Characters

Characters are the records most projects lean on hardest. Story Builder helps you keep track of characters in a novel: who they are, how they connect, when they were born and where they appear.

Creating a character #

Choose Create Character in the Characters list. The name is the only required field, so a character can start as a name and grow as the story needs it.

A character page has five tabs: Overview, Attributes, Storyline, Relations and Family Tree. The overview also lists the chapters the character appears in, the plotlines they lead or appear in, and the organizations they belong to.

How do I tell main characters from secondary ones? #

Give each character a Prominence: Main, Secondary or Minor. Choose it from the chip beside the name on the character page, or in the creation form; leave it Not set until you know. Prominence describes the story, not the world, so it is not one of the fields a storyline event can change.

The characters list shows the tier on every row and card, next to the number of chapters the character appears in and a plotline mark for anyone who leads a plotline. Sort the list by prominence — main first, then secondary, minor and unset, each in name order — from the sort label at the right of the toolbar, or click the Prominence column in the columns view. Under the filters button, pick one or more tiers, Not set included, or show only the characters who lead a plotline.

A warning mark appears when the tier and the story disagree: a minor character who appears in ten chapters or more, or a plotline lead marked minor or not marked at all. Hover it to see why. It is a nudge, not a rule: change the tier, or leave it as it is.

In Lens, the Cast report can be sorted by prominence too, so the main cast's threads sit together at the top.

Biography and portrait #

The Biography is a rich-text field, written in the same editor as a chapter, so it takes headings, lists and formatting. When collaboration is on, two people can edit it at the same time.

A character can have a Portrait. Images belong to the project and count against its storage, and one image can be used by several records without uploading it twice. Images in an unpublished project stay private; in a published story they are public, like the story. See images.

How do I keep track of a character's traits? #

Add custom fields. Instead of a fixed form, you decide what a character has: height, allegiance, the thing they will not talk about. Define fields in Settings → Custom fields; each one appears on every character in the project, on the Attributes tab.

A field of type A value from a list offers only the options you give it, like the five houses or the four schools of magic, so every character uses the same spelling and the character list can be filtered on it.

How do I show relationships between characters? #

Add a relation. On the Relations tab, choose Add relation, pick the other character, and name what each one is to the other: Ana is Bram's mentor, Bram is Ana's student. The relation appears on both characters at once. A character can also be linked to any other record through Related entries, and added to an organization with a role through Add to organization, which with the timeline on takes dates too: see organizations.

The relations page covers the graph view that draws them all.

Family tree #

The Family Tree tab draws a character's genealogy from their relations. In Settings → Family Tree, say which relation roles mean mother, father, adoptive or step parent, partner and sibling, and the tree builds itself from the relations you already have. Partners with no children and siblings with no known parents still appear, a child with more than two parents is drawn with two, and a link that would make someone their own ancestor is ignored. The tree warns when a parent is not older than their child or died before the child was born. Dates on the cards use your world's calendar.

New projects start with father, mother, adoptive parent, child, partner and sibling roles already set up, so the tree works from the first relation. The + on a card adds a relative: pick the role, type a name, and the new character is created and linked in one step. The first role in the child, partner and sibling groups is the one given to the character you add the relative to.

Birth, death and a character's history #

If your project has a timeline, a character has a Birth date and a Death date on your world's calendar. A death date can also be marked Unknown. With a birth date set, a read-only Age row follows them: the time that passed from the birth date to the death date when there is one, otherwise to the project's current date, written the way the Storyline tab writes the time since its anchor date — or not born yet when that date is before the birth. The date picker shows the same age while you choose a birth date.

Dates can be relative to another record's date. A death date can follow the battle it happened in: move the battle, and the death moves with it.

The Storyline tab is the character's own history. Add storyline event records something that happened to them at a date, with an optional location and description. Under Field changes you can record that a field changed from that date on: a new title, a switched allegiance.

Can I compare characters side by side? #

Yes. In the characters list, choose Compare on each character you want, then open Compare characters. Their fields sit side by side, Differences only hides what they share, and radar fields are drawn on one combined chart. It is a quick way to keep an ensemble cast distinct.

Tips #

Start with the name and one line of biography. Add fields when you find yourself writing the same detail into several biographies.
Mark the characters who carry a thread of their own as Main early. Sorting by prominence then keeps them at the top of the list while the cast grows.
Use a list field for anything you will want to filter on, such as house, species or rank.
Give every important character at least one relation. A character with none shows up in suggestions as one to connect to the world.
Set birth and death dates early. Lens uses them to catch a character who appears before birth or after death.
Record a character's changes of title or allegiance as storyline events rather than editing the field, so the history stays visible.
Date an organization membership on the membership itself, in the Organizations card, rather than as a storyline event: both storylines then show it, and the organization's member list stays right.

Relations — connect characters to each other and to the rest of the world.
Custom fields and values — design the fields every character has.
Timeline — give characters dates in your world's calendar.
Plotlines — follow one character's thread through the book.
Lens — check the cast for continuity errors.