Story Strides – A new writer platform

Writing a novel shouldn’t feel like failing at a productivity challenge. That’s where Story Strides comes in. What is it? Story Strides is a free writing companion designed to track your milestones.

Your writing journey is yours.

  • No streaks.
  • No pressure to write every day.
  • No requirement to hit 50,000 words.
  • No uploading your manuscript.

Story Strides lets you:

  • track multiple projects and drafts
  • Set your own targets
  • Measure in words, pages or lines depending on format (poets! You are seen!)
  • Break a project into sections that make sense to you

What this might look like?

Project: My Project
Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Gothic, Paranormal
Stage: Planning
Audience: Young Adult
Spice: 1 Chilli Pepper

Screenshot of a writing-tracker dashboard showing two young-adult novel projects: “Vorandexra” (fantasy) and “Death’s Hourglass” (contemporary, fantasy, historical, time travel), both in the planning stage. The page has a pale blue background and a progress bars for Outline and Draft 1, currently at 0%.

And then underneath your project’s information is your list of drafts which you can name however you like:

  • Outline
  • Draft 1
  • Draft 2
  • The draft that was abandoned.

Each draft contains its own word count tracker and sets of badges. Just like the draft list, you can name your sections anything you wish: Nov 1 to Nov 3; Scene 1 to Scene 50, Chapter 1.A to chapter 60.D

Anything you like. You are fully in control.

Track your goal

Screenshot of the “Vorandexra” novel project page on Story Strides. It shows project details, cover:
 Current target: 73,000 words
 Total words: 49,478
 Edit target: 73,000 words
 A Sections panel listing chapters, 
 A Words by Section bar chart visualising chapter word counts.
 Controls on the right for adding individual or multiple sections and changing the target word count.  On the graph is a count down to 0 dotted line.

Story Strides also lets you count your target down to 0. Set yourself a goal, it will make an adjustable graph and give you a dotted line so that you can see exactly how far you have to go until you reached your target.

There is also an ability to import and add multiple lines, so if you have been using google spreadsheets, excel, or other word trackers, you can easily import your data to the website and it will build the graph.

No need to start over as if your previous achievements were nothing.

Celebrate milestones with badges

  • Keep a journal of why a milestone mattered to you
  • Track progress across multiple drafts and revisions
  • Play with free creative tools for characters, traits, tropes and writing prompts
A webpage screenshot showing a purple-themed writing-achievement dashboard with three badge cards:  First Page Pioneer — completed and awarded, with a note: “Not sure when I hit it, but I was definitely in the flow!”  Side-Character Seeker — currently unearned, with an Add button.  Chapter One Champion — awarded, with an option to add a note.  Each card includes a decorative achievement badge on the left and explanatory text on the right.

One of the main features of Story Strides is the ability to add to your badge journal.

You determine how you have earned a badge, add it to your draft’s page, and then, if you want to, leave a note. It means when you go back, you can see how fare you have come.

More badges are planned soon, as well as the ability to get different badges depending on the draft type (planning, querying, writing, etc)

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You don’t need to write every day. You just need to keep moving in the way that works for you.

That is what Story Strides is about.

Beta-testing

Story Strides is currently in beta. There may be some teething issues, but don’t worry. Coding is just as messy as writing. Bring it to Story Stride’s attention via the contact form and we will respond as soon as we can.

Want a feature that isn’t currently available, let us know via the contact form or this post! We have had some feedback that has been implemented already.

https://storystrides.org

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