Author Archive | DramaQueen

Since we published the BETA version of DramaQueen 2.0, we have received a lot of exciting feedback on the NOVEL extension. A frequently important subject was the hierarchical structure of novel documents. We have used the time to incorporate the feedback: Names have shuffled around a bit for novel documents. The synopsis text-level now consists of “parts”. The treatment and novel are structured into “chapters”, no longer “bits”. On the novel text-level, chapters may have additional subchapters. In the Outline panel, there will be an additional hierarchy level for subchapterts, meaning chapters can be expanded to reveal the contained subchapters. For script documents the changes are accordingly. Split scenes no longer appear on the same level as regular scenes, but they are structured below scenes. This improves the clarity in the Outline. With the changes also comes a refinement of the drag’n’drop behavior, especially in relation to subchapters and split scenes respectively. The new behavior is more intuitive in many situations.

A second important change is that the text display can be limited to the active part or chapter. This option is situated in the gear-menu of the Texts panel. It doesn’t only help to focus on a certain area of the text, but exporting and printing the document take this setting into consideration, too. It was an often requested feature to export only a certain scene or chapter.

We have not forgotten script writers. The new BETA 3 features the “Shot” text element. It can be used for secondary headings and improves the reading flow. The attention can be quickly drawn to a certain perspective. With the change also comes better compatibility with other script writing software. The keyboard shortcuts for quickly switching the active text element have also been adjusted to the established standard.

Some will be happy to hear that the script text elements are again available as icons in the tool bar. We had unified the access to paragraph styles via a drop-down widget due to the NOVEL extension, but in some situations, the individual icons are easier to access. This option is also located in the gear-menu of the Texts panel.

Naturally BETA 3 also fixes reported bugs. That said, some of the new features are quite fundamental, so they should be put to test within an extended BETA phase. We will use the comming two to three weeks for polishing and will then most likely release the final version of DramaQueen 2.0. Until then, we wish you a lot of fun with BETA 3 and as always we are looking forward to your feedback!

After a long waiting time and repeated shifting of the release date, we finally have a BETA version of DramaQueen 2.0 with the promised extension for novel documents.

What’s different?

Not actually that much on first sight. Naturally DramaQueen now distinguishes between movie documents and novel documents. For new documents, the type is simply selected in the start panel:

Existing documents can be converted as promised (in the File menu).

The Smart-Import has been extended. On top of supporting scripts, it now supports all texts. If you have already started writing your novel or short story with another software, you can comfortably import it in DramaQueen. The text’s chapters and/or sections will be recognized correctly. To achieve this the text is searched for commonly used structuring. Numbered headings, headings ending in a colon, bold or underlined text styles. Or simply empty lines between paragraphs. When no structuring is detected at all, the import will separate individual paragraphs. Where that is unwanted, one should simply start a new document and transfer the text via copy and paste instead of using the import.

Novel documents are the realm of a different vocabulary of concepts. The text-levels are called synopsis, concept, and novel here (movie documents: synopsis, treatment, and script). They consist of parts and chapters (movie documents: steps and scenes). On the novel text-level there are no script specific options and writing aids. There are no scene-headings. Instead there are generic headings:

For novel documents on each text-level, for movie documents on the levels synopsis and treatment. Choosing a text element (a.k.a. paragraph style) now happens via a drop-down in the tool bar of the Texts panel. This means there are no separate icons in the script anymore. At the same time, “scene-heading” is now integrated as paragraph style.

The new headings can also be used in the Outline panel. For this we have integrated an option into the gear menu, to choose what the Outline column should display exactly:

The option ‘Prefer manual outlines’ matches the known behavior: manual outlines where provided, automatically generated from the text otherwise.
For automatic outlines, headings are always preferred if present in the text. The last option further restricts the behavior, such that only headings are used for the automatic outlines.

