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ScribbleSquid tries to help new writers -- with one glaring omission
Creative writing is not an easy task, but the web gives us great opportunities to collaborate and get some help. For our own book, my friend and I set up a custom DokuWiki which does the trick quite nicely. But not everyone likes to tinker; some people simply want to get down to business and start telling their story while getting feedback from their writing buddies.
This is the purported target audience for ScribbleSquid. The site claims to be friendly to the average user and even "introduce non-techies to the power of version control". Excited, I went ahead and registered and then started fiddling with it and figuring things out.
Despite their claims, the site is complex. I had a hard time figuring things out even after looking at the docs and watching the videos. But that's okay -- not all sites have to be dead-simple. Yet imagine my amazement when after searching and searching, I came to realize the website is missing one key feature:
This is the purported target audience for ScribbleSquid. The site claims to be friendly to the average user and even "introduce non-techies to the power of version control". Excited, I went ahead and registered and then started fiddling with it and figuring things out.
Despite their claims, the site is complex. I had a hard time figuring things out even after looking at the docs and watching the videos. But that's okay -- not all sites have to be dead-simple. Yet imagine my amazement when after searching and searching, I came to realize the website is missing one key feature:
The site actually offers no text editor.
Yes, you've read that right. It's a website for writers, but you can't edit your text on the site. Nope. You can only import documents. There are many import options, granted, but what were they thinking? Come on! No text editor? Really? I mean, what is the one feature you cannot do without on a website for writers?
The site is clearly a labor of love, and I assume they will probably add a text editor at some point in the future. However, at this point I really cannot recommend it. I can't understand their priorities, to be honest. Just so I won't feel like I'm bashing the site without giving it a fair chance, I've included one of their own videos right here, so you can get another perspective.
If you know any good collaborative writing websites, let me know in the comments (especially if you know of anything which does right-to-left languages properly).
ScribbleSquid Demo - Story Markup from Karim Shehadeh on Vimeo.
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsjfjbFeb 2nd 2010 7:30PM
did the phone company pull the plug on me while I submitted my comment?
If yes, here it is. If not, you've read it already.
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I do collaboration work with OpenOffice on site and Google Docs on line. Invitations are at my discretion on the web -- a little bit like Google Wave and while waiting for it... ahem, Google!
This plus the Ooo plug-in for Firefox, and I'm set as long as the phone and electric companies don't pull the plug.
Well, I do need to have ideas and how to write. But that is my problem, right?
ScootahFeb 2nd 2010 10:26PM
I don't write collaboratively very often and when I do - it's blog based. But I'm still struggling to find a better version of StorYBook for keeping track of my longer works
I love the idea of being able to create a list of characters and bios, a list of places and descriptions, a list of arcs, chapters and themes and then being able to write your scenes and drag in bits and pieces and display references from the list of characters and Bio's. I think it's great. But StorYBook just doesn't quite hang together right for me. I want it to be a little more like an Adobe product with smoother menus and easier drag and drop re-structuring and maybe even a more adapable heirachies and lists interface for indexing the works. Some Wiki functionality where key words are hot linked to their list identites (Liberty City in the text is clickable to see the Liberty City place description, etc) - and an improved inline editing capabilities (Less notepad, more Word) and I'd be delighted.
If anybody knows where to find such a marvelous application - I'd love them forever for a pointer.
karimFeb 3rd 2010 9:56AM
Erez,
I understand your criticisms completely. I was a little afraid that writers might balk at the idea of not having a tool for actually doing the writing on the site. My biggest concern with that, though, is that web text editors are mostly pretty awful and most writers (I thought) would want to stick with whatever tool they currently use. So I focused on making the import more robust.
As far as priorities go, my intent is really to give writers who work in writing groups a way to share the stories with other members of the group without having to mess with mass emails, tons of comments from people divided into multiple emails. ScribbleSquid is really meant to combine all annotations and comments from lots of people in one place. It was never really meant to be a tool for doing the actual writing since there are *so* many tools out there for doing that already and writers, again, are mostly particular about the tool they use (and, again, web WYSIWYG editors are really kind of crappy).
I'm curious, though. If an editor were to be added, would it suffice to have it be a plain text editor or would it have to be a WYSIWYG editor?
Erez ZukermanFeb 3rd 2010 10:16AM
Dear Karim,
Thanks for taking the time to read and reply! I hope the article did provide you with some exposure and visitors.
As for your question: I cannot answer for all users, of course. My opinion is my own, but I will tell you both because you asked and because I have an actual need for such a tool (which is why I reviewed it in the first place):
If an editor would be added, I would ideally want something like Etherpad (which is open-source now, by the way, so maybe that would make it easier for you to implement). BUT with one big difference: it should support RTL (Hebrew/Arabic) properly. So plain-text, but real-time and BiDi aware.
If you had just that one feature, I would immediately switch over to writing my book with your site. That's an absolute killer feature for me, because nobody does real-time RTL text editing well, not even Wave (which comes closest). But that's me.
Thanks again for writing. If you ever add/change anything major to the service, I would be happy to review it again, and if the changes are significant enough, post a follow-up on the site.
karimFeb 3rd 2010 10:24AM
Great advice, Erez. I'll looking into EtherPad as a possibility with RTL support in the back of my mind. Thanks again!