Books & Chapters
Writing is life.
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Writing is life.
Last updated
Was this helpful?
This guide has already been updated for our upcoming 4.0 release. Learn more .
Keep 100% ownership of what you write.
Are you working not on one but several books, all based in the same universe? Head over to your project settings and activate the 'Series'-toggle. This will allow you to create multiple books in one project. This way, you don't have to create the same story elements in different projects.
You can re-order books on the home screen by long-pressing them. The books will go into jiggle mode, after which they can be long-pressed and dragged to the right place.
If you disable the series toggle after creating multiple books, the overview will display your first book's chapters. No books will be deleted.
In your chapters list, you can detect a colored circle at the right. This color indicates your chapter's status. Every chapter starts with the first status: 'Not started yet'. You need to update your chapter status manually for each chapter. You can edit the status by tapping on the colored circle. At the moment, there are six stages your chapter can be in:
Red
Not started yet
Orange
Outlining
Yellow
Writing
Teal
First draft done
Light green
Revised draft done
Dark green
Finished
The editor is where all the magic will happen. Unleash your creativity and come up with the most amazing stories. This is your place to shine. We try to support you in the best possible ways, but over here, it's all up to you. The editor offers a basic set of styling options to format your writing.
Bold: mark your text in bold.
Italic: mark your text in italic to emphasize specific words or phrases.
Underline: give your text a little line underneath it.
Colors: give your text color.
Clear formatting: remove all styling from the text.
Left, center & right align: set the alignment of the current paragraph.
The cloud at the top right of the screen highlights the current saving status of your chapter. Every time you type a single character, it will reset a 5-second timer to save your date. There are two different states:
Cloud with checkmark: all content has been synced with the online database.
Cloud with loading icon: a sync is in queue; if there's no new input for 5 seconds, the editor content will be saved to the online database.
Do you have collaboration enabled? You might see a screen telling you this chapter is already opened by a different user/device. Make sure you close all instances of this chapter on all your devices. Fortelling locks your chapter to prevent synchronization issues.
Planning is critical for efficient writing. Create a quick overview of the events that will happen in your chapter with the scenes tool—long press to re-order items. Swipe an item to the left to reveal the delete button. Tap on a scene to open the keyboard and describe your scene. Try to keep the description as short as possible for a better overview.
This tab features some basic info about your chapter. You can view and edit the description of your chapter. It also highlights the following statistics:
Character count: the total amount of letters and reading signs.
Word count: the total amount of character series (aka words) divided by a space.
Paragraphs: the total number of hard breaks in your chapter.
Read time: the total number of minutes it takes an average person to read your chapter.
Speaking time: the total number of minutes it takes an average person to read your chapter aloud.
Keeping your content safe is one of my top priorities. Having different versions of your chapter available in the background is one of the many ways for you to have something to fall back on. You can manually create a new snapshot of your current writing in the version history by tapping the plus button. The app will automatically create a new version once in a while.
If you open the version history tab, you can select a version from the list to restore and overwrite the latest version. Always create a new version before switching to an older version. This way, you always have a backup of your current writing.
The most optimal writing setup with Fortelling is to have your phone and desktop side-by-side. This way, you can type with a real keyboard on your desktop and browse background information with your phone. But this is not always possible to achieve. That's why I created the quickly explore tab. Easily swipe between your chapter editor and your story elements. Write. A glance at your character. Write again. Without ever leaving the editor.
All your favorite tools are available to consult. You can even tap the edit button at the top right to modify the data of the selected story element.
See the page below for more information.
Links are currently disabled for chapters.
See the page below for more information.
