Contour At The Movies

Just got this in from a Contour user.  Besides that it makes me feel like a million bucks, I like that Kela points out one of the main strengths of Contour; instead of the structure feeling like it limits creativity, it actually frees your creativity.

Kela…from the bottom of my heart…thanks for the kind words!

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Jeffrey:

I am new to Contour but I’ve seen the light…at the end of my dark, dark story tunnel. Using Contour is like talking to the one friend who doesn’t accept my BS. It’s damn near impossible to get off the true narrative track when answering Contour’s questions. With the main stops in place, my brain is free to create more interesting scenes and characters. The story components come organically from the hero’s experiences.

And the movie reviews are like attending Contour seminars. I fill out the archetypes before checking my answers against the Contour review. Thank you for the time you put into this tool and please, keep writing more reviews of anything and everything!

Your student, K. Anelons

Right around that time I moved to LA in the mid-1980’s an upstart computer store opened with a crazy idea: cater just to the film and television community.  I gave it six months to a year before it folded in the shadow of Computerland.  Well, Computerland is gone, but THE WRITERS STORE is still there, and over the years Jesse Douma and his family developed their store into a mecca of merchandise and advice for writers, producers, and directors.

As Contour for Windows 1.0  joins Contour for Mac 1.1  in release, I just wanted to thank Jesse and the gang at The Writers Store for their support of Contour in general and me in particular.   Jesse will be the first to tell you that I can be a huge pain in the backside when it comes to being passionate about what I do, but (I hope!) he’d also be the first to tell you that my heart’s in the right place in my concern for writers.

Anyway, kudos to you, my TWS friends.  Your store is a class act and greatly appreciated.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

It’s official…Contour for Windows officially goes on sale Monday, March 30!  Pre-sales are going amazing, and there will be a discount available for registered owners of the TotallyWrite Development Suite.  If that describes you, keep your eyes on your inbox for details.

Thanks again to the great gang at Mariner Software for all of their hard work.    EXCELSIOR!!

IT Reviews just posted a review of CONTOUR.  You can check it out here.  

What I like about the review (besides the fact that they like the software!) is that it very clearly says what Contour is and how it helps writers.  It’s a great, concise overview of the program.

Thanks again to Rob Beattie and the IT Reviews team for taking the time to put CONTOUR through its paces.

Interested in being a beta tester for Contour for Windows?  Then CLICK HERE to start feeling the Contour for Windows love!

The Fully Awesome Carpetshark over at Mariner Software just sent me this screenshot of the soon to be beta-ready version of CONTOUR FOR WINDOWS.  And it’s skinnable so you can change the look.  

I’m getting excited…

The downloadable version of Contour is now the second most popular item being sold by our friends at The Writers Store in Los Angeles.  

Once Mariner Software gets the Windows version out the door, FD is gonna be pwned!

The downloadable version of Contour is now the FOURTH most popular item at The Writer’s Store, and the second most popular software behind Final Draft (who?).  

I’d like to thank everyone who stopped buying brass fasteners and are now using the downloadable version of Contour to bind their script pages together.

As of today, the downloadable version of Contour is the fifth most popular product being sold by The Writers Store in LA!  Whoo-hoo!  

Now, if only we could do something about those damn brass fasteners…

Not the movie, I’m talking about gender neutrality.  Contour, having been developed by a sexist pig (me) always referred to the protagonist in the masculine.  Actually, I’m kidding about the sexist pig thing.  I hope.

In actuality there is a debate in academic circles about gender neutrality and I had relied on the school of thought, as well as the guidelines in Strunk & White’s Elements of Style, that permitted the use of the masculine to refer to any non-specific person regardless of sex.  

After much consideration (and one refund to an irate user with a female protagonist) we’ve decided to embrace gender neutrality.  As updates start rolling out to Contour 1.0 we’ll be chipping away at all examples of inappropriate gender specific language in the user’s guide, manual, examples, help tips, this blog, etc. As you can imagine, this is a bit of an undertaking, so please be patient with us.  We’re trying to do the right thing.  Honest!   Rewriting it all will take some time.  

In the meantime, if I’ve offended anyone I would like to apologize to him or her, ask for his or her forgiveness, and assure him or her that he or she is welcome to contact me to discuss this or that.