Amazon Storybuilder: Gives Your Stories a Safe Place to Grow

Thank you, Amazon Studios, for the gift of Storybuilder!

I know that I was not the only one to receive the promo email from Amazon Studios about Storybuilder last month, but I may have been the first to click the link in the email.

I have been using it, and actually it has helped me begin one of my Seven Deadly Disciplines for 2014: Write six pages per week. Am I writing six pages per week? No! I am writing six hours per week. Well, I am writing much more than six hours per week, but I am writing story and screenplay pages six hours per week. Amazon Storybuilder is helping me in the pre-page stage of story construction. Storybuilder is not a screenplay format wizard, and it is not for creating storyboard panels. It is a notecard system to build the structure of your story before you begin cranking the pages.

Using notecards to nail down the elements of your story is an classic method. I was listening to Doug Tennapel speaking to a class on writing stories. Notecards! He says he starts with three: the beginning, the middle, and the end. Then he appended that statement by clarifying that he actually starts with one notecard – the ending. On that card he wrote what it was that he wanted the story to “preach”.

Anyway, I am using Amazon Storybuilder. Some may be concerned that Amazon will have some rights or options on their Storybuilder corkboards (each story project in Storybuilder is called a corkboard, and you can have as many corkboards as you need for all your brewing story ideas). It’s true, that when you upload a script to Amazon Studios, or use their storyboarding application, Amazon Storyteller, they have a 45 day option on those properties. And, it would be cool for them to pick your property for potential development, but Storybuilder is a free application that is cross-platform to help you work on your stories. And, not just you, but you can also open any of your corkboards to other collaborators, or critics. A team can start developing together on Storybuilder, or an individual that would like to receive notes from certain trusted colleagues/fans/family members. And, isolated artistes can create their story all by themselves.

I like it and I’m using it.

Here is my Amazon Studios page: http://studios.amazon.com/users/89237

I don’t have any of my corkboards open for input, yet, so I guess that puts me in the isolated artiste category. Hopefully not for long.