Absolutely essential for the NOVEL extension is support for EPUB as an export option. This feature was several months in the making:

In the document settings there is now a new page where options can be set for the Document which are used also for the EPUB export:

Any number of contributors can be defined with their respective roles. And there can be additional titles on top of the main title. It was only natural to move the option ‘Language of texts’ over to the new page from the layout related section of the settings.

The Help panel has been revised for the NOVEL extension. It reflects the type of the current document regarding the used vocabulary as well as leaving out script specific sections.

Just try it

If you want to experiement with the new BETA version, download it from our BETA page. It is recommended to install it in parallel to the previous version. New novel documents or documents converted into novels should not be opened in previous DramaQueen versions. It will work in principle, but formatting and layout-settings will be garbled.

If problems exists, we expect them more in the area of inconsistencies than in the form of crashes or serious errors. Still, we have touched a lot of areas in the software, so some caution (like saving often under a new name) is good advice. You should always have a backup of your documents.

We are looking forward to feedback and critique and will try to make changes until the final version, as long as it is possible without introducing long delays.

All 2.x versions are free upgrades for new customers

Maybe you have already noticed: All DramaQueen licenses purchased in the last few weeks have been “2.x” licenses. This means that all newly purchased licenses are now valid for all versions of the 2.x era. The next non-free upgrade will be the version 3.0. Of course it is up to you whether you upgrade at all, or even skip a version. For all owners of a “1.x” license, the 2.0 version is a free upgrade as promised. For them, the 2.1 update will be the first non-free (but optional) upgrade. We will soon publish a separate article on our new release and upgrade strategy.

What’s next?

For the immediate future we expect to smooth out any rough edges from the NOVEL extension. After that we want to focus on team work. Comparing documents, revisions, tracking changes, merging documents, replying in comments. Its this area where DramaQueen has some weaknesses and we receive many feature requests. DramaQueen 2.0 shows that it’s no longer a software solely targeted at movie scripts. Its dramaturgy tools make sense for stories in all media and formats, and so we want to market DramaQueen more intensively. You can help us by recommending DramaQueen, or by writing us about what features are missing for you or your friends and colleagues. We want to make DramaQueen the best tool which supports many individual ways of working, but without loosing sight of its main purpose: Developing great stories.

We wish you a Happy New Year!

While developing new features and specifically before each new release we do extensive testing. We test all new and all important old features, the compatibility with old documents as well as the installation and performance on all computers available to us. After each work day, automatic tests are performed which we extend progressively to check more and more of the code base against regressions in an automated fashion.

With all this in place, we still had to follow up each new major release with a point-update, sometimes even several. This isn’t even a problem only for us as a small, resource-constrained startup, but for the largest and best in the software industry. It seems almost a law of nature that there will always be some last, hard to reproduce bugs left which only show themselves with broader use. For this reason many vendors push updates in waves to their users, not only to prevent overloading their servers, but also so they can stop the update and fix it, if it’s raining complaints.

As much as we would love to provide perfect, error-free software from the start, we must face reality and seek a solution. It would be sad if users ignore new DramaQueen versions which end with .0 entirely, and wait for a .2 or .3 update. At the same time, there are users who would like to work with the new features as soon as possible, and are willing to take the risk that there may be some last bugs hiding in the software.

And so we have decided that there will be a short, open BETA phase before each new major release. This means that all users will be offered a new BETA in the start panel when it’s available. This notice is easily suppressed for the future with a checkmark (or re-enabled from the Help main menu). To prevent anyone from switching to a BETA by accident, they are never offered via the regular automatic software updates. Instead, interested users can go to a dedicated BETA download page from the link in the start panel and download the BETA from there. This BETA download page has room for information on the specific BETA and its new features. Of course it is easily possible to switch back to the previous release. Once the BETA version is installed, the regular software update mechanism works again to update to newer BETAs and the final new release.

The necessary changes in the software update process are contained in DramaQueen 1.7.4, it is therefore recommended to install this update. Otherwise a future BETA will be offered as a regular update (although it will be marked with “BETA” after the version number).

