Everyone firing up their DramaQueen is offered the new update to 2.2.5. This one is packed with a large selection of new storytelling-icons that allows to easily tag the status, character emotion, dramaturgy and event of each scene:
Our goal was to optimize the workflow between DramaQueen and Final Draft in such a way, that working on the same document in Final Draft and DramaQueen alternately would not loose any layout information. This means each and every layout setting specified in a Final Draft document is imported into DramaQueen, such as the page margins, fonts, indentations and spacings. At the same time all layout information is exported to Final Draft as well as all learned words for spell-checking.
Several changes make for an improved handling:
The revision mode — many may know it as “Track changes” — is probably one of the most missed and therefore most often asked for features. All the more reason to close this gap sooner than later!
Since quite some time we have developed ideas and concepts. At the same time such an important tool shouldn’t deviate too much from the expectations of writers and how it is done in other applications — even just for compatibility reasons when importing and exporting. So the first step was to go back to all the suggestions, requests and requirements, that we received for the revision mode, and develop several very exciting concepts.
As a result, we are looking forward to offer a solution soon — intuitive to use as ever — which will combine the best and most powerful ideas to be able to meet all usage scenarios with great flexibility:
Here is a first teaser-screenshot of our current progress:
We still need a little more time until the revision mode can be published in the next release, so it can — mature and perfectly integrated — satisfy the high expectations!
One of DramaQueen’s central ideas is to think of a story in individual storylines. Why is that so important? What do storylines do?
Storylines inspire me to go over my story several times. Because every strand has its own main character or the other way around: each character in their storyline is assigned their own conflict and development arc, their own antagonist and their own goal.
As a writer it is my job to experience my story through the eyes of each character. Within her storyline a secondary character becomes the main character. When, for example, the antagonist is seen as the protagonist of her storyline, it becomes clear that she also has a need and that her motive needs to be understandable and human. This change of perspective helps me to make my characters ambivalent and multidimensional.
Let’s look at one of the best known recent German films, “Good Bye, Lenin”:
The main character Alex wants to keep all excitement from his mother to save her life. But the other characters have their own goals too: Alex’ mother Christine faces the lie of her life in her storyline. Alex’ sister Ariane wants to start her own life with her own family and overcome the loss of her father. And Denis, Alex’ friend and colleague, wants to make great films as a director. Everyone has their very own understanding of what’s going on.
If you put all strands in relation to each other many stories turn into one. Every single one tells a part of the whole story – a different aspect, a different truth.
That is the question we constantly ask ourselves. We’ve developed a method to develop the narrative arc of each storyline. Our storyline-modus creates a filter enabling you to dive into the world of a storyline and blank out everything else. The analysis graphic tool visualizes all storylines – for more see “What the narrative graph reveals about your story”. Our latest feature automatically structures a story into single storylines. Before you had to choose each scene separately to assign it to a narrative strand. Now all you need to do is to set up the central character constellation for each storyline. DramaQueen takes care of the rest…
In our first release of the 2.x series, we have put the emphasis on optimizing the daily handling of DramaQueen and on laying the foundation for all nine comming feature updates of version 2. We have developed a new interface design for DramaQueen 2.1 which surprises with awesome, long wished for functions while at the same time making everything simpler and more intuitive.
Starting our new upgrade cycle, we have given DramaQueen a facelift. Our goal was to further reduce the elements of the interface. It shall step back behind the contents, the texts. The new dynamic toolbar replaces the local toolbars in the individual panels. It only shows the icons of the active panel which saves a lot of space and only needs a short time to adjust to:
There is now a Quick Search which effects all panels equally. The search field is at the top right corner in the toolbar:
The new main menu ‚Extras‘ contains options to generate various statistics, overviews, reports, and texts (for characters, locations and storylines):
The generated texts open as separate dq-documents, e.g.:
This makes it possible to not only export these texts, but to also edit and save them. Copy & paste works, too, which makes it easy to prepend the script or novel with a character or location listing (by pasting the list into the pre-text). The layout can be changed before exporting as well.
For the dialogue book and the character reports the option exists to number the dialogue block, to generate them with or without parentheticals or do it only for selected characters:
From the Extras main menu, it is also possible to generate simple text documents from the main texts, the three text levels:
The great advantage of this new solution is at the one hand that one can send text in the dq-format to someone else, without giving away the entire project file with all its panel contents. On the other hand, the text can be layouted specifically before sending, without having to keep these layout changes when continuing to work on the text.
In the Outline panel, the sub-chapters resp. the subdivided scenes are now expandable independent from the active text level. This makes them work exactly like chapters and scenes:
It is possible to convert chapters into subcapters and vice versa respective convert scenes in split scenes and vice versa. You can find the new options in the context menu of the outline and text panel:
Each sub-chapter may now be assigned its own storylines individually:
In the panels ‘Ideas’, ‘Characters’, ‘Locations’, and ‘Storylines’ there are now various sorting options available (via the gear-menu). The individual ideas, characters, locations, and storylines may be furthermore sorted manually per Drag & Drop:
The ‘View’ main menu now features a sub-menu for the option “Open another main window”. This allows to select whether the new window shall be connected with the existing window (sharing the global selected element) or be its own independent window (with its own selection):
Also new in the View-menu: the options Duplicate panel and Fullscreen:
Download DramaQueen 2 now – with new trial period, free of charge and without restrictions:
DramaQueen 2 includes 9 major releases (from version 2.1.0 up to and including 2.9.x.) with a plethora of new features and improvements. This will be those features that our users request the most, including the Top 10 most wanted features of our users:*
* Subject to unpredictible developments we reserve the right to exchange single features.
Due shortly we want to have a full article on DramaQueen 2.0 here. Until then you can read our articles on the DramaQueen 2.0 BETA versions. These already contain a lot of useful information on the changes that the NOVEL extension brings:
2015, 2016 and DramaQueen 2.0 BETA
2.0.0 BETA 3
2.0.0 BETA 4
And of course we have an extensive update report for the current release. We wish you great fun with DramaQueen 2.0 and as always we are looking forward to your feedback!
