1. Prose. was conceived during the queen mother of all hangovers by a resident author while he was sweating alcohol, sick on the floor of the Austin, Texas, convention center during SXSW 2014.

2. The Challenges feature was a source of consternation and violent text wars from Prose.’s creator to the development and business team, after the coder sent the resident author only the wire frame for Challenges, and the author thought it was the newsfeed, and he pulled over en route to Seattle and the war became bloodier while semis on Interstate 5 shook the author’s station wagon, which was basically held together by dirt and faith at that point. As the bigger picture was made clear to him, the author, known and usually hated for his bad temper, texted back his deepest apologies, but shit was still tense for a day or so.

3. During the first physical meeting between the author and the coder and the coder’s partner in the development company of the app, the three of them talked for three hours at Essentials Bakery by Gas Works Park, and the conversation became so high-energy that surrounding tables started listening, until the coder drove away a family of four with excited, constant foul language he was unable to control. The hurt look on the father’s face while he hustled off his wife and two small children made the author laugh until he started coughing.

4. The coder worked alone, and obsessed with the app until beta was launched only two months after concept.

5. The Prose. Facebook page had 100 likes per day for the first week, before anyone even knew what it was.

6. The ink splotch beneath the period after Prose. was initially placed beneath the top of the P, until it was moved on a whim at the office while the author and the coder and a few other people stared at it. Some people confused it with a bullet hole graphic, which the team decided could be worse, because what punctuates anything more prominently than a bullet?

7. During beta testing, the core group was only supposed to invite a few people each with the Testflight link via email, but none of them listened, or else none of their friends listened, and the 38 testers for beta became 128 within two weeks. Nobody has yet owned responsibility for this.

8. Prose. launched publicly on iOS the last week of September, 2014, and then launched the .com toward the end of the following November—from the iOS launch until the spring of 2015, aside from the popular social media pages, the news of the app pretty much spread by word of mouth.

9. The first country outside of the States to have a Prose. writer was Canada, and a writer from the UK was the first Proser from a non-contiguous country.

10. Since the app’s launch, the word "prose" has become an acceptable verb across the globe.

__________________________

You can view the fully-loaded version of this article on the Prose blog at: blog.theprose.com/blog

Taylor Adams, like Prose, hails from the Emerald City. He's the author of Eyeshot, a novel, and director of the short film "And I Feel Fine."

He graduated from Eastern Washington University with the Excellence in Screenwriting Award and the prestigious Edmund G. Yarwood Award.

His directorial work has screened at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival, and his writing has been featured on KAYU-TV's Fox Life blog.

The Evergreen State is his home.

"The Pacific NW has definitely influenced my creative choices," he said in an interview last week. "Growing up near Mount Rainier, I had a fascination with volcanoes, so all of my childhood forays into writing involved some variation of Mount Rainier erupting and destroying the surrounding area via mudflow/lava/pyroclastic flow/all of the above.

"Even now, my friends and family have noticed the occasional volcano reference sneaking into my work. I still watch Dante's Peak every now and then. You know, for research."

We asked Taylor to compare his work in screenwriting to that of other pursuits as an author. How do the two institutions conflict? How does one inform the other?

"I enjoy both, for different reasons," said Taylor. "Screenwriting is great because it's all about structure, and you can rewrite fast. You're in the story's skeleton, and you can rearrange and redesign those bones must faster than a novel, where everything about a scene is carefully detailed from the ground up.

"However, as a fiction author, this also means near-complete ownership of the product. You're not just writing a blueprint for a director, editor, set designer, etc - you're actually filling those roles. Of course, fiction writing is also collaborative (you have editors/beta readers/graphic artists/etc) but it's definitely more of a solo experience.

"I think I'm too early in my career to pick a favorite; hopefully I have a chance to do a lot more of both!"

For those of you that may be interested in writing for the small or silver screens, we tasked Taylor with putting together a list of top "must-see" films from the last 10 years.

Here they are, in order, accompanied by Taylor's commentary.

1)SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED

Screenwriter: Derek Connolly

"A warm, insightful story that uses time travel as a metaphor for relationships… and a great example of a satisfyingly open ending. It resolves its characters, not the tedious machinations of time travel, and resonates because of its simplicity."

2) SUNSHINE

Screenwriter: Alex Garland

"This film took some flak for its third act, but I think the tonal shift into slasher-horror (you'll know it when you see it) is a pretty natural extension of Murphy's Law in space. It's bold, smart sci-fi. I may be in the minority here, but I think the climax is brilliantly handled."

3) THE ROAD

Screenwriters: Aloy Adlawan and Yam Laranas

"A fascinating ghost story with a hypnotic, dreamlike structure. The narrative tugs backward in time to form a chilling circle. This one is notable not just for delivering great scares, but for the story's undercurrent of sorrow and genuine sympathy. Even for its monsters."

4) WORLD'S GREATEST DAD

Screenwriter: Bobcat Goldthwait

"A scathingly funny look at the celebrityhood that can sometimes follow an untimely death, and the regular people who get caught in the middle. I can't go into detail without giving too much away… just see it!

"Black comedy gold, nicely crafted dialogue, and a great performance from (the late) Robin Williams."

You can follow Taylor on Twitter @Tadamsauthor and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tayloradamsauthor.

Be sure to visit his site for more information about his current and upcoming works:

http://tayloradamsauthor.com.

__________________________

This #MondayBlogs series seeks to educate readers and writers from the inside out. Have an idea for an article? Want to know more about a specific topic? Humor us! Submit your suggestions via private message here or visit the contact page: www.theprose.com/p/contact.