If you have previously bought a license, this amount will be discounted off the new software we have due for later 2013.

Please download Story Turbo latest version May 26 2013 >

Group drag now works with mouse-drag as well as control-mouse-drag.
Template: now opens with last used template file.
Artifacts: Windows: Fixed: temporary artifacts if editing below 100% zoom.

You will be discounted on the new application I plan to get out by end 2013, using some of the principles used in the zooming layout (portable desktop with a ZUI) of Story Software. It will load the Story format files.

Story Turbo will also be getting updated to a v3 at some point so the story is not over…

Top Writing Courses > (opens in new window).

This has full courses with exercises by professional authors and scriptwriters. There are also Kindle ebooks for the courses and other subjects.

Check it out now at Top Writing Courses >

The Ladder Game layouts - copyright Geoff Davis 23-apr-2013

This is the next step from the creation of large canvases in Story Turbo.
The draft text of the story – only about 1000 words so far, and a synopsis for the rest of the story – is divided up into smaller texts to go with images.

So the linear draft text is made into text panels that can be viewed in a book with an adjacent image, or in the 2 dimensional canvas of Story Software.

In the image below, the A2 canvas has the first draft of the story. Then I copied bits of text into numbered boxes. These are generally paragraphs, but not always. They will get edited to have more interesting endings, to encourage further reading.

From now on the process is to take the text from the draft, copy into boxes, and then improve the text within the box to make it shorter, punchier, etc, suitable for quick reading next to an image that provides information and atmosphere.

Since my writing is usually short on description, this works quite well.

Note: Material and story here are copyright Geoff Davis, London, 2012-2013.

Go to Story Turbo writing software Download page >

This is the start of ‘large fiction‘ after flash fiction, quick fiction etc. Well, maybe.

Progress since last time is a new A2 layout so I can easily print to my A3 printer (two sheets, joined) for tryouts.

I also added the story text, even though it is a first draft. This needs a lot of work, as shown here, and has notes and comments.

This is a smaller than A2 image. As you can see the column of text fills only a small area. This is at 10pt. If scaled up to A0 from A2 the text would be 4 times as big, so readable at poster size on inspection.

This column of text is about the first third of the short story, about 2000 words. There will be more boxes with extra stories and more notes etc on the things in the story. There will also be original art, and some sort of appropriate layout.

The Ladder Game Geoff Davis 2013 All Rights Reserved A2 layout1

The Ladder Game Geoffrey Davis 2013 layout A0 in Story Turbo

The progress will be documented on this blog. So this is a work in progress or WIP. Even the story is not finished yet, although the basic plot is in place.

If you look closely (very closely) at the image above, the tiny red bit top left is the area showing onscreen, in the whole layout showing in the info map (the greyer rectangle top left). Click on the image to enlarge.

BACKGROUND
I have not been published for over ten years now, as I decided to take a break and do other things. Writing takes a lot of concentration as everyone knows, but also a certain attitude of mind, which I decided to suspend for a while and have a relatively normal life. I also got stuck in the alternative publishing scene which is fine but since I didn’t seem about to break into the mainstream I thought I’d have a rest.

But I did think up the odd plot. My latest story is The Ladder Game, a straight science fiction story, no surrealism or fantasy, just a futuristic tale. It is in three parts, part one is nearly written, parts two and three are planned out.

I have decided to continue with some of the characters from my last story Death in the Bubble World, since I like them. The Bubble World was a sort of virtual reality / surreal world (there is a lot of blur there). This is incorporated as a back story, or prequel, although only some minor characters make it through. All this is still being written now, it will probably get back to my usual style!

WHY SF?
SF, science fiction, is mainstream now, all those blockbusters have seen to that. Literary authors try their hand at it, from Iris Murdoch to Michel Houellebecq, via George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Anthony Burgess, even arch-satirist Martin Amis has written a rather snazzy SF short story (although layered).

I am interested in the idea that science fiction is Calvinist, and fantasy is Catholic; space ships vs dragons. Or, action vs quests.

WAGER ON, DUDE: THE HUNGER GAMES, SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND, ASIMOV, ALIEN
No The Ladder Game is not related to The Hunger Games, it is not particularly dystopian or teen. The game in my story is a wager, there is no game as such.

Fans of Space: Above and Beyond (also known as S:AAB) will recall the androids (‘silicates’) who were fascinated with gambling. This is much smarter than all that Asimov Laws of Robotics clunky old 50s style stuff… a machine intelligence may well be obsessed with numerical games. Who knows, but it makes a good story.

There are no androids in my story… yet. I might add a simulated brain, or AI. The European Community has just started to build one. This is a giant project simulating every neuron in a brain (100 million with 100 trillion connections) on super computers, but a few years after completion, the brain will be on a chip in your pocket. Quite what it, or a hugely expanded version, will be able to do, no-one knows. Because once it starts to work, it can be multiplied up in power just by adding more processing and storage, like any other digital system. Good eh? That’s what you might call a wager. Arnie, where are you?

