Shooglebox for writers

Shooglebox has become a favourite tool of authors who use it to gather research material for the books they're writing then discover it becomes an indispensable companion in all sorts of other useful and surprising ways.

Fiction writers use it to pull together stimulus that helps them immerse themselves in the worlds they're creating.

Non-fiction writers use it to collect raw source material in a way that makes it easy to review, explore and make rediscoveries and new discoveries.

"I bloody love Shooglebox"

Author Toni Summers Hargis on why it's an indispensable companion for writers and researchers.

Gather and save your research material

A quick and easy way to collect all the different types of material that might feed in to your current thinking and writing – web pages, book extracts, photos, videos, notes, quotes, social media posts, PDFs and other documents. You might use other apps and physical notebooks for specific types of material; Shooglebox helps you view and explore it all in one place.

Assemble immersive visual moodboards

Create multimedia moodboards to immerse yourself in the world of your story or help create a vivid sense of specific characters, themes or settings. With Shooglebox you're not restricted to picture moodboards – you can pull together a rich mix of imagery, music, video, text and any material that helps feed your imagination.

Boxes of cards for different projects

All the things you put into Shooglebox are turned into cards with an at-a-glance front and full material on the back. In the early stages of a new project it’s often best to start by throwing things into one messy box as you find them and seeing what patterns and connections emerge when you open your box again and give it a shuffle.

Boxes of cards for random inspiration

Shooglebox is a great place to squirrel away all the random things you come across unconnected to the topic or project you're currently focused on – those quotes, articles and odd snippets you have a hunch might come in useful one day. It's often the combination of your specific research and something entirely random that sparks the best ideas.

Build on the things you're discovering

Your boxes aren't just receptacles for storing all the links, articles and media you find in your research. You can add your own information and notes to the backs of cards – or you can create your own cards from scratch, with a few at-a-glance words and/or an image on the front and all the text and imagery you want to add on the back.

Visual grid layout to review and explore

The card-based grid layout makes it easy and fun to stand back and review everything – like being able to look at it all on a big visual bookshelf. If you know what you're looking for you can use search to find it – but something different happens when you've time to scan through your stuff and spot things you might have forgotten.

Saving things to
share with others

Authors tell us they find Shooglebox useful for all sorts of things beyond research for their current writing – eg saving material to use in your pitch to the publisher, squirrelling away conversations on social media, pulling together PR ideas. You can share any of your boxes with someone else – either read-only or for full collaboration.

Try it out for yourself

Or get in touch here if you'd like to find out more, ask any questions or book a free demo. Our team can take you through some of the best ways to get the most out of Shooglebox. We'd love to hear from you!