We've improved some features 🎊
Improvements to comments, and some other things we've done to make your writing experience better.
We launched our new writing experience earlier this year, and have spent quite a bit of time iterating on it based on feedback from some lovely First Drafters — thanks a bunch to everyone who’s reached out and helped us find the niggles and smooth some of the rough edges. You’re the best.
Latest release v1.0.57
An updated version of the app was released on the 19th of April. Here’s what’s new →
Improvements to comments
We changed how we were loading comments to increase the speed for writers with lots of comments in a project. It should feel super speedy now, no matter how many comments you have.
We reworked the comment placement algorithm to make it easier for you to navigate through comments, especially if you have a lot of them. Now, when you click on any text you’ve commented on, that comment will jump into view and all your other comments will move relative to it.
It’s a small thing, but we also made a change that saves you a click when you comment on anything. You won’t notice it, and that’s the whole point. But, it saves you a second!
Wordcounts on scenes in the manuscript
This might be my favourite new thing: You can now see the word count for a scene from the right-side menu in the manuscript (see the image on this post). This means you no longer have to jump back to the outline to see how many words you’ve written in a scene!
Fixes to hyperlinks
We fixed a bug that affected how hyperlinks to external resources were displayed.
Unallocated scenes on the plot outline
The “unallocated scenes” column on your plot outline will now disappear once you’ve allocated all scenes to a plotline so that you have a better view of your plotlines.
Adjustments to free plan limits
We made some changes to the limits on our free plan. We’ll continue to test what works best here, and try to find a good balance while honouring the intention of the free plan. The updated limits to the free plan are:
You can create 2 projects on the free plan (and unlimited projects on the paid plan)
You can create 1 plotline per project on the free plan (and unlimited plotlines on the paid plan)
You can create 10 notes on the free plan (and unlimited notes on the paid plan)
If you are on the free plan, but you’ve already overshot these limits, you won’t lose access to anything you’ve done. All your projects, plotlines, and comments are still there and you still have access to the platform, but you won’t be able to add more on the free plan.
If you upgrade before the end of May, you can take 20% off an annual subscription using this voucher code: LEVELUP
Here are instructions for redeeming the voucher code.
Here’s an overview of the free plan vs the premium paid plan.
📱 An update on the mobile app — We’re working on a few more improvements to the core app before we start building this, so there’s still time to give feedback if you’d like to help shape the direction we take. Here’s the survey.
Some recent posts on the First Draft Pro blog you might like:
20+ book tropes (and how to use them in your writing)
The only character template you'll ever need for novel writing