Chapters & Scenes

Stories in Talescape are organized into chapters and scenes. Together, they define the structure of your project and how players progress through it.

A chapter is a container that groups related scenes. It helps organize your story into logical sections such as Prologue, The Forest, or Return Home.

Chapters can also define events that trigger when the chapter starts, ends, or when specific conditions are met. These are often used to set ambience, initialize variables, or manage background logic shared by all scenes within that chapter.

Typical uses:

• Structuring long stories into acts or major locations
• Setting up background ambience, variables, or music
• Controlling pacing and tone between sections
• Keeping complex storylines organized

Chapters themselves do not display content; they control and coordinate the scenes inside them.

Free Demo Chapters

The first chapter of a paid story can optionally be marked as a free demo. When enabled, Dreamers can play this chapter without purchasing the full story. This allows Bards to give players a preview while keeping later chapters behind the paywall.

A scene is the smallest playable unit in a story. Scenes contain the actual content the player interacts with: dialogue, visuals, triggers, and logic. They are where storytelling, media, and interaction come together.

Talescape supports two scene types:

Normal Scenes

Used for the main story flow. They fill the full screen and connect to other scenes or chapters. Normal scenes define the backbone of the story structure.

Examples:

• “Arrival at the Harbor”
• “The Old Library”
• “Escape Through the Forest”

Inline Scenes

Inline scenes are small, self-contained overlays that open on top of a normal scene. They can be closed by the player at any time and do not pause the main scene. They’re ideal for short, contextual interactions or optional details.

Examples:

• Inspecting an object (e.g., opening a chest or reading a note)
• Viewing a short flashback or memory
• Solving a small puzzle or item interaction

Inline scenes must be opened through an Open Inline Scene action. They cannot be reached through normal navigation. They can also not act as start scenes in a chapter.

Each scene is made up of elements, such as text, images and triggers. Elements define what happens visually and interactively within that scene.

Typical elements include:

• Dialogue and narration
• Backgrounds and overlays
• Sound or music triggers
• Interactive objects or inline links

The details of how to add and configure scene elements are explained in the Scene Editor article.

Scenes and chapters are connected using actions that determine how the player moves through the story.

Common navigation methods:

• Go to Scene – Move directly to another scene.
• Open Inline Scene – Open an inline overlay and return when closed.
• Chapter Success – Mark the current chapter as completed and trigger the transition.

A chapter transition only occurs when a Chapter Success action is triggered. If the chapter is not the last one, Talescape loads the next chapter and executes its start events. If it is the final chapter, the story ends and the credits roll.

Unreachable or unused scenes are automatically detected by the Checks System.

Use short, descriptive names for both chapters and scenes. Avoid duplicates and keep naming consistent across large projects. Prefixes like 1_Intro, 2_Forest, or 2_Forest_Inline_Chest help maintain clarity in the editor.

Keep scenes modular: smaller, focused units are easier to debug and reuse.

Use the Story Preview to verify scene transitions, inline interactions, and chapter flow. Triggering a Chapter Success action during testing will simulate chapter completion and advance the story. If it’s the final chapter, the preview end.

The Checks System automatically flags any unreachable or missing scenes.

With your chapters and scenes set up, you can now move on to configuring metadata, content warnings, and collaborator permissions.