Dabble Launches Today!

This post originally appeared on Medium.com.

Dabble’s mission is to help you change the world. To leave your mark on humankind. To reach out through the pages of your novel and touch the hearts of others.

Dabble is now fully launched! It has been quite the journey. Let me introduce you.

Please, meet Dabble.

Dabble helps you write novels. Use it to write, to plot, and to edit. Dabble’s goal is more than helping you write novels. Dabble’s goal is to help you write good novels, and to help you become a better novelist.

Books have the power to entertain, uplift, and change. They make us laugh. They make us cry. As a boy I cried the night I finished Where the Red Fern Grows. Then as a man, courage swelled within me the night I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Books have molded and changed me for the better. And our deepest desire at Dabble is to free you to mold and change others for the better.

Dabble’s Story

Seven years go I was looking for a good book to read. A book that would inspire and excite me the way Harry Potter and others had. I had put down another mediocre novel and found myself wishing for more truly great books. Then I realized, I should write them! I can’t wait around for others to write them for me. I must write the books I want to read!

I began learning everything I could about writing, story telling, character, plotting, dialogue, editing, world building, and more. I read books and blog posts and studied novels. I loved learning the craft of storytelling. I never realized there is more to writing a book than just sitting down with your laptop and typing words. There is so much more. Good stories, stories that touch lives, require a great deal of work.

I am a programmer who loves creating great software. I have always wanted to create my own software product. And now I wanted to write great books. Writing started to compete with programming in my spare time. I had to choose between them. I decided perhaps I could do both in turns. I could write software that would help me write novels first, then I could use that to write my own novels. I could also help others write great stories and have a part in the coming generation of unwritten life-changing books.

And so, Dabble was born.

I have lovingly crafted Dabble over nights and weekends for the last two years. In January we launched in open beta and have improved with the feedback provided by our marvelous beta testers.

Dabble was created by a lone programmer in his basement. The logo, website design, marketing copy, customer support, product design, programming, and everything has all been me up until launch. I now have help in the social media department as Sarah Turley has recently joined the team.

Welcome Sarah!

Dabble Makes Your Novels Better

Human beings have finite minds. We can only do so much and fit so much into our brain at one time. Writing (and really, any creative activity) can bring you into a state of deep focus that allows you to fit much more into your brain than usual.

When you write a book, there is much to keep track of. Readers may have little idea of how much thought, planning, and world-building goes into a great book. When you sit down to write, you spend a good amount of time loading all the details of your story into your mind to put yourself into the scene and setting.

Dabble helps you, the writer, to put all these aspects of writing together in an organized way that simplifies your task and helps you store less in your brain. This helps you write deeper, fuller stories. You aren’t limited to stories that can only fit into your head at one time. You can have much more depth and breadth to your plot, your subplots, your characters, your world.

Dabble keeps getting better. It will continue to improve month after month, for years and years and so will literature! Dabble has only just begun its journey.

Top Features

Here are the main features that Dabble provides you today to help you write better.

Writing

This is the most basic task of writing a novel, and Dabble does it well. Our goal in designing Dabble’s writing features is to help you focus, to sink into the world of your story. Dabble does this by:

• keeping your cursor at the same level on your screen so you aren’t continually scrolling up while you write
• fading out the controls while you write to remove distractions
• limiting the text formatting options which distract more often than not
• providing clear structure for your books, parts, chapters, and scenes
• letting you focus at any structural level, from viewing the whole book down to viewing only a single scene

Try it! Dabble feels really good to write in.

Plotting

To have a deep novel, you really need to understand (even if it is on a subconscious level) the structure of your story. Dabble helps you map this out the way J.K. Rowling and many others have done. Working with the plot lines side-by-side really helps you to understand your story, whether you plot before, after, or throughout the writing process.

Learn more in our blog post on the plotting feature.

Everywhere You Are

You are a writer. You need to write. At work during your lunch break, at home in the morning or evening, and at the cabin on the weekend. Dabble works everywhere you are, *almost.

Dabble works in any modern browser, both online and offline. It has desktop apps for Mac and Windows if you’d prefer to not use your browser. And it syncs to the cloud so you can keep your novel in sync across all your computers. Rest easy knowing you have a backup stored elsewhere, come rain or shine, hurricane or computer crash.

* Dabble is not yet on mobile, but we have plans to put Dabble on your phone and tablet.

Get Dabble

You can head over to Dabble’s website and create a new account to start using Dabble immediately. You can also download Dabble to use the desktop app. It is the same great Dabble experience wherever you use it.

If you find Dabble useful in any way, please share it. On Twitter, Facebook, with your friends or family. Dabble is still very new, and the more people that use it the faster it will improve.

Be sure to check the site for amazing introductory pricing and discounts.

Share Your Feedback

When using Dabble, click on Help -> Chat With Support and give us your thoughts or ask any questions. Please, let us know what you like. Tell us how Dabble can improve. Alert us to any bugs or issues you are seeing. We thrive off of your feedback.

A huge thank you to all our beta testers. Your help has been invaluable. Most of all, thank you to my wife and my family who have supported me, and to God who has given me everything. You are all the best!

Thanks to Sarah Wright.