing. I treat ChatGPT as an advanced Google Search. I try not to let it influence my writing too much, and don’t feed it anything unless it’s something I wrote for fun and don’t really care about.
Managing a lore archive repo with multiple authors/contributors would be a nice idea. That could be fun.
I tried Scrivener, and I think it’s too many bells and whistles for me. I just need a thing to throw my words into, leave comments like a Google Doc, and version control so I can keep track of changes/earlier versions of my writing.
I’ve heard those stories about Scrivener too. Scrivener to me is like what a planner is to people with ADHD. Sounds useful in theory, but ADHD brain isn’t going to stick with it. It’s more work to organize and figure out how to use the system versus just get the thing done, even if it’s a mess lol.
I just thought of another feature that I wish apps had. I wish it was easy to re-arrange chapters by dragging and dropping. I tend to write stuff out of order or write several versions of the same chapter. To manually put them in the “right” order in a Pages/Word doc is painful.
Yeah, plus being able to rollback changes in case I don’t like anything. Wattpad already has this (as do Google Docs), though their system is more clunky and specific to one single chapter, whereas with GitHub you can bundle multiple chapters into a single commit (e.g. added a new character) and then push to prod.
My description goes a bit deeper than that, like having a UI app that shows the text (which may be stored as .md or .txt files), including adding page numbers, as well as headers and footers as appropriate.
Plus, that would make it easier to fight back in case someone plagiarises you.
I don’t either, but I’m thinking of developing AI that does other things:
Better typo checking, including inconsistencies (repetitions, wrong word use, gender confusion, etc.)
Automatically creating a database of the various characters introduced so far, and how they are related.
Analyse for plot holes or where clarification might be necessary.
A sheet of where the various characters are physically present and what they are doing at a certain point in time.
If there are any plot points left unresolved.
And so on. I have ideas, but these seem really difficult to pull off. I might try designing a bot that does this, but I’m too poor for an API key so I’m having to rely on locally hosted chatbots.
That does happen in MS Word if you use chapter headings properly. You just need to set up clear boundaries to where a chapter ends (e.g. start and end with a page break).
For those looking for version control, you can achieve pretty much that within Scrivener using the snapshot system. I’m not overly familiar with it as I’m a “vomit up a book->publish” kind of person, but it does exist and can be used that way afaik
and scrivener has the same amount of horror stories about it. So I’ve never gotten it bc I’m soooo scared lol.
