Great Tool, Room For Polish – Story Planner for Writers Review

I've been looking for something like Story Planner for years, and it does most everything I could ask for. Experienced writers understand that outlining is not a perfectly linear task. You don't sit down and create all the characters in one go, all the locations in another, all the history in another, and then plan from Chapter One to Chapter Done in chronological order. Instead, you often have pieces of ideas - a cool character, but where does he fit in; an exciting location, but how long before the protagonist reaches it - that arise when they feel like it. Story Planner allows you to quickly switch tasks as one idea leads to the next. Add new characters in the characters tab. Go back to the scenes tab and add your new character to all the scenes he should appear in. Update the description of a major location when you suddenly realize that it should be full of venomous snakes by switching to the locations tab. Everything ties together nicely and can be printed into a serviceable, if not specifically beautiful, outline on paper. It allows you to capture your ideas your way, with granular control. If you include a date and time for each scene, the statistics tab will even keep track of how much time has elapsed in your story. Overall, there's a little room for polish. The date and time spinner, for instance, is not very fantasy or medieval friendly, as you find yourself repeatedly spinning the year spinner back to the 1500's twice per scene. It would be nice to be able to set where the spinner starts, rather than always defaulting to the current year. It also only allows for separation into "Acts" and "Scenes", when I would submit that most novels consist of "Acts", then "Chapters", then "Scenes" within chapters. These and a few other quibbles I could mention are very minor inconveniences. Overall, Story Planner is the most brilliant fiction outliner I've seen so far, amenable to everything from brainstorming to final outline. It's become my go to tool for building new ideas, and there's nothing else that even comes close to doing the same things.
Review by robertdmoores on Story Planner for Writers.