Characters

The characters module is the roster and the relationship map for your whole story. It holds three things: a dossier per character (tier, identity, faction, arc, portrait); relationships you build yourself, so the canvas shows who has scenes with whom; and per-chapter changes to age, occupation, faction and phase state, each with a clear starting value and a chapter where it changes.

It does not decide who should appear or whether someone has enough stage time. Appearance and line counts are measured from the draft you wrote, to show how the parts are spread. Nothing warns you that a character has been offstage too long, and nothing edits a dossier behind your back.

Open Characters in the left navigation. Four areas, each with one job:

• Canvas: character cards and relationship lines. Scroll to zoom (20%–200%), drag to pan, drop a card anywhere.
• Top island: icons only—Overview All, Reorganize, Auto-Organize, Save Layout, Co-appearance Links.
• Bottom-left console: the Static Relationships / Dynamic Slices switch and Filter. In Dynamic Slices, chapter buttons appear above the console so you can read one chapter’s web of relations.
• Right sidebar: Relationship List on top, Character List below (grouped by faction / hierarchy / relationship density).

Double-click a card to open the Edit Character drawer on the right. It is non-modal: you can still zoom and pan the canvas beside it, and the list on the far right stays visible.

1. 1
   Drop a card

   Right-click empty canvas and pick New Character. The card lands near where you clicked. There is no permanent add button in the corner.
2. 2
   Fill the dossier

   Double-click the card. Top to bottom: Character Name, Character Portrait, Character Tier, Affiliated Faction, Aliases, Gender, Age, Occupation/Identity, Phase status, Character Arc, Visual Notes. Name and notes are click-to-edit text—no grey frame until you hover.
3. 3
   Save

   The button at the bottom reads Save, then Saving. The card updates at once and is there when you reopen the project.

Empty fields fall back to placeholders: “Untitled Character”, “No character arcs yet”, “Identity Info Not Filled”. Deleting takes two clicks: Delete in the drawer, then confirm “Delete this character? This action cannot be undone.” Deleting a person also removes the relationship lines attached to them.

Most of the time you do not file characters first and write later—the people arrive while you write. The rule is simple: a speaker line is the doorway into the roster.

1. 1
   Mark a line as a speaker

   Press Tab on a line and pick the speaker type. Lines of dialogue that follow attach to it.
2. 2
   Commit the name

   Press Enter, move the cursor to another line, or let the editor lose focus—any of those commits it. Loomworld then compares the name with the roster: both the formal name and aliases match, ignoring case and surrounding spaces.
3. 3
   Match binds, a miss files a card

   A match only binds—no duplicate card. A miss creates one on the spot, filed under the Minor tier by default, with the other fields left for you.

The other direction matters too: a name mentioned in a description line is not a link to the dossier. Connecting text to a person with the right-click “Connect to…” menu leaves a thread for the reader; appearance counts, co-appearance lines and the heatmap count only chapters where that person speaks as a speaker line (see “Co-appearance lines and appearance counts”). How references work is in Entity mentions and @.

Tier is a segmented slider: Lead, Supporting, Minor, Walk-on, Extra. It drives the card’s size and how much it shows:

• Lead / Supporting: a 3:4 card, name first, then “gender · age · occupation”, and the character arc at the bottom (clamped to a few lines). No scene or line counts.
• Minor: keeps the two count chips “N scenes / M lines” and the identity line.
• Walk-on: no counts—only “gender · age · occupation”.
• Extra: a square text card with the name and an “Extra” tag, about half the size of a Lead card.

You own the tier. Beside the slider sits a suggestion, for example “Suggestion: Supporting; Basis: 12 scenes / 31 lines / 3 relations”. It only counts what is in the script; it never overwrites the tier you saved. With no script data yet it reads “Suggestion: Supporting Character; Basis: No script data”.

A faction is a lore card, and that card is the single source of truth for the faction’s name, aliases and identity. A character stores the faction’s identity, not a word: rename the card and the chips on every character, the roster groups, member counts, rankings and what the agent reads all update together. No find-and-replace.

The faction box is a search field you can type straight into. Both the formal name and aliases match:

• One exact match—press Enter and reuse that card.
• No match—only then does “Create Faction …” appear as a choice.

Choosing to create one is still drawer draft. The card and the membership both appear only when you save the character. Typing, clicking away, cancelling or closing the drawer leave no stray card behind. One character can belong to several factions at once; removing a chip unbinds that person only.

Four fields can change chapter by chapter: age, occupation, affiliated faction, phase status. The switch is the “Activity” toggle beside the field; the history it keeps is labelled Dynamic Evolution.

1. 1
   Turn it on

   The input keeps editing the starting value—how things were at the beginning—and a chapter track appears under it: “Initial” on the left, one dot per chapter.
2. 2
   Click a chapter dot

   A plain dot reads “: Click to add a change point”; a lit dot lets you view, edit or delete it. Arrows step between chapters, and the track slides sideways on long projects.
3. 3
   Fill the new value and press Done

   The chapter window holds the value that takes effect from that chapter on. Done only edits the draft; the drawer’s Save commits everything together.

