Navigating the Story Map

The Story Map screen shows the visual structure of a story. Each passage in it is represented by a card, and links between them are shown as lines with arrows.

Scrolling and Zooming

You can scroll around the Story Map screen using all the usual methods you'd use to scroll around a window: the scrollbars on the side of the window, using scroll gestures on a trackpad, and so on. If you're using a mouse, you can also use the right mouse button to grab the view and move it.

In one corner of the Story Map, you'll see three buttons showing squares of different sizes. These let you zoom in and out of the map, showing different levels of detail in your passages.

Jumping to a Passage by Name or Text

To move to a particular passage in the Story Map screen, choose Go To from the Passage top toolbar tab, or press the P key any time your cursor is not in a text field.

This will open a dialog with a search field. Enter either the name of a passage or some text it contains, and a list of matching passages will appear. Twine uses fuzzy matching, so you don't have to enter the passage name exactly, and it will find close matches if you make a typo. When deciding which passages match what you've typed, it slightly prefers matches in a passage name to what's in passage text.

Click a passage in the list or press the Return key to select the one which has two chevrons (ยป) beside it to move your view so that the passage you've chosen is centered. The chosen passage will also be selected. Use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to move the chevrons in the list to another passage in the list of matches.

Empty Passages

An empty passage is one you haven't written any text in (usually). These show up in the Story Map as translucent cards with a dotted border. Twine automatically creates and deletes empty passages when you edit links in passages.

Tags

If you have assigned colors to passage tags, passages with those tags will have a small stripe of that color at their top. Tags that do not have colors assigned will not show a stripe.

The Story Start

The story's start passage is drawn in the map with a green rocket icon connected to it.1 To change this, select a different passage and choose Start Story Here from the Passage top toolbar tab. This button is also present in a passage edit dialog.

If there is a link in a passage that Twine can't find a passage for, it will instead show a red line ending in a 'no entry' symbol. Edit the passage to correct the problem.

References

A story format can extend Twine so that it displays references. A reference is a connection between passages, but how exactly they relate is up to the story format to define. One common example of a reference is when one passage embeds another inside itself.2

If a story format finds references in your passages, they will be displayed as dashed lines with arrows, rather than solid lines.

References in the story map can be turned off by disabling story format extensions.

1

The idea behind the icon is that it represents where the story 'lifts off.'

2

Again, embedding passages is functionality that a story format provides, because it governs what happens when a story is played. It isn't something Twine does in and of itself.