Add characters and casts

Every story fills up with people. A hero, a mentor, a rival, and a barkeep who somehow mattered by chapter nine. Here’s how to add characters and casts in Dabble so you never lose track of who’s who.

A character holds one person’s profile. A cast groups them. Both take a couple of minutes to set up.

We’ll cover:

• Before you begin: where characters and casts live in Dabble
• Steps: create a cast, then fill it with characters
• Tips: editing and reorganizing later

Before you begin

Characters live in the Characters section of the left navigation, right alongside your Manuscript, Plots, and Notebook.

A cast is a container that groups related characters together. Keep one cast for your main characters and another for the supporting players.

Steps

Build a cast first, then fill it with characters. You can also make a character on its own and sort it into a cast later.

Create a cast

1. In the left navigation, open the Characters section.
2. At the Characters root, click Create a Cast.
3. Give the cast a name. Dabble opens the new cast so you can start adding characters to it.

Create a character

1. Open the Characters section, or open the cast you want to add the character to.
2. Click Create a Character. On desktop this is a button; on mobile it is in the actions menu. An empty cast also offers the button in its center.
3. The Character Settings window opens. Fill in the details you have so far:
   • Name
   • One-Line Description (a short subtitle, optional)
   • Excerpt (a longer summary; if you leave it blank, Dabble shows the start of the character’s profile)
   • Portrait (an avatar image, cropped to a circle)
   • Banner (a header image or a solid color)
4. Click Save. New characters get a random banner color until you change it.
5. Click the character to open it, then write profile notes in the body, where the placeholder reads Add notes for this character….

Tips

Nothing here is locked in.

• To edit a character later, open the character and use the header edit button, or use the edit option on the character’s card.
• You can reorder and reorganize by dragging characters and casts in the navigation.

Related

• Organize your Notebook
• Use templates in Dabble
• The left-hand navigation menu