Last Updated on by Michael Brockbank
Reedsy Studio just added “Templates” to its planning board functions for paid subscribers. What this means is that you can create in-depth elements for your manuscript, ranging from the bio of a protagonist to various world-building details. But is it worth upgrading Reedsy?
The planning board in Reedsy Studio has a lot of functionality for outlining and developing a novel. Adding templates to the mix just makes a lot of aspects much easier to manage.
Not to mention being able to flesh things out a bit more, especially if you’re planning to write a series.
What Are Templates in Reedsy Studio?
Templates are assets you can add to Reedsy Studio to help you describe specific characters, locations, narrative devices, and worldbuilding elements for your novel.
The templates include the most common entries and questions for each asset to help guide you to fleshing out the details of your world. These are not mandatory entries, but more guidelines for the information you may need while writing your book.
Once the template is added to your planning board, you can edit the template to further fit your needs and wants.
The idea is to help detail the most important aspects of your novel. This helps with continuity, which is a vital part of writing a good book or series. And so far, Reedsy has included templates for some of the most common elements of a book.
Plus, the templates can give you ideas for creating your own notes in the planning board.
What Kinds of Templates Are Currently Available?
At the time of this post, there are over 40 templates you can use to detail your book. These include points from Worldbuilding, Characters, Settings, and Narrative Devices.
Worldbuilding
There are currently 20 worldbuilding templates you can use to add intricate details to the story. These range from creating special armors to developing unique weapons.
Essentially, Reedsy has included the most common elements of worldbuilding. This can help you brainstorm ideas before or during your writing.
It would have been helpful if Reedsy had templates when I was writing Kingmaker. Reedsy Studio didn’t have planning boards when I published the book, but I would have easily used something like this to keep track of various aspects of my world.
Characters
The Characters templates might be useful to help keep track of people in your book. This includes the antagonist, protagonist, side characters, mentors, and even “interviews” that you could answer from the perspective of a character to accentuate their behaviors and mannerisms.
You can add all kinds of details regarding your characters, such as their favorite phrase, style of clothing, signature accessories, and much more.
I know a lot of folks who put a lot of details into a character. So, this might work extremely well for those authors. Or, at least it’ll give you ideas of what to include in your own character profile in the planning board.
Settings
As the name suggests, the Settings templates are geared toward landmarks, locations, and even planets. This can help you keep track of where your story takes place and works hand-in-hand with the worldbuilding aspect.
The Settings section doesn’t just work for fictional locales, either. You can do some research and highlight real areas of Earth while saving them to your novel. This makes it easier to reference instead of having to Google it every time you need something.
Usually, I’ll add URLs to websites or YouTube videos for reference materials. For instance, I saved the URL of a video showing how the 1873 Colt .45 Peacemaker operated while I was writing Shadows of Atlantic City.
Narrative Devices
The Narrative Devices is the shortest of the templates in Reedsy Studio. It currently includes four narrative types: conflict, stakes and consequences, symbols, and themes.
You don’t necessarily need to fill out the narrative devices for your novel in such a fashion. However, they can be quite helpful for newer authors who don’t understand the nuances of those narrations.
Based on the questions and fields, the Narrative Devices could be quite educational. There are a lot of things in the questions area that you might not think to Google or think to include to improve your writing.
How to Add Templates in Reedsy Studio
Adding a template to your story is relatively easy, and there are a couple of ways you can do it.
From the manuscript, you’ll need to either create a new board or click into an existing one.
From the planning board, click to “Add” a new page.
Reedsy will open a small window under the Add button. Select the “Browse templates” option.
Find the template you want to use and click the “Add” button next to it.
Reedsy will create a “New note” in the planning board and add all of the fields related to the template you added.
Then, you can arrange them like you would for any other note you created in the planning board. For example, you can create a folder specifically for saving weapons, locations, characters, and other story elements.
You can also arrange them using drag-and-drop or pin them to your manuscript while you write.
NOTE: You can also access the templates from a new note in the Reedsy planning board.
Are Templates Worth Upgrading Reedsy Studio?
The planning board in Reedsy is one of my favorite parts of the writing app. There’s so much you can do with it, ranging from saving research and links to expanding on characters and plots. If there is one aspect of Reedsy Studio to upgrade, my first impulse would be the Outlining planning board.
With that being said, adding the templates is a nice touch for Reedsy. It offers a helpful addition for worldbuilding while highlighting some of the things you might want to add to your own notes.
The best part is that the templates use functions and tools that you have access to once you upgrade to the premium version of Reedsy Studio. The Q&A layouts and more are all accessible when you create a note without using the templates in Reedsy Studio.
Something else to consider is the helpful nature of the narrative devices. These ask questions regarding certain aspects of your story, which can help you realize more potential while writing and planning.
It’s nice that the worldbuilding templates are saved with your story, but it’s not very intuitive if you plan on writing a series of books. What I mean is that the notes can’t be shared with other books you may want to write.
This probably isn’t a deal-breaker in most cases. But it would be useful if the notes could be shared with other manuscripts down the line. It just saves from having to copy the information from one planning board and putting it into another.
The “Outlining” add-on is about $85.99 per year if you pay the 12 months in advance. Considering the cost of other writing apps with similar capabilities, this isn’t too bad a price. Not only would you get the templates I highlighted above, but you also get unlimited planning boards, notes, and attributes.
In any case, it’s worth setting up a free account and then using the free trial for 30 days.
I use the paid version of Reedsy Studio and feel that it’s worth the cost, especially since I plan on writing several books per year.
Experiment with Reedsy Studio Templates
Although I probably wouldn’t use the character templates often, as I prefer to create my own, the worldbuilding templates are interesting and full of details that will help bring a story to life.
In any case, the templates are a useful addition to Reedsy Studio, especially if you’re a beginner author. Just keep in mind that you can easily create your own layouts with unique attributes if none of these suit your needs.
So, it’s easily worth your time to set up a new account and give the 30-day trial a whirl. Even if it’s not something you’d use, at least you can experiment and possibly come up with your own ideas of details you’d like to add to characters, scenes, and/or plots.
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