The beta version of Story Scribbler is almost complete! We’re adding some final touches and polish, and then will be opening the platform to it’s first beta testers.
I’m excited to see how Story Scribbler is recieved, and hope you all enjoy using it.
What are we sharing?
This beta release is the core of Story Scribbler - we’ve created all the basic features we think are necessary for teachers to get started:
AI Co-writing
Our AI co-writer is integrated into every aspect of our editor - from creating the initial draft, to creating beautiful illustrations, to rewrites and edits, we want you to be able to rely on your new co-writer to create the content you want.
### Sharing, Personalising and Downloading
A story no-one can read is no good at all - so we created a built-in e-reader to make it as easy as possible to share your work.
- You control your story visibility - sharing public stories is as easy as sending a hyperlink, no Story Scribbler account required to read!
- Control the e-reader font, text size and text/page color, with numerous options for dyslexic readers.
- Save your work as a PDF - control how your final document looks, and download a print-ready document to share as a physical book!
What’s coming next?
While this blog is announcing our first version release, I want to focus on what new features we have planned for the next iteration, which we’re excited to dive into building:
Chapter books
Behind the scenes, our AI co-writer is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, which means it can rewrite text up to ~12,000 words long (or about 27 pages of A4, with 12 point Arial font). This is appropriate for short stories and single chapters, but restricts how much text can be created when using the draft and rewrite tools. In addition, it’s tricky to navigate through the editor once we go beyond a few thousand words.
To improve this, we’ll be making a couple of key adjustments:
- Separate chapters - introduce a chapter select function, allowing users to view a single chapter in the editor at once, and switch at any time. This will also allow users to use the first draft tool on each new chapter to draft new scenes, and use the rewrite tool on individual chapters or the entire novel.
- Scene markers - navigate chapters quickly using scene markers, added manually or identified by AI.
Picture books
On the other end of the reading spectrum, our AI co-writer is currently strictly text-only. Our vision is for our rewrite and draft tools to have access to all the same tools you do, so it behaves just like a 2nd version of you.
We’ll also be making some tweaks behind the scenes to make your illustrations more consistent, and adding more in-depth styles and theme options.
Illustration gallery
Illustrations aren’t infinite, and we want you to be able to get the most value from your AI paintings, so adding a gallery to the editor is a top priority - you’ll have access to every image you ever created, all from one easy to access menu, letting you use images in multiple projects or recover images you deleted.
We also have plans to attach the orignal descriptions and style tags to these images, so you can search your collections, recreate images, and borrow elements from great descriptions.
That’s a lot of blue sky thinking from me, but I hope it gets you excited for where Story Scribbler is heading - our goal is to build a platform brimming with great features, and enable you to be as creative as possible.
Want to try for yourself? Right now we're engaging with select schools to get feedback from teachers in return for free access to the platform - if you're interested in participating, reach out to us at hello@storyscribbler.com and let's chat!
