Characters

Characters live in their own row above the Throughline in the Draft Workspace. Create a Character Card, then drag it or its chip down onto a Beat to cast it there.

What’s on a Character

A Character Card holds:

• Name
• Color, which follows them everywhere: their chip, their dialogue highlighting in the Write Workspace, their node in the Shape Workspace’s Constellation
• Summary
• Want, Need and Flaw: what they’re chasing on the surface, what they actually require, and what’s preventing them from getting it

Casting

Drag a Character’s chip onto a Beat and they’re in the cast for that scene. A Beat can hold as many Characters as you need. You can also enter Character names manually in the Beat dialog, or in the Beat’s top bar in the Write Workspace.

Characters aren’t locked to one Beat. Cast the same Character into every scene they appear in; the relationship is just a drag, so restructuring later costs nothing.

In the Constellation

In the Shape Workspace’s Constellation, Characters are nodes you can connect to one another, with a relationship labelled in each direction. See Shape for that side of it.

In the script

Character names autocomplete in the Write Workspace, and (V.O.) and (O.S.) cues stay attached to whichever Character they belong to. Rename a Character and Throughline offers to rename them throughout the script too, with a preview of how many scenes and lines are affected. See Formatting & Elements.

Recycling

Drag a Character onto the recycling bin and it’s recycled, not gone. Open the bin and you can restore it exactly where it was.