Characters and other entities, added when you need them
The cast is a view of your book, not a form to fill in before chapter one. Characters, places, items, and events appear when you give them a fact worth keeping.
In short
The Asten cast lists the entities in your story (characters, places, events, items, rules, sources, and others) with their aliases, notes, and confirmed facts. It is optional and grows as you write; nothing in it is required before you draft a scene.
More than characters
Entities can be characters, places, events, items, rules, sources, or anything else.
Aliases
Mira, Captain Mira, the harbormaster’s daughter. One entity, many names.
Facts at a glance
Each entity shows the facts you’ve settled about it, with their status and source.
No mandatory fields
A cast member can be a name and nothing else until the story needs more.
Example: a name in a cartouche
A playful alphabet using uniliteral signs. Real Middle Egyptian spelled names differently and mostly left out vowels.
Why not character sheets?
Many writing tools greet you with a 40-field character questionnaire. Some writers love that. Many discovery writers find it kills the draft. Asten takes the other road: the cast fills in as you settle facts, so the record follows the story rather than leading it.
Why are names drawn in cartouches?
Egyptian scribes enclosed royal names in a cartouche, an oval ring that marks a name as important. Asten borrows the idea: an entity’s name appears in a cartouche wherever it is referenced. The example below draws a name in one, using a playful alphabet rather than real hieroglyphic spelling.
About cast
Do I have to create characters before writing in Asten?
Can one Asten character have several names?
Keep reading
Try the pre-alpha
Open the workbench in your browser on a sample novel, or download release 0.0.1b for Windows or Linux.