Authors Lounge discussion

Literature & Latte just released a new program called Scapple.



It's a very simple yet elegant tool. It most resembles a mind-mapper and for lack of a better vocabulary that's what I'll call it.

There's very little to get between you and splattering your thoughts on the screen in Pollock style.

You can control the color & size of the fonts, background and borders. Formatting is what you'd expect from a text editor. Again, very straight forward.
Connections between objects are a mater of drag and dropping while pressing a specific key for left, right, or double arrows.

Speaking of drag and drop, you can D&D to import images, docs, pdfs, text files and Scapple will ask if you want to break out the text into individual objects. You can resize images on the fly.

I'm a great fan of Scrivener and made a lot of use of the cork board, but I felt a bit constricted by it. Scapple changes that. I can drag and drop cards from Scrivener to Scapple and, conversely, drag any text object from Scapple into a Scrivener folder to create a new card.

You can try out Scapple as a full function demo or just buy it for 14.99. I'm using the demo, but will buy it before the 30 day trail is over.

Disclaimer: I'm not associated with Literature and Latte in any way, shape, or form, blah, blah, blah.
I'm posting this review for the enlightenment my writing brothers and sisters of what's new out in the world that may, or may not, be of any use to them.

Hope you guys find this helpful.

I'll second that, Christopher. I've been using it as one of the beta testers for the last few months, and I wouldn't be without it now. A brilliant way to outline and get ideas down and ready. I've already plotted two stories with it and used it for three speeches I have to give. And the integration with Scrivener is great, too. And no, I've got nothing to do with Literature and Latte either, apart from using their software and genuflecting in their general direction whenever I have a lot of work to do!

Is there an app for that? :) I'll have to check.

I think I may try this for two things. Writing of course but I can see it being handy for work when I'm trying to figure out a family genealogy.

Thanks for sharing that Christopher.

Aw fudge. It's for Mac only.

Sorry, Cindy. I forgot to mention it was only for Macs. On the up-side, if you were ever on the fence about getting a Mac this Scapple would be a good reason to do it.