Story Map

Story Map shows your document as a canvas: boards, columns and groups become frames, and cards become boxes you can place anywhere inside them. Story connections appear as arrows. It’s the place to build and check interactive stories, and a good way to lay out any material spatially. Story Map is available on Mac, iPad and iPhone. This page describes it with a mouse and keyboard; for touch, see On iPad and iPhone.

For how Story Map relates to Board View, and what it saves where, see Board View and Story Map.

The Story Map window

• Toolbar at the top, in two rows. The first row has the active board’s name, the Board View button and the filter, in the same places as in Board View. The second row has the History, Arrange, Boards and Display menus, the Panels menu, and the Canvas and Linear view buttons.
• Canvas in the middle.
• Outline on the far left, when you show it: the document’s boards, columns, headings and @GRP groups as a tree. See Outline.
• Story Inspector on the left: what the selected card means in the story. See Build a branching story.
• Library beside it: reusable characters, images, sound and variables. See Scenes, characters and sound.
• Linear view on the right: the selected content as continuous text.
• Footer: Story Health, Review, the layout save status and short hints.

The name in the toolbar is the active board: the one selected in the board list. Selecting a card on the canvas makes its board the active one. When other boards are on the canvas too, a badge such as +2 after the name counts them. Hover over it to see their names. If the active board is hidden on the canvas, its name is dimmed. Click the name to rename the board, or right-click it for the board’s menu, just as in Board View.

Panels shows or hides the Outline, the Story Inspector, the Library, Cues, Sets and, in editions with it, AI Assist. The menu stays open, so you can switch several panels in a row. The Canvas and Linear view buttons show or hide those two areas. From the keyboard:

Keys	Action
Cmd+Option+1	Expand the canvas to full width
Cmd+Option+2	Expand Linear view to full width
Cmd+Option+3	Show or hide the Story Inspector
Cmd+Option+4	Show or hide the Library
Cmd+Option+5	Show or hide Cues
Cmd+Option+6	Show or hide Sets
Cmd+Option+7	Show or hide AI Assist
Cmd+Option+8	Show or hide the canvas
Cmd+Option+9	Show or hide Linear view
Cmd+Option+O	Show or hide the outline
Escape	Restore the previous layout

A full-width canvas or Linear view stays that way when you switch to Board View and back, and when you reopen the document.

Move around the canvas

• Zoom with the scroll wheel, a pinch, or Cmd + scroll. Pan by dragging empty canvas, or by scrolling on a trackpad. If scrolling doesn’t behave the way you want, change it under Display → Canvas options → Move around.
• Fit the view with the zoom controls, and turn on the Minimap under Display → Canvas options for an overview.
• Choose which boards appear with the Boards menu. Only show active board limits the canvas to the board selected in the board list. Hiding a board only affects the canvas: it stays in the document and in Linear view.

Select

• Click a card or frame to select it.
• Shift-click adds to the selection, and Cmd-click removes from it.
• Shift-drag across the canvas to select with a box. Dragging left to right selects what’s fully inside the box, and right to left also selects what the box touches. Change this under Display → Canvas options → Box selection.

Arrange cards and frames

• Move a card or frame by dragging its header. A frame takes its contents with it. While dragging, press Escape to cancel, or drop near the outlines of the starting position to put it back.
• Resize a selected card or frame from an edge or corner.
• Duplicate by holding Option while dragging.
• Tidy up with the Arrange menu. Fit surrounding areas to contents (Shift+F) shrinks or grows frames around their cards, Realign… lines cards up in rows or steps, and Collapse selected shows cards as their title line only.
• Grid and Snap under Display → Canvas options help with alignment. With Keep items in their containers while dragging, a frame grows when you drag a card past its edge, and the card stays inside it.

Arranging only changes the layout. Undo it with History → Undo layout (Cmd+Option+Z). History keeps the document’s changes and the layout’s changes apart, each with its own undo and redo.

Change the structure

Dragging a card into another column or group, or out onto empty canvas, proposes a change to the document’s structure:

1. Drop the card where it should belong. The destination is highlighted before you let go.
2. The footer shows Unapplied map changes, and Linear view reads the proposed order.
3. Select Review in the footer. The review lists the structural changes and any story problems.
4. Select Apply changes. The document is updated in one step, which one Cmd+Z can undo.

A card left on empty canvas stays where you put it. When you apply, FlowBoard files it in a Loose Cards column on a board named Unassigned, which it creates if needed.

Add cards

• Press N to add a card in the middle of the view.
• Press Option with an arrow key to add a card next to the selection. Hold two arrows for a diagonal. Add Shift to duplicate the selection in that direction instead.
• Right-click where the new content should go, and choose from the menu’s Create in section. Its heading names the destination, for example Create in Act 1 / Scenes. If you right-clicked inside the destination, the new content goes there. Otherwise it’s added at the end.

