This entry is about an open source tool, that some friends of mine would have appreciated ! These friends were writing a play, a book, and what they hoped to be the great American novel. This software StoryBook is the open source equivalent of an outliner for story or play writing. This software provides facilities for adding, and removing characters, which scenes they participate in, and assigning scenes to chapters of the books. In the case of play wright, just change the word act for chapter, and off you go. This software provides a chronological view, and a concept that is useful with keeping thoughts in different locations, or different venues called strands. This software then keeps track of the strands, and how they interact. You can even view which scenes a particular character shows up in!
This software is not a word processor, please do not expect this software to provide that facility, but for seeing the forest, for the trees. Or in keeping track of all the various interactions that occur in your book, or play this software is just great!
This software is currently available for Linux, and Windows NT, 2K, XP and has been translated into Brazilian, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Danish, German, French, and of course English. since this software is written in Java, you will need the Java Virtual Machine from here.