Is Fictionary worth the price?

[WJ]

I've recently learned about an app designed to analyze fiction at a high level. Supposedly it can help writers check for structure, character arcs, pacing, POV control, hooks, scene structure, etc. It sounds too good to be true, but is also priced at $20 USD per month. Has anyone here used it? Is it worth the investment?

[Jim]

WJ, I've recently learned about an app designed to analyze fiction at a high level. What is the name of the app?

[WJ]

It's called Fictionary, and can be found on Fictionary.co

[Tealphine]

I just tried the free trial. I imported my manuscript and it asked two questions to help define the chapters and scenes. From there it pulled a list of characters. It will pull every name mentioned and class it as a character so you have to go through and sort it out. It managed to mostly pull all the characters first and last names. You can then set a character (or several) as the POVs and protagonists.

After sorting my characters it tracked my story arc. It accurately pinpointed the scene of my climax. However, it did not accurately pinpoint my first plot point and was a little off from my second plot point. I wasn't able to correct it.

It classes a character "exit" as the moment you stop mentioning the character so in my story it claimed a character was still in the story because my main character mentioned her a few times in conversation.

Then there's a screen to show you your word count per chapter which is useful. It also shows your scenes per chapter (determined by your scene markers). There's a story map which shows which characters appear in what chapter and scenes, the character POV in the chapter and also the location. It didn't pick up any locations from my story. It also listed the wrong chapters as the inciting incident, plot point 1, etc.

It then breaks down your percentage of character and story elements and tracks the progress of scenes you've evaluated.

Evaluation is the screen where you can go through the scenes and set the POV, POV goal, plot, settings, etc. You can specify what a scene is for and if it contributes to the story arc. I didn't have much need for this but I can see why it'd be helpful. There's also a word cloud which I'm sure has use for somebody. There's an optional advanced mode with extra options.

Overall, it's a tool to organise your chapters and elements. If you're good at keeping track or already know what you're doing then you wouldn't have need for this program. For my manuscript I didn't have a need for anything the program offers. It doesn't seem to actually do much analysis or point out anything useful, especially because you can't tell it where your plot points, climax or inciting incidents actually are. If your structure is weak or your characters have no goal, you have to discover this yourself by just filling in the boxes per scene. On top of that, I'm sure there's plenty of free resources/worksheets that will help you achieve the same thing. If I used it wrong and anyone knows better, feel free to correct me but I'd say save the $20.

[Vidyut]

Every time I use stuff to structure my novels, I end up wasting time I could have used in writing or refining my story. I haven't succeeded in improving my story even a single time by using formulas and check boxes and tools. and my books average 100k. Specific sections after I see a need, I may use a thesaurus, grammarly, etc but for whole book, what works for me is to write, write, write, then refine, refine, refine till I LOVE what I'm reading.

I edit many times. Many, many times. For story, for character development, for continuity, to make some part shorter or longer, for overall smoothness, typos..... My writing is often twice the length of the finished book and it gets tighter and tighter. That is the one thing that makes it shine.

yWriter is free and excellent and lets you make characters. Scrivener and such too. But everything other than the actual manuscript is tools and if you're spending more time in figuring it out than improving the story, at least for me, it isn't worth it.

Only tools I've found necessary are those that let me write scenes and reorder them. For that, I prefer some writing software rather than a single word document, etc.

But there are many tools so maybe it works for people with the temperament that finds them useful.