1This was originally published on April 2, 2014 on Hatch, our internal version of Medium. Check out Hatching Inside Medium for more context.

Building blocks of a story

Inline content, layouts, and parts

When Medium first launched the story page it looked something like this:

At the start of September we began an exploratory project called Plus Plus. Four months later Medium 1.0 launched, known internally as one-dot-oh, which included the concept of covers and full bleeds to the story page.

Stories++ is a new project focused on migrating the story page to a more flexible model. Not one where we have a cover and then a story (and maybe a full bleed) but rather building blocks that are assembled in different ways to provide variation between stories.

Let’s break down the building blocks. The first level is inline content:

Inline content can be arranged within layouts. Right now we only are thinking about one layout, image grids.

Both inline content and layouts live within parts:

Parts seem to be used best for a change in tone, scene, or chapter. Giving the reader a moment to pause before moving on in the story. We are also playing with the ability to toggle the height of a part to fill the viewport. This would allow authors the ability to create covers very similar to how they exist now.

This was a high level look at how we are thinking about the story page. More detailed posts/plans to come on Hatch shortly. Leave notes or come chat ☺