Features · Story
Where is she, and what does she know?
Not notes, not a spreadsheet: a state you can ask for, computed from what happens.
Events with effects.
An event sits on a strand and says what it does to people: someone moves to a place, learns something, is injured, dies, is born, changes a relationship. An event can be anchored to a scene or placed in time.
- Twelve kinds of event, from beat to learns to death
- Effects: add, replace or remove a value at a path
- Travel events can name a mode: walk, horse, bicycle, car, train, boat or plane
State, with causes.
The state of a character at a moment is the profile as it is (who they are), plus age worked out from the birth date, plus every event up to that moment, plus where the last scene they were in puts them. It is pure: the same story and the same time always give the same answer, and each change says which event, strand and scene made it.
- alive, age, location, injuries, what they know, possessions, mood, status
- appearance, relations and any facet an event names
- State difference between two moments
Honest note
It knows what you tell it.
- Not offeredIt does not read your prose for facts
State comes from events and the facts of your cast. A scene can assert an age or a weekday, and the checks compare that with the calendar, but Author does not infer events from sentences.
Questions
About state.
How does Author know where a character is?
From what you tell it: events with effects (a journey, something learned, an injury), the facts of the cast, and the last scene the character was in. It folds them in story order. The same story always gives the same state, and each change names its event.
Does it read my prose and work it out?
No. It works from events, scenes and facts you entered. A scene can state an age or a weekday, and the checks compare that with the calendar, but Author does not infer events from sentences.