Fortelling - Story Writing App

What happens the second you open it

You tap the icon. The logo appears. Then you wait. Sometimes the screen goes black. Sometimes it stays on the logo for a long time. This is not a rare occurrence. Multiple users have reported startup issues where the app simply does not load. One reviewer on the App Store asked, "why is it stuck on logo ?". Another source noted "reliability issues on launch and login: app sometimes won't load or shows a black screen, with slow registration in some cases". So the onboarding reality is not smooth. You might have to force-close and reopen. You might have to wait. But eventually, if you persist, you get in. And then you are greeted by a clean, organized interface with two main tabs: Worldbuilding and Writing. The home screen is designed to be your command center, giving you instant access to all your storytelling tools. But that initial friction is real. It sets a tone of caution. You wonder: if the app struggles to start, how will it handle my novel?

Once inside, you start creating. You add a character. You fill out a template. You write a location. The templates are detailed, with fields for age, gender, species, personality, languages, geography, climate, culture, and more. It feels powerful. You can create sublocations and walk through your world. You can link characters to locations. You can build an entire universe. The app gives you the tools to organize your ideas in a way that plain text or a simple note app never could. But then you start writing. You type a few hundred words. The app starts to lag. One user reported that after writing just 700+ characters, the app became "卡到疯狂" (extremely laggy). Another user on CloudApks noted "really bad lags". This is the reality: the app is ambitious, but its performance does not always keep up with its ambition.

When worldbuilding meets plotting, and why it breaks

The core promise of Fortelling is that you can connect your worldbuilding directly to your plot. You create a character, you create a location, you create an item. Then you write a scene and link that character, that location, that item. The overview board lets you see all these connections in one giant board with lines between them. This is powerful. It helps you maintain consistency. It helps you avoid contradictions. But here is the clash: the more connections you make, the more data the app has to process. And the more data it processes, the slower it gets. The lag is not just a minor annoyance. It is a fundamental breakdown of the workflow. You are trying to write, to be creative, to flow. But the app keeps stuttering. The writing sprints feature in version 5.0 is designed to help you hit your goals in timed sessions. But if the app lags during a sprint, you lose focus. You lose time. The feature that is supposed to boost your productivity becomes a source of frustration.

This is not just speculation. The feedback is consistent. Users praise the features but criticize the performance. The app is described as "a great tool for story building" but also as having "reliability issues". The developer acknowledges bugs and releases fixes, as seen in the changelogs for 4.4.3 and 5.0.3. But the underlying problem may be architectural. The app is built to handle complex relationships between story elements. That is a lot of data. And on mobile devices, especially older ones, that data can overwhelm the system. The result is a tool that is brilliant in theory but frustrating in practice. It is a classic case of feature creep: the app adds more and more capabilities, but the core engine struggles to keep up.

Ads, bugs, and the cost of free

The app is free. That is a major selling point. You can access all the core features without paying. Users appreciate this. One reviewer called the free version "amazing with all the features". Another said "No need for the paid stuff". But free comes with a price. The app is ad-supported. Some users report that the ads are not intrusive, but others note that the free version has limitations. The web version, for example, has caps on how much you can create. And there is constant pressure to upgrade to Pro. The Pro subscription costs $12.99 per month or $129 per year in the US. On iOS, it is Rp 49ribu per month or Rp 499ribu per year. That is not cheap. And users resent the push. One review on chrome-stats noted "Monetization pressure: heavy push toward Pro, with a paid web version and other paywalled features". Another complained about "pressure to pay for Pro". The app feels like it is always asking you to upgrade, even when you are just trying to write.

Bugs are another constant companion. The app has a reputation for being buggy. Users report issues with the color picker, the save button, discard popups that appear even when there are no changes, and problems with changing text styles. Some users have reported that the app "broke on me and the devs wouldn't reply". The Exodus Privacy report also found trackers in the app, including advertisement, crash reporting, and analytics trackers. This raises privacy concerns. The app collects personal information, financial information, and three other categories of data. It shares financial information with third parties. Data is encrypted in transit, but you can request deletion. So the free experience comes with trade-offs: ads, bugs, privacy concerns, and constant nudges to pay. It is a classic freemium model, but executed with a level of friction that can wear you down.

The permissions you grant and what they mean

When you install Fortelling, you grant a long list of permissions. According to the Exodus report, the app requests 18 permissions, including ACCESS_ADSERVICES_AD_ID, INTERNET, POST_NOTIFICATIONS, READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED, WAKE_LOCK, and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE. Some of these are expected. INTERNET is needed for collaboration and web sync. READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE are needed to save your work and access images. But why does it need to run at startup (RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED)? Why does it need to prevent the phone from sleeping (WAKE_LOCK)? These permissions suggest that the app wants to run in the background, even when you are not using it. That could be for notifications or sync. But it also raises questions about battery usage and background activity. The app also has access to your advertising ID, which is used for tracking. The developer claims that data is encrypted in transit and that you can request deletion. But the presence of multiple trackers (up to 7 in one version) suggests that your data is being shared with third parties for advertising and analytics. This is not unusual for a free app, but it is something you should be aware of. You are not just getting a free writing tool. You are also becoming a product.