The Right Tools Make All the Difference

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Dabble, a NaNoWriMo 2017 sponsor, is a writing platform designed to help you become a better novelist. Today, writer John Wilker shares his experience with searching for the “Holy Grail” of writing platforms:

The hunt for the perfect writing platform is right up there with The Holy Grail in terms of likelihood of ever being completed, but it’s still a worthy cause for those who take up the challenge.

I’ve tried my hand at NaNoWriMo for years, lots of years, using everything from Word and Open Office, to apps that are no longer on the market. Last year I won my first NaNoWriMo using Scrivener. Maybe I’d have won no matter what I used, maybe Scrivener was the secret sauce, who really knows? You might think that winning NaNo would mean my quest had come to an end, but you’d be wrong. The search is eternal, and like any good plumber it’s all about the breadth of tools at your disposal––not everything needs a plunger. (I assume plumbers believe this, but am not one hundred percent sure.)

Enter Dabble.

I first found Dabble because I know its creator, and in fact I’ve known him for many years. I had heard that he was working on a writing tool that focused on writing and getting words onto the screen above all else. His goal was to make an app that got out of the way and let you write. A lofty goal, oft shared by writing apps. Knowing Jacob helped: I knew he was a great developer and didn’t build bad or ugly apps. It’s easy to fall into the trap of ‘more is better’ when it comes to writing apps, at least for me, having tried nearly all the available tools at some point over the last decade or so. But there’s more than just a grain of truth in the opposite notion. Less truly can be more, and Dabble captures that excellently.

The moment I installed Dabble I fell in love. It’s beautiful in its simplicity. You open the app and you’re writing in no time. No complicated setup or onboarding before you can get down to writing. You start a new project and boom, you’re writing. However, being a text editor for writing is only one of Dabble’s charms––the other is being a great plot-lining tool, which to me is it’s biggest feature.

“I feel like my story is much richer, and the character and story interactions are much deeper, now that I can easily visualize where everyone else is in the story at a given point.”

I stumbled onto plot-lining after NaNoWriMo 2016 and immediately liked the idea. I’ve always been an outliner when it comes to my more technical writing, but outlining never really fit for me and my creative writing; I’d either stay too top level and not be able to keep the story in mind, or end up outlining every other paragraph and getting far too granular. Plot-lining on the other hand, fits like a glove! I’m glad I found it now, and bummed I didn’t find it before. I’m head over heals for plot-lining.

Dabble has an awesome plot-lining interface. It allows me to work out the arc for each character in the story in a clear visual way. Each character gets a column and as I place their cards I can see where one character is compared to the rest at any point in the story. It’s great! I feel like my story is much richer, and the character and story interactions are much deeper, now that I can easily visualize where everyone else is in the story at a given point. Gone are the days of scrolling back through scenes and chapters to try and remember where I left someone: now I can look over at Dabble and see where they are at any point.

Being able to lay everything out in a rich and easy to use interface is a treat. Being able to open Dabble anywhere on any computer is the icing on that treat. Dabble syncs my projects in the cloud, so whether I’m on my laptop in a browser or using the desktop app, I can open it up, move things around, etc. all in an easy to understand interface.

Even when I’m not actively plotting, and just want to see where I need to be, it’s great to be able to pop in and view the plot-line.

Sometimes, even the best products are made horrible by a lack of support, or worse, terrible support. That’s not the case in the slightest with Dabble. In fact it’s been a real treat to interact with Jacob and provide feedback and ideas for improving Dabble. I’ll be sitting on the couch writing, and an idea will pop into my head and from within Dabble I can fire it off. Sometimes I even get a reply right back, if Jacob is sitting on his couch or at his desk working on Dabble, and we can discuss the idea and flesh out what I’m trying to ask for and what he can deliver. It’s nice knowing that when i find a problem, large or small, all it takes is a quick note in the built-in help center and the next time I open Dabble, there’s a note from Jacob with “fixed” or “thanks” or an explanation of the feature. That level of customer love is rare and refreshing.

I feel like my writing is much improved having had Dabble as part of my arsenal.

John Wilker is an independent event organizer by day and writer and doggy daddy by night. This will be his 12th(ish) NaNoWrimo. 2016 was his first NaNo win and that book is now available on Amazon. This will be his first year using Dabble as part of his writing workflow.