TeenageTells- How To

This week I'll be telling you all about how to use Fortelling. Fortelling is a writing app with an area to create projects, and a place to take part in writing challenges weekly (with prompts) and comment on others' work. Today I want to share how to use it, however it is amazing easy-to-use so this is just an overview.

First, you have to register with an email, and create a password.

After that, you will be led to a page with a big yellow cross at the bottom (or top if you're using the desktop version), with which you can create new projects.

You will then be prompted to give your project a name and description. Then, you will see a few categories:

Home (which shows an overview of what you're doing);

Writing (where you can have your chapters, outline and synopsis);

Statistics (where you can find your writing progress which you log);

TimeLine (where you can have as many timelines as you want, showing character arcs, events, historical events, etc.);

Characters (where you can add your characters, describe them and design them);

Groups (quite self explanatory, and your characters can be added to these different groups to separate them. For example, the hero team and the villain team);

Locations (which are very fun because you can categorise them by region, country etc, and add a place within a place within a place for a long time. very amusing);

Species (my personal favourite where you can add your species, a short description, a long description, pictures, and links);

Items (perfect for things like important artefacts to collect, or weapons characters have);

Languages (where you can have language proficiency, history, parts of speech, etc, simplifying the language-making process);

Boards (which are similar to mind maps and a bit like Milanote and very convenient);

And, lastly, Files (where you can look through all your images and uploaded files easily).

On the app, I mentioned there are weekly writing challenges, in which I myself have participated in a few. Occasionally there are special challenges called 'author or the month' which grants the winner a certain amount of premium for free. However, very honestly, these are not very often. The weekly prompts are different in genre and there's something for everyone, especially since you have access to all the previous challenges, and their submissions. Conveniently, you can comment on others' work, encouraging them or giving (polite!) critiques.

Additionally, you can work with other writers on the app by giving them your code (or vice versa) and chatting, and using all the above features together.

On Fortelling, you can link characters to events in the story, or vice versa, and you also have a large gallery of pictures for you to choose from for your project cover, characters, creatures, places, etc. Within one project, you can add multiple books easily, by going onto the Writing page and finding the first yellow plus at the top. Perfect for writing a series or interconnected books. In categories such as creatures, locations, or characters, you can create tables for things such as where each sub-species of a creature comes from, or the most important words and their meanings in a region.

My main tip for Fortelling is to get out there and experiment (even if this is my tip for life and almost any part of it too). There is such a large community, you are bound to find someone to click with.

If you found this week's tips for teenage writers helpful, enjoyable or you think someone else will love to read it, share it with others! Let's help more teen writers achieve their dreams. Together.