My review of Campfire - a writing program (Patreon)

Taken from the latest video. Decided a review would be more helpful than a simple sponsor. 

"And while I do want to say a big thank you to Campfire for sponsoring this video, I really want to do more of a review of the product. This is a writing program designed to help you put together characters, stories, and worlds. I was given this a few months ago, but I wanted to try it out extensively before recommending it because unlike with normal sponsorships, this is to do with writing books - so it matters a bit more to me. I want to start by saying I do totally recommend this product for certain types of writers, let’s get into why. 

1. Campfire has a character profiling feature, a timeline, a character arc feature, a relationship map, an encyclopedia tool, and a worldbuilding tool. The character profiling is pretty standard with what a lot of programs out there will have. It’s customisable, you can add files for backstory, physical description, personality traits. Really useful, but if you’re just looking for that, maybe this isn’t for you. 
2. But Campfire has two unique things that I’ve found really useful - the first being the timeline feature where you can list the events, detail what happens, and draw connections between them. For me, I used it to mark out the first, second, and third acts in my book in a a very visual way that I hadn’t before. I could see where my midpoint fell, my darkest hour, where the emotional story beats fell, and if they worked within the overall narrative structure. Marking this out also allows you to see which parts are superfluous. I haven’t done this, but this would also be extremely useful for writers using multiple timelines - either because they’re writing from multiple perspectives or because of time-travel. 
3. The second really amazing feature in Campfire is their character arc manager, and I may be a bit biased because I actually suggested this. When they first sent me the product, they asked if I had any feedback, which I was taken aback by, and I suggested a character arc tool that allows you to map out how your character changes across the story. I want to give big props to them for listening to feedback and building that into their program. 
4. What really sold me on Campfire though, and I wouldn't recommend it without this, was that you could interconnect all of these things. You don’t just list events in the timeline, but you attach those events to certain characters so that when you go onto their profile you find the list of events they’re involved in. Similarly, you can go through the events of your story and attach character arc changes to those events for a particular character. Even more so, you can pin certain events to parts of your map - which you can upload to literally map out the physical progression of your story. You’re integrating character development with plot with narrative with setting. Why I like this is not just that it is virtually impossible to remember how all of these things intersect all the time, but allowing you to not just record them all, but connect them all helps clarify the way your story actually works and, this is important, the way it doesn’t work. You can very easily see, ‘Oh, this scene doesn’t have a character arc moment? What do they really learn in this scene?’ You can see, ‘Oh, their relationship changes in this scene, and changes very quickly again - was this too soon?’ if you put down everything you have into Campfire, you might see which characters are useless, which scenes have no emotional dimensions, and which scenes interrupt the pacing of the story. 
5. If you as a writer really want to focus on getting narrative structure and character arcs right, the fundamentals of your story - which… should be everyone, or forgets details about their characters like me, then I totally recommend Campfire. It’s not a worldbuilding resource, though, at least not yet. The encyclopedia allows you to create entries for anything, but there are other programs out there more oriented towards pure world and map building. Some people prefer to start with the world, and that’s okay, but Campfire isn’t built for that. And if you’re just writing very casually, or short stories, or poems, it’s more oriented towards novels. It’s constantly bringing out updates, and I can imagine it’s going to keep getting better. I hope you at least check it out. There’s a link down below to their site if you want to check them out, and they’re on Steam - I have the Steam version.