See what’s new and track the continuous improvement of the Beemgee storytelling tool here.
2018
August: Create new plot event cards while FILTER is set | change order of STRUCTURAL MARKERS segments (Premium only) | new Premium character attribute SECRET | German translations revised | new CHARACTER DEVELOPER category dividers | new Premium plot attribute ATTRIBUTES
July: Error reporting function
June: Adjustable line height for COMPARE CHARACTERs (Premium only)
May: Free Registration | GDPR conformity | new Premium plot feature ESSENCE | new Premium plot feature CAUTIONS
March: Character views DEVELOP-COMPARE renamed | “Fastest Story” six step app entrée on www.beemgee.com | collaboration with Mrs. Wulf online
February: SLL Certificate renewed | Symfony backend update
January: Services | new character attribute WISH | renamed character attribute CENTRAL TRAIT | new story attribute SETTING | improved on-site help texts
Beemgee and ProWritingAid are proud to announce the runners up and winners!
Every three days participants of The Plot of Gold Challenge received assignments per e-mail. Within thirty days, authors of fantasy, historical fiction, romance, and pretty much any other genre or style you can think of had complete outlines of their stories. Many submitted these to The Plot of Gold Competition.
Choosing the winners was much harder than the judges had imagined, since the standard of the entries was very high across the board. Thankfully, the PDF exports of the many Beemgee projects we received provided thorough insight into the nature of each story, including its strengths and weaknesses.
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Beemgee has come a long way. The features so far:
General
Free –
- FREE registration: Log into your account with your e-mail address and password.
- Tour: Turn the guide to Beemgee’s basic functionality on or off at your leisure.
- Context-Sensitive Help | ? |: On-site explanations and advice about each specific aspect of story development.
- “More About …” Buttons: Context-specific links to in-depth articles on each specific aspect of story development.
- Retractable Tool-Bar: Keep your workspace uncluttered by closing the tool-bar.
- Autosave: Project saves automatically after every change.
- Simple-Share: Share your story’s project link with your co-author, editor, producer, etc. (Attention: anyone you send the link to will be able to edit your project – Beemgee always saves the newest version).
- Work Offline: Continue working on your project even if you lose the internet connection (free features only) – the project will sync when you are back online.
- Language Switch: Use the tool in English or German.
Premium –
- Premium Registration: Log into your account with your e-mail address and password – see and adjust your account and billing information.
- My Stories: Unlimited number of projects.
- Detail Views: See detail views of character sheets, pot events, and your step outline.
- Export PDFs: Character Sheets, Plot, Step Outline, Project – with selections for narrative/chronology, all attributes or input only, etc.
CHARACTER
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If you speak German, this online congress could be for you!
From the 5th through to the 12th of November, bestselling authors and experts from all fields of storytelling and (self-)publishing are giving advice, knowledge and tips on everything to do with writing and selling novels and stories.
It’s all free on www.online-autorenmesse.de.
Beemgee is taking part too. Hear what we have to say about how to create compelling characters on the 7th of November at 6 p.m. CET. Click the banner to register for free to the online author fair:
ProWritingAid teams up with Beemgee to run the 30 Day Plot of Gold Challenge
To enter, click here: Plot of Gold.
BoD and Beemgee are looking for heroes!
Click here to take part in the competition!
UPDATE: The winner is … Call for story outlines by Beemgee, Ink-it and CONTEC México 2017.
This is Yolanda Prieto Pardo, whose story outline LOS ALTOS VUELOS DE JOSEFINA was chosen in the Fiction without Friction contest we ran with Contec México and Ink it. She has won a lifetime subscription to Beemgee Premium. Furthermore, our friends at Ink it will publish the novel online all over the world in 85 countries.
Congratulations Yolanda!
The CONTEC/Beemgee “Fiction without Friction” call for stories
Many innovations relevant to authors of stories and “content” apply to publication and distribution. However, digital aids can also help creators right from the moment they have their first ideas.
With Beemgee.com, fiction authors have a tool that helps them organize their plots and develop their characters. When it comes to pitching the work to a publisher, a Beemgee project provides a powerful supplement to the traditional exposé.
For publishers and other content disseminating organizations, Beemgee is a new tool that increases productivity during the evaluation process and considerably improves the workflow between author and editor/producer/publisher.
To showcase this new approach, CONTEC and Beemgee are running a call for stories, which the ebook platform ink-it is supporting.
Turn your story into a book for sale in over 40 online stores! (more…)
From the point of view of one of the founders.
Hello there,
I’m Olaf. Despite my name, I’m British, but I moved to Berlin in the 90s. Until a couple of years ago I worked for big German publishers. Like (I suspect) many people in publishing, I harbored the secret desire to be an author. Such was my ordinary world.
One day I met my friend Amos for coffee. He is a filmmaker, and we spoke about a movie he was working on as well as the novel I wanted write. We discovered that we knew of no online tools conceived to help authors structure and outline their plots. This was the inciting incident for my own story.
After I had spent a few days ruminating, I noticed that I had a clear idea of what I expected of an outlining tool. So I started researching what was on the market. And I found … nothing. At least nothing that came close to what I saw in my mind’s eye.
So I went to Robert, whom I knew professionally and respected for his integrity and acumen. I told him I was thinking of a web-based software for authors, but that I would only conceive it if he would be my partner.
To my delight, he needed merely a few days to agree. Our journey had begun. (more…)
Welcome to the Beemgee blog.
This blog is about storytelling. We examine how fiction works and what stories consists of, especially plot and character development. Many of the posts are inspired by functions and features of our outlining software. We believe there is a craft to creating stories. (more…)
There is a craft to storytelling.
Much of that craft has to do with the structure of the story being told, the construction of its narrative. Many authors build this construction first, before filling the first page with text. The process of planning how the story works is known as outlining.
There are significant benefits to outlining. For one thing, going through this process usually entails fewer rewrites later. When the author knows the direction of the storyline, it is easier to keep all its threads under control while writing. Without this direction, there is a danger of losing the plot half way through.
Of course, any story is “told”. It therefore has language – text, if the medium the story is presented in is, say, a book. Film has language too. But apart from language, stories have structure. It is in building this structure that Beemgee can help. (more…)
