Directing Your Story

To place a character on screen in a certain position add the following to your script:
@CHARACTER stands POSITION Examples:

@Hayes stands upscreen right
@You stands screen left

Entering and Exiting the Scene
If a character is commanded to “stand” on screen, they will pop into existence rather than enter naturally. So you will need to make your characters enter.
To have a character walk onto the screen use:
@CHARACTER enters from SIDE to POSITION

To have a character walk off the screen use:
@CHARACTER exits SIDE Examples:
@Hayes enters from left to screen left
@You enters from left to screen right
@Hayes exits right
@You exits left

Moving around the scene
To make the character turn and face left or right use:
@CHARACTER faces SIDE Example:
@Hayes faces right
To have a character walk from their current position to a new position use:
@CHARACTER walks to POSITION Example:
@DONALD walks to screen left Note that characters will always default to face right during their first appearance.
If a character walks, they will always face the direction they were walking when they stop.

Zones
We divide each background or scene into zones. Each zone is the width of one iPhone screen, with no overlap. Each zone has the 5 positions listed above (eg upscreen left, screen center, etc). So for example in the scene below there are really 20 positions (5 positions in each of the
4 zones).

Moving the camera
By default your story will all take place in zone 1 but if you want to move the camera to look at a different zone you can:
@pan to zone Z the camera will pan from the current zone to the specified one at a constant rate
@cut to zone Z
The camera will instantly move to the specified zone
Examples:
@pan to zone 2
@cut to zone 4

Placing a character in a different zone
When you position a character using the above commands (eg @Hayes stands screen left) you are positioning them in whatever zone the camera is currently looking at. If you want to position them in a different zone (i.e. off screen) use:
@CHARACTER stands POSITION in zone Z Examples:
@You stands screen center in zone 3
@Hayes stands upscreen right in zone 1 You can also have a character walk off screen and into a different zone:
@CHARACTER walks to POSITION in zone Z Example:
@DONALD walks to screen left in zone 2 This allows you to pan over to a character a reader may not have seen yet, without forcing them to walk on screen or pop into