StoryCAD Collaborator
Writing craft is a collection of skills: certain tools and techniques that can achieve a specific desired result. We divide the craft into language skills (the micro level of words and sentences) and structure skills (the framework of your story, plot, characters, scenes, and so forth). We don’t concern ourselves with language skills. There are plenty of excellent books and courses that help with these, including the best teacher: practice, practice, and more practice. Our trade is the structure skills. There are also plenty of excellent books and courses that teach these skills. Our contribution, StoryCAD, is a free desktop app for Windows and macOS that applies computer-aided design to help you create an outline for your story. The outline comprises story elements, which include a story overview, problems, characters, settings, and scenes. Your outline is your blueprint when you write your draft, using your language skills.
Our latest addition to StoryCAD is StoryCAD Collaborator. It’s an additional paid feature that helps you develop your outline. A free trial is available so you can try it before you buy. If a StoryCAD outline is a map, Collaborator is your GPS, an assistant that helps you navigate your story turn by turn. It’s a collection of workflows, small AI helpers that can help you with the details of building and assembling story elements into something unique: your outline, for your story.
From within your outline, when you launch Collaborator, you choose a craft job (a workflow). Collaborator works with the story elements that job needs, suggests text for specific fields on those elements, and you decide what goes into the outline.
You don’t need Collaborator to use StoryCAD. You need StoryCAD to use Collaborator. It exists for people who want an always-available assistant without leaving the outline they’re already working on.
Collaborator is not a replacement for writing craft. It sits beside StoryCAD’s forms and the craft ideas in this manual (especially Writing with StoryCAD) and on StoryBuilder.org.