Hi:
I just found Tales Creator a couple hours ago, and it looks neat.
Now, in the story creator, I can do text and sorta format lines, add a background, and CREATE characters.
BUT - I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to add a character to the storyline. The character won’t drag into the storyline, and there doesn’t seem to be anything like “Add Character.”
The help videos didn’t help. 
Someone wanna help a noob out? Thanks! 
James
Hey thecosmiccompanion! Welcome to Tales!
Alright, entering actors is:
(enter: ACTOR)
or multiple:
(enter: ACTORA, enter: ACTORB) etc
To get them off stage:
(exit: ACTOR)
or
(exit: ACTORA, exit: ACTORB)
or
(exitall)
And here is the right tutorial for that:
If you prefer the written examples → scroll down to “Stage Directions”
Hope it’ll help 
otherwise 
continue to ask 
Thanks, adarkwood - the story format defaults to prose, not character portrait or whatever.
That video explained everything perfectly! Super easy to do once the format is changed.
ahhhh yes, under Series Details you can switch between prose and character portraits!
Glad you found it!
Hope now everything will run smoothly, but you’re welcome to ask any question of course
Hi @adarkwood, I also had a question regarding this but for prose! I don’t want character portraits but I would like a branching story. I tried to follow the directions so that I can provide choices but I keep getting errors telling me that my syntax is wrong and I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong! Please help!
Hey @Percinnamon
Is this what you’re seeing when you added a choice?
Then you’ll have to switch to code editor (see at the top beside your chapter title)
The Team works on a visual editor that can handle branched stories, but as of now, they only work for linear stories. So anyone who wishes to branch, needs to use the code editor.
Otherwise, if it’s the choice itself:
You can have choices now with or without prompts.
Without prompt:
* I want to follow the left path. -> go_left
* I want to follow the right path. -> go_right
With prompt:
You come to a fork in the path. You have to choose which path you want to continue walking on.
* I want to follow the left path. -> go_left
* I want to follow the right path. -> go_right
You continue with:
:go_left
Here you describe what happens when the reader goes left.
-> knit_together
:go_right
Here you describe what happens when the reader goes right.
-> knit_together
:knit_together
Both paths lead together (unless you want to go full-on nuts and never merge the branches anymore but spread them out further (all possible, but it’s also a lot more work and nerves)
Another possibility to do choices (these too can be with or without prompt):
You come to a fork in the path. You have to choose which path you want to continue walking on.
* I want to follow the left path.
You describe here what happens when the reader goes left.
* I want to follow the right path.
You describe here what happens when the reader goes right.
[join]
After the {join], the story continues for both branches as if you have knitted them together. However, with this version, you can’t add other choices within the choice, it’s mostly useful if the choice has only a few different dialogs or similar, but if you want to add more choices within the branch → use these jumps
@adarkwood Thank you for the help! I’m definitely going to reference this. I think my issue though is the fact that it keeps telling me to declare my actor in the header but whatever I’m doing isn’t right. When I try to look for resources to help, it only shows me how it’s set up for character portraits. Is it necessary for me to declare when people enter and exit if I don’t want portraits?
Hmmm okay, I’m not really sure why it would ask for actor declaration when you don’t use any 
But to show you what prose style looks like:
This is an example of prose writing without actors:
Code:
Emulator
And this is an example of prose writing with actors:
Code:
Emulator:
You see the difference? I don’t use any actor names in the previous example as I don’t use actors there. It’s just prose - like a regular novel
(Btw within the TC you can find example stories to check out. There are stories written in different styles and you can compare the codes to what you want to use :D)