What the Create in section offers depends on what you right-click:

You right-click	Destination	Offers
A column	That column	Add scene, Add branching story, Add card, Add empty group
A group	That group	Add scene, Add branching story, Add card
A card	The column or group the card is in	As for that column or group, without Add branching story
A board, or empty canvas	The board’s first column, other than Archive and Reference. Empty canvas uses the active board	As for a column

Archive and Reference columns offer only Add card and Add empty group. The same commands are in the command palette, where they use the selected card, group or column. To add a board, use + Add new board in the board list, or the command palette.

Edit cards on the map

Double-click a card, or select it and press Enter. The editor opens larger than the card. Enter saves, and Shift+Enter starts a new line. The editor works like the one in Board View, including formatting and splitting. On iPad and iPhone, a card opens in the edit dialog instead.

Right-click a card for its menu: editing, copying, duplicating, grouping and deleting, plus its tint, importance, syntax, Play inclusion and story type.

Read in Linear view

Linear view shows the text of what you’ve selected, as one continuous passage:

• nothing selected: every card on every board;
• a board or column: all its cards;
• one card: the whole column around it;
• several cards: just those cards.

Choose how it’s ordered in the reading sequence menu:

• Document order follows boards, columns and cards, including changes waiting for Review.
• Custom order follows the order in which you selected things.
• Story path follows the story’s connections. Select the card to start from, then Shift-click cards further along to guide the route through them. The path is marked on the canvas with numbered cards and dashed arrows. Turn on Stop at last selected card to read an exact excerpt, and use Select path cards to select every card on the route.

Click a passage to select its card on the map. Double-click it to edit. The eye and Aa menus in Linear view control card headers, separators, word counts and typography. To save or copy what Linear view shows, use Export cards…, which covers the selected cards, the current story path, or the whole board.

Large stories

• Sets saves selections of cards as named reading lists. Click a set to read it in Linear view.
• Find & Replace (Cmd+Option+F) can search All boards, Visible boards or the Active board.
• Outline lists the document’s boards, columns, headings and @GRP groups, and lets you search them. See Outline.
• Cues lists every story cue and @GRP group in the document. See Scenes, characters and sound.

Selecting an entry in the outline or in Cues selects its card and leaves your panels as they are. While Linear view is open, it scrolls to the entry. It doesn’t open Linear view by itself; when you open it later, it starts at the place you chose.

If the layout goes wrong

Display → Canvas options → Reset layout rebuilds the positions of all cards. It asks first, and Undo layout can restore the previous arrangement. Card text and the document’s structure are never affected. Reload map reloads the layout from its saved file.

On iPad and iPhone

On iPad and iPhone, you work on the canvas with your fingers. A trackpad or mouse on iPad works as described for Mac above, and you can switch between them at any time.

Allow folder access

Story Map saves its layout in a file next to the document. To write there, FlowBoard needs access to the document’s folder, the same access it asks for to show a document’s images. Until you allow it, the map works normally, but layout changes stay on this device: the footer shows On this device, and a notice offers Allow folder access. Once you allow access, the layout is saved next to the document, where Story Map on your Mac finds it too.

If the document is in iCloud Drive and its layout hasn’t downloaded yet, or you’re offline, Story Map tells you so and leaves the layout file as it is. Reload the map once it’s available.

Gestures

To	Do this
Pan	Drag with one finger, also across cards and frames
Zoom	Pinch with two fingers
Select	Tap a card or frame
Move	Drag a selected card. Drag a selected board, column or group by its title bar.
Scroll a long card’s text	Select the card, then drag its text. Move such a card by its title bar.
Open a menu	Touch and hold a card, a frame, an arrow or empty canvas
Edit a card	Double-tap it
Cancel a move, a resize or a new connection	Put a second finger down

Cards and frames move only while they’re selected, so panning never rearranges your story.

When something is selected, two buttons appear beside it: Edit (the pencil) opens the card for editing, and Actions (⋯) opens the same menu as touch and hold. Edit appears when one card is selected.

To select several cards, select Select in the toolbar. Then tap cards to add or remove them, or drag across empty canvas to select an area. The button counts the selection, for example Done (3). Select it when you’re finished.

Edit a card by touch

Double-tap the card, select Edit, or choose Edit text from its menu. The card opens in the same edit dialog as in Board View, and the map stays where it is. In the dialog, Return starts a new line. To save and close, select Save, tap beside the dialog, or press Cmd+Return on a hardware keyboard. Close stops editing and asks before discarding changes.

Connect cards by touch

Select a card first: only a selected card’s handles respond to a finger. Then drag from its handle as described in Connect scenes on the canvas. To remove a connection, touch and hold its arrow and choose Disconnect.

On iPhone

On iPhone, and on iPad in a narrow window, the map fills the screen. Panels opens one panel at a time over the map, and Done takes you back to the map. Linear view is in the Panels menu, too. The panels you chose on a larger screen stay as they were.

Next

• Build a branching story uses the canvas and the Story Inspector to create scenes and choices.
• Keyboard shortcuts lists every Story Map shortcut.