I guess I cant have it all, yet

I’ve been looking at a number of index card-based writing tools and so far I have yet to find the one that will take me through my whole process, which consists of three broad steps: 1) jot down my plot points and other brief ideas on index cards until I have a basic skeleton of the story; 2) take up each index card and expand on them with more lengthy notes, as well as add additional cards, also with lengthy notes, for the scenes between my plot points; 3) start writing the manuscript. I currently use the Index Card app, which is perfect for the first two steps but which does not have a function to write a formatted manuscript, so I have to turn to Word to do that. Storyist, unfortunately, is lacking on my step 2. Sure, you can write extensive notes on the card itself, but it is a limited view and I would be doing a lot of scrolling to review those longer notes (which can go a full page or more). Index Card has a couple of ways to add lengthy notes to each card, both of which provide a full screen view which has been awesome. That’s what Storyist lacks and it’s a biggie for me. In addition, I don’t find the functionality very intuitive, but that may just be a learning curve. Other things that don’t work great for me: I would like to pin the navigation pane while in profile view, rather than having to be in landscape view, because profile view fits my hands perfectly when writing. I understand that would limit the space for the manuscript, but couldn’t you move the cards across the bottom in that case? (a la the Skeleton app)? Also, it would be nice if you could view longer card notes while in this view as I am often referring back to the while writing, maybe by expanding the card. So the long and the short of it is: I was hopeful at first, but am now a little deflated, particularly after paying $10, which is a rather steep price. But, I’ll keep checking back with the hope that some future updates will incorporate the functionality that I need.

Writer-at-large about Storyist