Two structural entities are important when writing a book: chapters and scenes. A chapter has at least one scene but can also have 2 or more scenes, depending on your writing style. So far our short story has neither scenes nor chapters. So let's create the first scene.

You may wonder why we are starting with a scene and not a chapters. When you start writing a story you probably don't know the assignments of scenes to chapters yet. Since scenes can be assigned to chapters very easy using drag-n-drop, that can be done later.

As you created the new project, the first scenes has already been created. Click on the edit button to edit that scene:

• This scene is located in the column called “Default Strand”. Every scene in Storybook is assigned to a strand (or a plot-line). Strands can be:

  • “The good guys” and “he bad guys”.

  • The name of a central character, e.g. the hero's name “Superman”.

  • The name of a location, e.g. “Things happen in Africa” and “Things happen in Europe”.

  • Everything else that belongs together in your story.

  • We will add more strands later. For now we keep it as it is.

• It's a good idea to have a strand for miscellaneous stuff, i.e. a strand for scenes that don't have much to do with the another strands.

Stories often start with a mystery, a puzzle that makes the reader intrigued. In the first scene Amy is in her flat:

It's late in the evening. It was a hard day, and Amy is watching TV. Suddenly the TV switches off. At the same moment someone rings her doorbell. Not once, but three times. Then the TV switches on again. Amy gets up from the sofa and looks through the peephole. No-one is there. As she opens the door, she sees a shadow running away. She looks down to the ground where a black briefcase is laying.

In the now shown dialog to edit a scene, enter the title (“Amy in her flat”) and the scene text. Open the date chooser (the small calendar icon besides the date field) and select the date: February 2, 2011. Click on “OK” to close the dialog.

• The title and the text is shown now in the scene. Also note the chosen date is shown on the left. Every scene shown in this “date row” is assigned to the same date.

• You can also edit the text in a scene box directly without opening the edit dialog.

• Storybooks automatically shows a second row now, set to the following date (also known as tomorrow). For a new scene happening tomorrow, simply click the “+” button on that row.

• To edit a scene click on the first command button (pen icon).

• To delete a scene click on the second button (no parking icon).

• To create a new scene with the same date click to the third button (plus icon).

We now edit the scene again and assign the character and the location:

• Switch to the second tab and double click on the character “Amy Anderson” in the lower list. The chosen character now is shown in the upper list.

• To un-assign a character, double click on it in the upper list.

• Also click on the location “Amy's flat” to assign the right location.

• Major characters are marked with a *.
   

Let's have a look at the scene again:

• The character's abbreviation (AmAn) is now shown as well as the chosen location (Amy's Flat, New York City). Move the mouse cursor over a character or a location to see more information in a tool tip.

• Note the "x.x" at the upper left of the scene. Here the chapter and scene number is shown. Since we haven't assigned this scene to a chapter yet the label “x.x” is shown.

Continue with Part 5