Using [YOU] in toasters and Speech Bubble Style Update

Announcements! Writer's Portal Updates
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Hello Episodians!

NEW ON THE WRITERS PORTAL: Using [YOU] in toasters

You can now use the names that your readers enter in stories in toasters!

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To do this, put the script name you are using for the reader character in brackets:

readerMessage [YOU] became friends with Rose

*Note: This will not work in the web previewer yet. Since the tech for the web previewer is different than the app it takes a little longer for these updates to make it there. *

UPDATE: Speech Bubble Styles

We announced a few weeks ago that we were nearing the end of our Speech Bubble Style beta and since then we have been incorporating the testing feedback into the feature. As of today, 50% of readers are seeing the new speech bubble styles in the app. Once we roll out the tech to all readers, we’ll then start to roll out the feature to more authors as well. The main reason we’re coordinating the move in this way is because the most significant changes to the tech happened in our app. Plus, in order openly let you change your story’s speech bubble style, we also need to make sure that your readers can actually see (and enjoy!) those changes. We know it’s been a long time in the making, so thanks for continuing to be patient!

For writers, we are still looking into issues that were brought up during beta testing. Specifically, we want to make sure we are addressing concerns with the name badges so that they are easy to read but not intrusive in stories.

Stay tuned for more on this in upcoming updates!

As always, we’re excited to get these released to you and would love to hear your thoughts below :point_down:

Update: We’re looking into an unrelated issue that is causing the speech bubble placement to be a bit off. For the time being, please do not move your speech bubbles. We’ll have more updates for you all as we get more information on the cause.

Update 2: We’ve rolled back the Speech Bubble changes that were recently released until we can implement a fix for the shifting. Really sorry for the trouble this has caused and thank you for your understanding!

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awesome!

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Yayyy!

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This is reassuring. I haven’t got the new feature yet but what I saw in screenshots looked concerning. I’m hoping for the best.

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Not gonna lie, at first I thought this post was talking about actual toasters. :joy:

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Awesome! I’ll be trying this out for my new story. “In The Name of Love” by Cat Hemmings. Check it out :wink:

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I have the new speech bubble style in my story and there were two things that concerned me. First was the “box” with the character name in it. I feel it’s too big and clumsy. It draws the attention too much. I would like it to be just the name without the box. Second thing I noticed was how the speech bubbles in my already published story have moved so that almost all of them are now placed right on the characters faces. I haven’t had to learn how to move the speech bubbles placements, because it has always worked really good automatically. The placement is apparently not automatic anymore and this will mean a lot of more work for the authors. And this has me worried!

You said you are working on some issues, but I wasn’t really sure what those issues are, so I thought I’d let you know my thoughts.

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And now I have to re-place all of the speechbubbles from my stories with pink or purple bubbles…

ARGH.

tired%20mere

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They look great :blush:

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I’m really looking forward to the color change, I hope it’s out before I release my new story :slight_smile:

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Agreed, I’m hoping that they can eliminate the box. It just looks tacky and distracting.

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Is it possible to fix this so that we do not have to place speechbubbles again? The last time when the font changed we had to do this. Some authors have multiple stories going st once which means that they may have to lock them in order to place speechbubbles. This can hurt reader retention as well as engagement.

I feel bad for those who have multiple stories with a lot of episodes. It’s a bit of work to have to redo:

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Same!

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Thanks for bringing this up! We’ve just updated our post above to address this issue.

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How do they look?

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Thanks for bringing this to our attention! We’ve gone ahead and updated our post above with details on the issue. We’ll aim to update the post as we discover more.

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Thanks for bringing this up! We’ve updated our post above to address this issue. We’ll be updating the post as we get more information.

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I love this. I wanted to use this in my story but I had to use a narrator bubble instead.

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I’m glad you addressed the speech bubble error, because I know some people had some problems with it in their contest entries. Was anything else effected during testing? Also I’m excited more people will get the new speech bubbles and I want to check to see if it’s me :).

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Oh thank God! The speech bubble placement in Limelight was really throwing me off. I almost went back and corrected the placement myself but figured you guys would notice the problem and fix it for us.

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