We hope that this will make the .0 releases of DramaQueen live up to high expectations on reliability, and that we will find a “critical mass” of beta testers on this voluntary basis for each new release!

Did you know that ‘Good Bye, Lenin!’ (2003) is the most famous recent German film? What kind of storytelling choices are behind this story, which fascinated audience and critics alike?

Here I want to show you how clear storytelling – applied to each storyline – amounts to an expertly perfected structure. I will also explain how unplaiting single narrative strands in a script can help your own writing. This kind of storytelling means to not only work with one main character, one conflict, one goal and one set of plot points, but – in the case of ‘Good Bye, Lenin!’ – with four storylines with respective main characters, conflicts, needs and wants, several twists as well as an individual insight and realization.

‘Good Bye Lenin!‘ is the story of an East-German family around the fall of the Iron Curtain. It tells how individual family members deal with the father’s Republikflucht (escape from the GDR) to the West several years ago (backstory) and how the remaining family deals with the mother suffering a heart attack and falling into a coma for several months, and then waking up to a new world.

The tragicomedy is told from Alex’ point-of-view, his sister Ariane’s as well as their mother Christiane’s and creates therewith several storylines:

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DramaQueen visualizes the architecture of your story. But what kind of information can you gain from the graphic display? Use these questions to check the narrative arcs of your storyline:

1. Which narrative strands or storylines constitute my story?
2. Does each of my central characters have his/her own storyline in which he/she is the main character? Is each strand told from the point of view of its main character?
3. Do all important characters have a want or need? Do the individual storylines provide information about the different wants / needs of my characters?
4. If my protagonist has a want and a need it is useful to define two storylines from his/her point of view: a wantline and a needline.
5. Does the narrative arc rise or fall dramatically for each main character at the first plot-point of their storyline? If yes – it creates an incising event for the character. If not, the character has nothing to lose. Or there is no contrast between their habitual life at the beginning of their storyline and the first plot-point.
6. Is the second act twice as long as act 1 and act 3?
7. Are your story’s individual sequences or phases about the same length? Or are there single passages which are over-proportionally long or contain many short scenes? If yes:  Are there steps or scenes you could shorten or cut out?
8. Do the main secondary strands start not later than at the beginning of the second act?
9. Is the main strand (and therefore the main character) present throughout the story, or are there longer periods in which the strand is (unintentionally) exposed or neglected (recognizable by the broken line)?
10. Does each storyline have significant highs and lows? When a narrative graph features steep arcs the storyline offers strong turning points and contrasts. Should the storyline run flat and straight-lined over a long period it lacks turning points and twists.
11. Does each strand have a complete arc?  Is there an inciting incident, a plot-point 1, a midpoint, a plot-point 2 and a climax? Every secondary strand, however small, needs at least two turning points.
12. Does every sequence close with a plot-point? As a general rule: the more turning points a storyline has, the more unpredictable and thrilling it is – provided that the twists are motivated by the action and characters.
13. Do the narrative strands intertwine? Are there connections between the plot-points of storylines – e.g. is the plot-point of one strand also the trigger for another strand’s plot-point?
14. Are there scenes where the plotpoints of several storylines coincide? These are your story’s master-scenes which should get your special attention during the writing and development process.
15. Do particular storylines run parallel or reverse to each other?  Arcs running in opposition to each other can be dramatically very effective. They can reveal, for example, that the protagonist’s and antagonist’s goals contradict each other or that the main character’s want and need contradict each other. Parallel storylines point out that their main characters pursuit the same goal or that they have the same problem or conflict.
16. Does the story escalate in the third act?  If the arcs of all storylines become steeper in the third act the story’s drama intensifies.
17. Do the “climaxes” of the various storylines coincide? Only when that is the case, they do make up the climax of the story.
18. Do all storylines have a happy end or do all end tragically?  This could have a one-dimensional effect. When all storylines end differently – positive and negative – we get an ambivalent ending.  This could be emotionally very satisfying.  An example: the main character did not get his want (negative ending of one storyline), but has met the love of his life (happy end of another storyline).