AN AI ATE MY ALIEN
AIs in SF tend to be a cop out, just another character with special powers. Aliens are the same, they have to be human readable or they don’t work as characters. Even the aliens from the, uh, Alien movies are really just big baddies out to get you. Why? No-one knows.

PROCESS and OUTPUTS
Story Turbo was devised as a writing tool with images. The images could be for inspiration, or scans of text, or whatever. It can also be used as an output tool – which is what I am after with this project.

The final The Ladder Game Part One story will be an A0 and A1 poster, a Story file (non-linear, viewed in Story Turbo), a traditional ebook, and possibly a print on demand real book (if there is any demand!).

I have been testing it with A0 layouts and everything works fine (if you have it, A0 is at a 7% zoom on a 15.4 inch laptop monitor at 1350 x 800 resolution). This gives the big print size. The resolution means that one screen at 100% zoom is actually only part of the layout.

The image at the top is my starter A0 layout, I have added black lines at the extents (corners) of A0 in pixels, which his a full screen on my laptop at 7% zoom. These were lines from our recent free clipart collection, see Download page.
Story Turbo can export/publish images to the extents of the canvas layout, so by setting lines at the edges, it will ‘print’ to that size. It is a bit wonky but the final piece will be under A0 to make an image within that size. This can then be printed by a bureau or split up for A4 or A3 printing at home.

IMAGES
I have sets of images from Death in the Bubble World, by Paul Greenleaf (the Flash online version) and Sara (the 3D models used in the print version). These are very dark. I will use these for the tests. I have an illustrator interested, this has yet to develop into any artworks.
I also have a make up artist who wants to use models for characters and other photos.

The visual side is yet to be defined, as you can see. For the work in progress I will use a mix of the Bubble World graphics and my own sketches.

CROWD FUNDING
Once some progress has been made I might put this on Kickstarter.

Sign up to get email alerts etc.

Our other app Story Lite is also going up to a similar amount. Lite is text only and some writers prefer it as no images (although you don’t have to import them!).

Don’t forget to download the extras from the download page if you have not yet done so.

Free clipart - Oi!

These clipart images are public domain and have been created by our artist Eva. Some have been modified from OpenClipart.org

We will be adding a video on how to make a comic or graphic story using Story Turbo and these clipart images.

In brief: Just open Story Turbo then import images – browse to the folder (or use drag and drop) – get boxes and frames, lines, speech and thought bubbles, captions, even stick men and characters. Or use the boxes and bubbles, and add your own character set. It is fast and easy.

Then use the Publish (export) button top right of toolbar, to make an image, or even web page, of your story.

Clipart Story Software Collections – All files

This is a large set for graphic stories, comics, diagrams, mind maps, brainstorming, whiteboards, etc. All colors, transparent backgrounds, blended onto white.

Tip: Files have transparency so you can layer them.
Tip: Change the Z index level setting to ’1′ or more (double click on image to get the image format menu, Alignment, Z-Index).
Tip: Use Image format/alignment & rotation first, then stretch them with Fit to Box ‘on’.

Free clipart - freedom

Set 2 – Brainstorm, Mind Map, Business, People
Folders are (some have subfolders too):
Business People
Charts & Diagrams
Mind Map Components
Smileys
Stamps
Stickmen
Symbols

If you read so called golden age SF of the 40s and 50s, half the novels seem to open on the bridge of a space cruiser about to blast something or other. Often the captain is sipping a cup of coffee. I suppose that is to prove the inertial damping is working…

Iain M Banks The Hydrogen Sonata

That is all a bit Star Trek of course. That is the usual futuristic UN metaphor, liberals with big guns. Bit one sided eh? For Banks it is called The Culture (a culture is also something growing in a Petri dish, or our island galaxy).

All these writers should analyse Sven Lindqvist‘s trilogy about racism and genocide, which goes into differential weaponry – see Saharan Journey (part 2 &3) and Bench Press (part 1). Lindqvist also wrote A History of Bombing, which incidentally is non-linear.

Different societies rarely have equal weapons technology, so all these space battles etc are just to have the fun of writing action. In reality, the attacks would be like H G Wells War of the Worlds, where death comes in a mysterious black cloud. Advanced weaponry kills at a distance so no defence or even comprehension is possible. Nowadays, drones take the role of gunships.

As for the process of writing action, Iain says he writes action really fast and has it all in his head, not in sketches or dioramas.

That is the power of the imagination, in detailing the scenes then rushing through to create the exciting text. Obviously there will be editing afterwards.

Although I have to say (in nerd mode) I thought the weaponry and AI was a bit off in the second major set piece in Hydrogen Sonata. There is a problem with engaging futuristic weapons in basically old style man to man (ship to ship) combat or ‘SF punch ups’.

Adam Roberts (SF author) never engages in space battles, his alien effects just creep in mysteriously to undermine the protagonists.

See also our our How to Write Action on the Writing Courses site >

How to Write Science fiction (intro) >

Adam Roberts book site >

Visit great interview with the author Iain M Banks >

Gnomes in SF - Use of Weapons Iain M Banks