🛝 New App Updates — A Better Editor, Writer Chats, and No More Locked Stories
Newsletter 014
As the Switch-Lit community continues to grow with writers from all corners of the world, we’re excited to release these major platform updates and new app features meant to enhance the creative flow (and fun) throughout the Switch-Lit collaborative storytelling experience.
Drumroll please 🥁…
NEW — No More “Locked” Stories
Prior to starting every Switch-Lit story, writers choose a time limit for writing each chapter to foster momentum and accountability. If time happens to run out for either writer, the story will not be “locked” anymore – it will simply move to a new “Inactive Stories” list in your Dashboard with two streamlined next options:
The waiting writer can “Send nudge!” to encourage their partner and let them know they still want to know what happens in the next chapter of their story.
The writer whose time expired can reactivate the story and move it back into the “Active Stories” list by writing and submitting their next chapter.
NEW — A Better Text Editor
Check out the following key updates to your new, sleeker Switch-Lit text editor uniquely designed to streamline turn-based collaborative storytelling:
You will find a new visual progress tracker (the circular wheel at the top of the left sidebar) to help you know where you are in the overall process of your Switch-Lit story, and inspire you to bring your story to completion.
A visual progress tracker for every Switch-Lit story The “Preview full text” button (on the left side of the top toolbar) now enables a true split-screen experience so you can reference all previous story chapters side-by-side with your current chapter. This helps you and your writing partner move towards the goal of a more cohesive collaborative story.
“Preview full text” mode allows for a true split-screen writing experience The “Focus mode” button (on the right side of the top toolbar) enables a full screen view of your current chapter for more focused writing. Additionally, you can toggle seamlessly between “Focus mode” (full screen) and “Preview full text” (split-screen) modes while writing your chapter.
“Focus mode” allows for a more focused, full-screen writing experience
NEW — A Better Editing Process
We believe that the goal of the editing process for collaborative stories should be cohesion – one writer’s narrative breadcrumbs are picked up by the other, imaginative bridges are built across chapters, and the story binds itself in an original way.
In support of this goal, the updated Switch-Lit editing process simply extends the turn-based approach of writing to editing, except that each editing turn encompasses all of your chapters, not just one chapter at a time:
The writer who wrote the last chapter picks who will be the first to edit all of their chapters.
After the first writer-editor finishes editing all of their chapters, then they will submit them so the other writer will then edit all of their chapters.
When the second writer-editor finishes editing all of their chapters, they can choose to either submit their story for finalizing (titling, publishing), or they can do another round of edits in a revision cycle that may continue until both writers are satisfied (i.e. a first round for content, a second round for copy editing, etc.)
A new editing process extends the turn-based approach of Switch-Lit
NEW — Writer Chat Messenger
Last but not least, we have created our own custom chat messenger! When you finish the first draft of your story, you and your writer will enable a new writer chat window to connect and/or discuss any revisions in real-time, ultimately streamlining the editing process.
This cute little writer chat window is located in the lower left hand corner of your Switch-Lit writer account Dashboard (see below):
All of these exciting new updates for our community and the advancement of collaborative storytelling were brought to life by our creative partners September Digital and Studio Airport 🛫
Try something new,
Ken
Editor, Switch-Lit
Featured prompt:
Prompt 3
Walking around the neighborhood, I came across something that I had never h-e-a-r-d before and it unexpectedly saved me.
by Switch-Lit
Did you know?
This year, the curator Robinson McClellan stumbled upon an overlooked index card in a collection of cultural memorabilia that ended up being the 200-year-old manuscript of a lost waltz by Frédéric Chopin, known as the greatest fantasist of the Romantic classical music era.
“The star pianist Lang Lang, who recently recorded the waltz for The New York Times at Steinway Hall in Manhattan, said the work felt like Chopin to him. The jarring opening, he said, evokes the harsh winters of the Polish countryside.”
Read the full story on The New York Times and listen to Lang Lang’s performance of Chopin’s lost waltz here.
Don’t give up.
“And if the snow buries my
My neigbhorhood
And if my parents are crying
Then I’ll dig a tunnel
From my window to yours
Yeah, a tunnel
From my window to yours
You climb out the chimneyAnd meet me in the middle
The middle of the town
And since there’s no one else around
We let our hair grow long
And forget all we used to know
Then our skin gets thicker
From living out in the snow
You change all the leadSleeping in my head
As the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn…”
– “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” by Arcade Fire
Contact us:
📟 Ping us with any questions, requests, or proposals for Switch-Lit:
editors@switch-lit.com