Creator cinematic authoring

Scenes and the reader

Published events are staged as scenes. You author the canon facts, characters, locations, beats, dialogue direction, and real branch decisions; playback composes them into ordered narration and character dialogue. The reader is a distinct unnamed participant, not a named character in the cast.

Do not write the reader's words, thoughts, feelings, identity, consent, allegiance, purchases, attacks, inventory use, or irreversible actions for them. Put consequential reader actions in branch choices. Characters may address the reader as “you,” and narration may describe what the reader can perceive and the consequences of an action they actually chose.

Beats, dialogue, and decisions

Use dialogue beats for an important line or speaking intent from a named character. Use setup, action, emotion, reveal, consequence, and cliffhanger beats for observable direction and canon facts. Include every character who is present so dialogue can resolve to the correct cast member.

Use a required branch only when playback must stop for a reader decision. An optional branch may remain available while the reader continues. Validation can block a branch that cannot advance from its anchor, so fix the named branch or event before publishing.

Story Packages and lasting consequences

For a Story Package story, put outcome-changing decisions and their state effects in the package. Playback preserves authored injuries, deaths, resource losses, clues, and accusations; it does not let narration choose a decision for the reader or erase an outcome after it happens. Configured counter and resource limits are enforced, and a character who is dead, missing, evacuated, or incapacitated cannot independently act. A later turn cannot revive a participant or cast member whose authored state is terminal. The package's current content rating and safety limits also remain in the narrator contract; a mature tier does not override an authored limit such as keeping graphic gore off-page.

In a fixed-case mystery, the culprit and objective truth stay fixed even when suspicion or an accusation changes. The reveal course controls which facts narration may use in each episode, so do not depend on a later truth appearing early. Use package validation and simulation to catch an unavailable required actor, an unreachable decision, or an ending that no authored path reaches before publishing.

Preview and lint

Creator preview uses the same structured scene shape as live playback without consuming the reader's AI allocation. Review the order of narration and dialogue, who is speaking, how the scene addresses the reader, and where a required decision stops Continue. Script, Markdown, and JSON exports preserve the same block order and speaker identity.

Story lint reports participant-agency warnings for conflicting point-of-view guidance, authored reader dialogue or internal state, and consequential actions assigned to the reader. Treat these warnings as editorial findings: update the named event or beat, preview again, and publish only after blocking validation findings are resolved.