From story to script, and on to the floor

The Story Room and the Writers' Room hold two different things: what the story *is*, and what the script *says*. This is how they meet.

Mapping characters

When you upload or write a screenplay, ScenePaper reads the character cues out of it and produces a list of script characters — every name that speaks.

Those are not the same objects as your story characters. The script knows that RED speaks fourteen times; it does not know that Red wants to be trusted with reasons rather than errands. So they are linked: each time a revision saves, story characters are matched to script characters by name.

Once linked, the two halves stop drifting. The psychology, relationships and arc you wrote in the Story Room attach to the name that actually appears in the screenplay, and from there to casting, which attaches a real person to it.

The chain runs: story character → script character → cast member → the person who turns up on the day. Each step is a link rather than a re-typing, which is why a name change in the script does not orphan everything downstream.

Promoting a scene

A narrative scene is a plan. A production scene is a thing with a number, a shoot day, takes and continuity.

When a scene is ready, promote it. ScenePaper creates a production scene from it — titled from the scene, with a slugline built from interior or exterior, venue and time of day — and the two stay linked.

The scene now appears in both places: still in the Story Room as the story object, and in Scenes as the thing you will shoot. From there it picks up a shoot day on the schedule, lands on a call sheet, and collects takes and continuity on the day.

Promotion is reversible. Un-promoting unlinks the two, and deletes the production scene only if nothing has been scheduled, tagged or shot on it.

Which one do I edit now?

Once a scene is promoted, the Story Room copy remains the story record and the production copy is the operational one. Rewriting the *story* still happens in the Story Room; changing what gets shot — status, scene number, shoot day — happens on the production side.

Next: who can read your script — before you send it anywhere.