About Us
Our goal at Novel Goggles is to help writers to craft better stories, whatever their writing style.
Story planning and structure, integrated with YOUR manuscript.
Who are we?
Who is behind Novel Goggles? Me. I am Lionel Basson, the solo founder and developer of Novel Goggles. My formal education is in Electrical & Electronic Engineering and I worked in the aerospace industry for a number of years. I've always enjoyed writing, creative pursuits in general, and creating tools. I also enjoy learning and figuring things out. These attributes were useful in my engineering endeavours and they have proved useful in starting a business and creating the Novel Goggles SaaS. Besides High-School English, I have no further formal training in creative writing, but I apply my ability to learn to all aspects of the Novel Goggles project as well as my own creative writing.
Currently, the 'we' in Novel Goggles is mostly aspirational. While I get advice and feedback from a number of people, almost everything that you see on this website or in the web app was created by me. I founded a company to be the legal entity behind Novel Goggles, and that company is Exceptional Invention. Exceptional Invention and Novel Goggles are my attempt to build a sustainable life for myself whereby I can contribute meaningfully to the world at large while working in a way that I find enjoyable and fulfilling. I have expansive plans for both Novel Goggles and Exceptional Invention, but for now, the focus is on Novel Goggles. To me, Novel Goggles & Exceptional Invention offer a path to exiting the rat-race that modern working life has turned into and I'm working hard towards making a success of both of these projects.
My Linked in and the Novel Goggles LinkedIn pages can be found here:
The Origins of Novel Goggles
The desire to create Novel Goggles was kindled while I was struggling to regain control of an unruly story manuscript that had gotten away from me. I'm a pantser who likes writing scenes. Amusing thoughts occur to me and develop as I write, and wrangling these scenes into a proper story is something I struggle with. As the aforementioned troublesome story grew in scope, the struggle of maintaining consistency and evaluating what story elements were missing or needed revision started eroding at my enjoyment of writing. As I tried to resolve the problems with my own manuscript, I started reading more about story structure and the different ways that other writers use to optimise their writing processes. My desire to use these ideas to improve my own stories led to the seeds of Novel Goggles.
Initially, Novel Goggles was envisioned as a plugin tool to help evaluate and refactor an existing story. As development progressed and users gave feedback, it became clear that providing the maximum benefit would require tighter integration between story planning and analysis, and the process of writing itself. This has resulted in the Novel Goggles available to you today, which includes a word processor with tight integration with the story planning and structure elements.
To get an idea of what underpins the development of Novel Goggles, take a look at the overview page of the How to Write a Novel section of the website. There, you will see an overview of the processes and aspects of story writing that I am trying to make accessible to anyone who wants to write creative fiction. Novel Goggles still needs work before my ultimate vision for it is achieved, work supported by the Novel Goggles subscribers.
As a solo founder and developer, I have limited resources that need to be distributed over a large number of tasks aimed at making Novel Goggles a success. My time is split across: research & development, integration, marketing, support and content generation. If the time between updates seems long, this is why. The more people support Novel Goggles, the more resources I have to pour back into the project.
Our Mission & Values
Novel Goggles: Mission
Our mission at Novel Goggles is to make captivating story-telling and book writing accessible to creative writers of all kinds. We aim to make Novel Goggles both extremely comprehensive as well as supremely flexible. Writer's should be able to use the features and tools in the way that works best for them but they should also feel encouraged to try the more holistic approach to story-telling that Novel Goggles promotes. I admit that we have not entirely reached our goals just yet but we're always exploring new ways to improve the writing and planning experience for our users.
In service of our mission:
- We're always learning: In terms of software development, creative writing, and what our users want.
- We're always look to innovate: We like to try new ideas. They don't always work out as planned, so let us know what you think and help us change and adjust.
- We want to stay Affordable & Accessible: We aim to keep pricing accessible to as many people as possible.
Exceptional Invention: Mission
Our broader mission at exceptional invention is to create an innovative and efficient team that can tackle multiple SaaS products and create a multitude of tools for people and businesses to use to improve their efficiency and productivity. This mission is currently solely focussed on creative writing and Novel Goggles, but we intend to branch out into other areas once we grow large enough to sustain further projects.
Some Areas where Exceptional Invention hopes to offer services in the future:
- Professional Development Software for individuals and companies
- Project Management Software for complex hardware & software projects
- Systems Engineering Software for complex systems
- Low-volume Production & Assembly software tools
Values
Our values at Novel Goggles & Exceptional Invention are shared. We believe in offering software products and services that are broadly accessible to users with varied economic circumstances.
We believe in the right to privacy. We try to limit the amount of data gathered about our users. Unfortunately, to operate as a successful business, we DO need to integrate some analytics and tracking software. However, where possible, we integrate these tools in consent mode (no cookie-based tracking takes place until after cookie configuration is complete, and then only what the user allowed) and configured for maximal privacy (for example, IP address anonymisation is enabled for Google Analytics and full text and image masking is enabled for Microsoft Clarity).
We believe that your user generated content should be available to you should you choose to take it elsewhere. Currently, we provide downloadable .json files (using file extension .ngog purely for identification purposes). These are human-readable text files that can be opened in text editors. In the future, we intend to provide tools for viewing and exporting these .ngog files more easily.
What does the future hold?
While I am proud of what I have developed thus far, the journey does not end here. I am constantly striving to improve the existing features of Novel Goggles and add exciting new ones. I hope that 2025 will be a year of growth for the Novel Goggles community and for my company: Exceptional Invention. By growing Exceptional Invention I will have more resources to apply to the creation of new features, the development of new technologies to support my more adventurous ideas, better testing, and a more modern and responsive look and feel.
If Novel Goggles sounds exciting to you in its current form or you're excited about where you think I'll take it in the future, you can support me by subscribing. I encourage my adventurous users to subscribe to the Pioneer subscription tier when it is available for new subscribers, you can read more about the Pioneer program here.
Basic Brand Guidelines
Novel Goggles
Should you wish to write something about Novel Goggles or Exceptional Invention on your website, these are the logos, fonts and colours that match our brand guidelines.Logos
Fonts
- Korolev
- Poppins
Colours
Exceptional Invention
Logos
Fonts
- Korolev
- Poppins
Colours
We improve our products by using Microsoft Clarity (in consent mode and strict masking mode: all images and text are masked) to see how you use our website. By using our site, you agree that we and Microsoft can collect and use this data. Our privacy statement (Privacy Policy) has more details.