StoryMill 3 review

There's a story in each and every one of us. The only problem is how to crowbar it out. A decent-sized book is 100,000 words and a project of that size is daunting. So much so that few ever attempt it.

Of those who do, the vast majority should never have bothered.

Every book is different but they're all structured in a broadly similar way, with clearly defined character development, scenes that build on what has gone before and a satisfying conclusion that will leave the reader desperate for more.

The trouble is that the vast majority of people setting out to write their first story either don't know the rules or start off well, then stray into the realms of the unpublishable. With the aid of StoryMill though, it's pretty much impossible to write in an unstructured, disorganised way.

It ships with three templates, each of which breaks the story into chapters, scenes, characters and locations. By skipping back and forth between each one, you can work on each element in isolation, fleshing it out in full, before moving on to the next. If you prefer, you can also write as much as you can and put it to one side to come back to later on.

On the other hand if none of the default templates suits your needs, you can create your own. However, for our money the Snowflake method, by which your story is gradually written and improved over a number of weeks, is an excellent way to structure your work.

The idea is that you plan your novel by creating a series of scenes that you then attach to your chapters. As you write each scene your chapter is passively composed in the background, allowing you to concentrate on one thing at a time rather than the whole novel. You can keep track of your status by colour-coding your files, while smart folders make short work of organising unfinished sections that might need further attention.

Mariner Software is rightly trumpeting another innovative feature in StoryMill, which helps further organise the story-writing process: a timeline view. This looks very much like a Gantt chart but instead of scheduling tasks it displays your individual scenes, with a bar representing each one stretching out across the timeline to show its duration and what's going on elsewhere in your book.

The timeline is just part of a beautiful interface. Compare it to Word - even Word 2008 - and you'll realise what a proper writing tool should look like. Your story elements are ranged to the left and their details to the right, while your work or any research notes are displayed in the large central pane.

If you think all this sounds familiar that's probably because you've used Avenir, which is precisely what this is under the hood. It's a direct continuation of the original product line, with the same developer. There's even an upgrade price from one to the other.

Of course, not everyone wants to work in a highly structured environment and even if you do make use of all these database-like features (you'd be a fool to buy it if you didn't), you might still want an uncluttered working scenario, which is why there's also the option of a full-screen view.

Once written, your story can be exported in a range of formats, including Word 97 (no mention of 2004 or 2008), HTML, plain text and RTF.

One feature we particularly liked - not immediately obvious from the menus - is the option to have StoryMill back up your work to your .Mac backups folder on every Save. Combine this with Time Machine and you have a bullet-proof local/remote backup system that should keep the fruits of your labours safe should the worst occur.