Two structural entities are important when writing a book: chapters and scenes. A chapter has at least one scene. Of course it can also have 2 or more scenes, depending on your style of writing. Our short story has neither scenes nor chapters. Not yet. So let's create the first scene.

You may wonder why we are starting with scenes and not chapters. Why not create a chapter first? When you start a story you probably don't know the assignment of scenes to the chapters. Once a scene is created, it can be assigned to any chapter simply with drag-n-drop. How this works is explained later in this tutorial.

The easiest way to create the fist scene is to click the "+" button as shown in the screenshot. There is one thing to notice: this button is in the column called "Default Strand". Every scene in Storybook is assigned to a strand (or a plot-line). Such strands could be: "the goods" and "the bad guys", or the name of central character, or... It's a good idea to have a strand for miscellaneous stuff that doesn't have much to do with another strand. We will have a closer look at strands later in this tutorial. For now, we'll work with the "Default Strand".

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 lies.

Click to the button shown above and enter a title ("Amy in her flat") and the scene summary. Enter a date ("Feb 2, 2009") and press the OK button to close the dialog. You don't have to enter dates manually. Simply click the small calendar icon beside the date field and select a date.

The view has changed now. First, the date we entered is shown on the left. Every scene appearing in this "date row" is assigned to "Feb 2, 2009". Secondly, the scene we've created is shown... of course. But didn't we forgot something? Right. We haven't assigned the character (Amy) and the location (Amy's flat).

To edit a scene click on the first command button.
To delete a scene click on the second button.
To create a new scene with the same date click to the third button.

Since we want to edit the scene click on the edit button as shown in the screenshot.

Choose the second tab called "Characters and Locations". Adding characters and locations is simple. The upper list (empty at the moment) shows the characters already assigned.

To assign a new character, double-click on the character in the lower list. The lower list shows all characters. Note the leading "*" on some character's names. These characters are central characters and are listed first.

To remove an assigned character, simply double-click on the name in the upper list. You can also use the buttons "add" and "remove".

Now the character's abbreviation (AmAn) is shown as well as the location (Amy's Flat, New York City). Move the mouse cursor over a character's or location's label. More information is shown as a tool tip.

The title and summary can be edited directly without opening the scene dialog. To edit other data you have to use the edit button.

Last but not least for this part: Note the "x.x" on the upper left. This shows the chapter and scene number. Since we haven't assigned a chapter, nor set a scene number, the dummy "x.x" is shown. More of it later in this tutorial.

Continue with Part 4