Plotline use cases
Nov. 5th, 2003 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSo, here are the use cases for Plotlines. Anyone care to opine if I've missed anything?
For the most part, I've avoided the concept of chapters and "sections" entirely. The scenes can be arranged along a plotline, in order, and multiple plotlines on the chart will allow you to intermingle your scenes until you have a satisfactory arrangement. The scenes will simply have two ordering elements-- a time one and a moment one. The "moment" one will be used to tell you which scene is more important, but in theory both scenes will be happening at the same time, possibly with sub-scenes intermingled (such as in a battle sequence). A collection of time events (worded, "scenes happening between time slices 15 and 30") will be decorated with the label "chapter," but that won't be hard-coded into the project anywhere. This way you can lengthen/shorten/rearrange and then restucture your chapter beginnings and endings any way you like.
I haven't figured out yet how to use the GTK Text Editing widget to make "live" associations, but I'd like to be able to click on a character's name as you're writing (or, better, have a CTRL sequence) that brings up the character's database entry as you work, so you can make sure that the description, characterization, etc., that you're writing match what you originally did. Don't want your character's eye color changing halfway through, or have a north-facing window in Seattle have the sun streaming in.
- Writer starts a project (provides name, gets default template)
- Writer associates a template with the project.
- Writer loads an existing template
- Writer adds or changes a field in template list.
- Writer deletes a field in a template list.
- Writer saves template.
- Writer requests to see all fields in a template list.
- Writer works on his project
- Writer adds a character to his world.
- Writer deletes a character from his world.
- Writer adds a location to his world.
- Writer deletes a location from his world.
- Writer adds a story (provides story title).
- Writer deletes a story
- Writer adds a plotline to his story (provides plotline name).
- Writer deletes a plotline.
- Writer adds a scene to a plotline.
The scene will have an establish place along the plotline.
Plotlines are broken up into timeslices. Multiple scenes, even from multiple plotlines, can occur in one timeslice. This is "decorative"; this information is stored outside of the scene/character ERD. - Writer removes a scene from a plotline.
- Writer associates a character with a scene.
- Writer removes a character/scene association.
- Writer associates a location with a scene.
- Writer removes a location/scene association.
- Writer modifies the content of a scene.
- Writers associates a collection of time slices into a chapter.
For the most part, I've avoided the concept of chapters and "sections" entirely. The scenes can be arranged along a plotline, in order, and multiple plotlines on the chart will allow you to intermingle your scenes until you have a satisfactory arrangement. The scenes will simply have two ordering elements-- a time one and a moment one. The "moment" one will be used to tell you which scene is more important, but in theory both scenes will be happening at the same time, possibly with sub-scenes intermingled (such as in a battle sequence). A collection of time events (worded, "scenes happening between time slices 15 and 30") will be decorated with the label "chapter," but that won't be hard-coded into the project anywhere. This way you can lengthen/shorten/rearrange and then restucture your chapter beginnings and endings any way you like.
I haven't figured out yet how to use the GTK Text Editing widget to make "live" associations, but I'd like to be able to click on a character's name as you're writing (or, better, have a CTRL sequence) that brings up the character's database entry as you work, so you can make sure that the description, characterization, etc., that you're writing match what you originally did. Don't want your character's eye color changing halfway through, or have a north-facing window in Seattle have the sun streaming in.
