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Provides: Novel processing, formatting, management and tracking

Format: Electronic download or CD

Developer: Return Self Software and Mariner Software

Minimum Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4

Retail Price: $44.95 (+$5 for boxed version); $14.95 upgrade

Version Reviewed: 3.0.1

Availability: Out now

Demo Available: Fully functional trial.

It seems that every time I review a word processor, I tell the anecdote about my ex-girlfriend now Microsoft employee who once suggested back in the mid-90s that software developers shouldn't even bother trying to compete with Microsoft Word. I think my overuse of this story stems from two facts: 1.) good wood processing anecdotes are hard to come by, and 2.) developers have been effectively competing with Word since before Word was released.

We're now in 2008, and Mariner Software—the developer of Mariner Write, which is the word processor that prompted that comment from my ex—is attacking Microsoft Word on two fronts. Along with Mariner Write, they also offer products targeted towards specific groups of writers: Montage for screenwriters/playwrights, and now StoryMill for novelists.

StoryMill (formerly Avenir from Return Self Software) is a perfect example of tailoring a program for a very select audience, offering a slew of features that are great for authors but would be completely useless to anyone else. "Highlight Clichés?" Are you serious? It's in here, and why not? When you're using a program such as StoryMill, you have time to consider such things. I'm not sure exactly what process the software uses to find the clichés, but I'm happy to report that four chapters into my current novel, StoryMill only found three, one of which wasn't even accurate (it highlighted "... time out" even though the usage was "... time outside"). So, perhaps not a critical feature, but certainly interesting.

Of course, many of the features of StoryMill go well beyond "interesting." One of my favorites is Full Screen mode, in which StoryMill covers your entire desktop in blue, showing only your white text. Aside from taking me back to my formative Commodore 64 years using PFS Write, Full Screen Mode provides distraction-free writing where I can focus entirely on my words. The color scheme also causes much less strain on your eyes than the standard black text on a white background, and yes, you still get full use of the mouse/cursor and formatting options such as bold and italics. Getting there is kind of weird, as you have to be in Chapter Mode to access the feature (more on that in a minute), and you do lose the bulk of the program's functionality while in Full Screen Mode, but getting back out is as simple as hitting the escape key. StoryMill knows where you left off between modes, so you're always in the same spot.

The true functionality of StoryMill, however, comes from how you organize your project. With traditional word processors, you pretty much just tear through it without much consideration for the pieces that comprise the novel. It was always my habit to have extra files with character descriptions, the outline, bits of dialogue or jokes I know I want to use, etc. In StoryMill, this is all built directly into the project file. Characters, for instance, can be added to the "Actors" View, where you can store details about them, and even include photos. Research and Tasks are built in, but you can add and remove Views as you see fit. And although I like having this database immediately available to me, I'd like to see tighter integration between it and the novel. For instance, if I want to see where a joke or particular bit of dialogue is used, I currently can just write a page number next to its entry in the View. What I would really like, though is to be able to hyperlink it to where it appears in the novel so I can get there with a simple mouse click. Even better would be communication between StoryMill and Mariner's MacJournal program, which I use for storing ideas, quotes, etc., that I intend to incorporate in my writing.

The two main Views in StoryMill are Chapters and Scene. Scene View allows you to set up each scene in your novel, serving as a place to store notes about it. They're organized in the order in which they appear in the novel, and contain such useful information as the scene's start and end date, its location, which characters are in it (provided you've set up your characters in the Actors View), in which chapter the scene occurs, and so on. Depending upon the complexity of your story, this can be either very handy or very cumbersome to manage. I did find it awkward to build scene details on a novel I'd already begun, and decided to not bother with it. I would certainly use it if starting from scratch, however, as pretty much your entire outline can easily be laid out and managed here.

It's in the Chapters View, however, where you'll get the bulk of your work done. This is the word processing portion of StoryMill, viewable either in the project window or by opening the chapter window above it. To take advantage of the aforementioned full screen mode and other options (such as the ability to zoom your text), you'll need to open the chapter window. Although this felt odd at first, I did get used to it pretty quickly.

In the project window, you can view your chapter text on its own or alongside the scene text (provided you've set up your scenes, of course). Working with chapter and scenes open in the project window does clutter things up, but that's where full screen mode or opening the Chapter View in its own window become useful.

As with the Scene View, Chapter View is great when starting from scratch, but takes a little more work if you're transferring another project to StoryMill. It seems you'll have to copy your work chapter by chapter, as I couldn't find a way to have StoryMill automatically break a longer work into separate chapters. Also, StoryMill can't read files from other word processors (including Mariner's own MarinerWrite), so you will have to copy and paste your content from another application. It can, however export to other applications (including RTF, Word '97 .doc and Word 2007 .docx), which is obviously very important in the publishing industry. StoryMill got stuck building the preview the first time I tried to export, and I had to force quit the program to kill the process. No problems after that, though.

There a lot of other features I could cover, such Timeline View, Storylines, Events, and more, but I'd rather close this review out talking about the Submissions feature. This is a simply a database built into your document that allows you to track your submissions to various publishers. It includes general contact info, as well as important dates (submission and rejec ... uh, I mean response), and room for tags. In a somewhat endearing nod of encouragement, when you add a new entry, the Response field defaults to "Accepted." Thanks for believing in me, Mariner.

Again, the main thing missing from here is true integration with the various publisher databases out there. It's probably too much to ask, but being able to pull in this content from writersmarket.com, for example, would be fantastic. At the least, I'd like to see the inclusion of more commonly used fields such as the type of submission (query, outline, manuscript, etc.), date of request for manuscript, and so on. It seems you could add these using the Tags option, but I couldn't get it to work in a logical manner.

Despite these shortcomings, StoryMill still stands as a fantastic tool for the novelists. I find it curious that Mariner uses the phrase "aspiring authors" in their promotions, as if those who have already been published wouldn't be interested. We'll see how I feel about that when I reach that point. Until then, StoryMill is my program of choice for managing and completing the daunting task of writing novels. And although you can certainly use StoryMill for general word processing, a combination of this and either MarinerWrite or Nisus Writer will still come in at least $100 less than Microsoft Word on its own. You could even throw iWork '08 into the mix to get page layout capabilities (not to mention spreadsheet and presentation software), and they would still be cheaper and easier to use than Word.

So, why bother competing with Word? Because as long as there are authors out there who want to actually get some work done—whether it be as large as writing a novel or as small as writing a query letter—there will be a market for programs such as StoryMill. Thankfully, there are companies such as Mariner Software who acknowledge that ... and who haven't hired any of my ex girlfriends.