The rules are written out: a change carries on until the next change point; deleting one falls back to the previous value or the start; a value identical to the previous stage is refused (“New value matches previous stage; no change point needed.”); and a blank input does not mean “none”.

A track with no change points is still saved, so you can open the lane now and fill it later. Closing a track that has changes tells you how many it will delete before it asks you to confirm.

There is one way to build a relationship: press “Relationship” on a card (tooltip Add Relationship), the canvas says “Click another character card now to establish a bidirectional relationship”, click the second person, and the Edit Relationship drawer opens. Cancel backs out. That button only shows on a selected card or while you are wiring one, so the canvas stays quiet.

Two characters share a single line, and the white capsule on it reads in two forms:

• One shared word: with the Bidirectional Perspective switch off, the capsule holds a single label—lovers, father and son, allies.
• A word each way: switch on Bidirectional Perspective and the capsule splits in two—for betrayal, misunderstanding, one-sided love. A to B “probing”, B to A “brother”.

Relationship Metrics are on by default: a small ring each side of the wording, with names you define (“devotion” for lovers, “trust” and “loyalty” for a lord and his minister), falling back to “Intensity” when the name is blank. Turning metrics off only hides the rings; the numbers you entered come back when you turn them on. The capsule carries wording only—longer material belongs in Plot Evidence: Relationship Notes and the list of Shared Scenes.

A line with no wording, no note and no metrics is not drawn, so you never get an empty thread; clearing the form and saving is the same as deleting the relation (confirm “Delete this relationship? This action cannot be undone.”). Double-click the capsule or the line to edit; a single click only selects.

The Co-appearance Links switch on the top island (off by default) lays a fainter dashed layer under the canvas: two characters who both take the stage in one scene get a dashed line, and the capsule in the middle shows how many scenes that is. It is a hint, not a relation—it never enters the relationship list and never invents wording. Click that capsule and the same Edit Relationship window opens; only after you fill something in and save does it become a manual relation. Co-appearance lines always sit under manual lines, which this switch never touches.

Counts come from the draft, but only credit appearances as a speaker: the “N scenes / M lines” chips on a Minor card, the same numbers in the list below, and the co-appearance counts all measure scenes where that person speaks, plus the dialogue lines that follow. So “they were clearly in this scene but the count is 0” is not a miss—the character did not speak in it.

The Relationship List holds only the relations you made: one row per pair, “person —wording— person”, with the two metric rings; before any exist it reads “No relationships yet”. The Character List groups by faction / hierarchy / relationship: the faction view puts unaffiliated characters under “Ungrouped” and shows a multi-faction character in each of their groups; the relationship view sorts people into High-Density, Medium-Density, Low-Density and none by how many relations they hold. The list always shows every character—canvas filters never hide anyone from it.

Say things like “add a witness to this scene”, “change her cover to a retired cavalry officer”, “this extra is dead weight, delete them”. The agent reads your roster and your draft first, then returns a confirmation card—you decide whether the pen falls. On that card it can:

• Create a character: a name at minimum, other fields if it has them.
• Change fields: name, aliases, gender, age, occupation/identity, character arc, visual notes, phase status, tier, affiliated faction.
• Delete a character: the card spells out what the deletion touches (appearances, relationship lines and the like) before you confirm.
• Create a relation: which two people, one shared word or two directional ones, plus an optional note.

Factions get extra protection: the card states both “these faction cards will be created” and “this character will end up belonging to…”. If a name is ambiguous or a card changed in the meantime, the whole card is rejected rather than quietly clearing the member list.

One card carries up to 8 operations and applies them in a single confirmation; after confirming, the whole card goes onto the project undo stack, so one undo pulls it all back. Two things never come through a proposal: the portrait, which you upload yourself or take from “✦ Generate Image”, and the chapter change points, which stay yours. Scope and the confirmation mechanism are covered in AI collaboration overview and Cross-module links.

• Layout: a dragged card stays where you let go—nothing pulls it back. Reorganize places only the cards you never positioned; Auto-Organize ignores the current layout and reorders everything, overwriting manual placement. Save Layout keeps what you have.
• Portrait: hover the image area on the card or in the drawer and click the camera icon to upload or replace. With no portrait the card shows a low-saturation tint from its tier. A failed file reports “Failed to process portrait”; “✦ Generate Image” needs a signed-in account, drafts the prompt first (“Drafting prompt…”), then lets you edit it and choose Adopt or Regenerate.
• Fewer cards than expected: the Filter panel opens from the console and can hide tiers, filter by faction, or “Hide minor characters and passersby” in one click. Filters change only what the canvas shows, never the dossiers.
• Counts stuck at zero: check whether the character appears as a speaker in that scene. A name mentioned in a description line does not count as an appearance.

How the modules connect to each other is in Reference modules overview.