Who is speaking: how a cue becomes a character
The name printed above a line of dialogue is called a cue. In this app a cue is not just capital letters — it points at a real character in your project, which is what lets a character's own page list every line they speak and lets a rename reach every one of them.
What happens when you press Enter after a name
Type the name, press Enter, and one of three things happens before the speech line opens underneath:
- The name matches someone in your cast — the cue is linked to them, silently. Capitalisation does not matter, and neither does a note in brackets:
MARA (V.O.)is still Mara. - The name is a nickname you have used before — say you once told the app that "THE STRANGER" means Marcus Vance. The app remembers that, per project, and links silently again.
- The name matches nobody — you are asked: Create new character "X"? with two ways out: create them now, or pick an existing character it was meant to be (a typo, or a nickname you would like remembered). "Keep editing" leaves the cue as typed, linked to nobody.
Why it asks instead of guessing
A cue that points at nobody is a line the character's page does not know about, a rename cannot reach, and the production breakdown cannot count. Asking once is cheaper than every one of those going quietly wrong.
Two questions you may also be asked
- "Remove this empty character cue?" — you pressed Enter on a name line with nothing in it. A cue with no name is not a cue; remove it, or keep editing.
- "Remove "MARA"? No dialogue follows this cue." — Mara's name is there but nothing is said under it, either because you pressed Enter on the blank speech line or because you clicked away from the page. A name floating over empty space prints as exactly that, so the app checks whether the cue was a mistake.
Renaming a character
Rename a character on their page and every cue that points at them changes, along with every mention of the name in prose — episode outlines, scene descriptions, character notes. That is the payoff of the link: the name is one fact kept in one place, not a word repeated in a hundred.