A Writer’s Text Editor – Liquid Story Binder XE

I tried out Liquid Story Binder XE by Black Obelisk Software last month. I confess I did it with one hand up behind my back because I’m not a believer in adopting new software for the sake of it. I have a text editor that does everything I need. Why change?

But after reading the sales pitch on the product page, and a few product reviews, a little nagging voice in my head suggested that perhaps a text editor dedicated to writers might actually help coax forth more creativity that good ol’ Microsoft Word. There was a 30 day trial, so I downloaded it and tried it.

Right off the bat, I was intrigued by the interface, and was immediately reminded of my own suggestion just last month about the use of art boards as a way of keeping your head in the story (“Getting In The Mood to Write, and Your Head Back Into Your Story Quickly”). The default interface is black, and as you’re encouraged to add your own clip art, which can be arranged in the work area, you end up with a virtual art board of story prompts. Liquid Story Binder also lets you add multimedia files, so music that inspires you, animations, clips, and more can be stored with your story, arranged on the “board” and every time you open up your manuscript, will be there to prompt you into writing.

You’re also able to create story time-lines, character profiles, note files, outlines, journals, and much more.

The only problem I had with the program: It forces me to work in ways I don’t work. I’ve been writing novels for twenty-plus years and I’ve got systems for how I develop stories. I sat down with Liquid Story Binder XE and actually tried to write a story that editors had asked me for, that had a serious deadline. So I wasn’t screwing around with it. I was a professional at work. And I couldn’t get Liquid Story Binder to work for me the way I wanted it to. To be fair, I was trying to offload over twenty years of habit in less than thirty days. But at the same time, I kept being frustrated by how inflexible the program was in unexpected ways. For example: I don’t want to keep my manuscript in chapters in separate files. I don’t write that way. I also need to use a specific template for a specific publisher, and couldn’t figure out a way to import it. (Again, given time….) And the other gripe I had was the character profile and other forms: They were forms. You have to tab through preset fields and fill in data. Such a waste of time.

On the other hand, I really liked the art board idea. The other big positive was that the program was mobile: Once it was installed on my desktop at home, I could drop it into my Portable Apps directory on my USB Drive, and take it with me.

After a few writing sessions, when I realized I was beginning to get bogged down in struggling with the program more than making progress with the story, I had to ditch the program and move back to more familiar software because I really am under a killer deadline. And there I hit another nasty snag: exporting your data from Liquid Story Binder XE is no picnic. I was reduced to cutting and pasting to get everything out, because for the life of me I couldn’t find a decent export function.

I think Liquid Story Binder XE has some huge benefits. If you happen to work the way the program does, you’ll be in Valhalla, and if you’re new to the writing game and don’t have a lot of habits to change, you might learn to love it, too. Certainly, I can see value in the program. Someone has a put a lot of thought into breaking down the novel writing process, and assembled a huge range of tools for authors. Having everything opened up for you and ready to go with one “open” command is a useful idea, too. And I really do like that art board/desktop thing. In fact, I adapted the idea to my own desktop: it’s now a collage of my current story. And the Word files for my character profiles are in “web” format, and with black backgrounds, with clips of the characters inserted in them. I don’t have to build a special MP3 play list for each novel — I’ve been doing that for years.

Do give Liquid Story Binder XE a try if you’re curious. The 30 day trial is long enough to tell you if it will work for you or not, and if it does work for you, I suspect it will work very well indeed.

First appeared on Anchored Authors in April/May, 2009

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