Writer's Portal Guide 2: Starting Your Story in Portal

Starting Your Story

Helpful Video

• Starting in Limelight

1 The Portal

Take time to explore the portal. Take note of the several tabs at the top. 

• My Stories
• Where all your stories can be seen
• Art Catalog
• Where you can view our stock backgrounds, overlays and clothing
• Guides
• Where you can find all information on how to use Donacode, and starting your story. 
• FAQ
• A page full of frequently asked questions and answers.
• Community
• This will send you to our Discord; this will navigate you away from the Writer’s Portal.
• Payments
• This will become available to your when your story reaches the minimum number of required reads.

To get back to the homepage at any point, click on the  logo in the upper left corner. 

2 Create A New Story

The first step in writing a story is to create your story.

• Go to “My Stories” if you’re not already there.
• Tap the link “New Story.”
• Enter a title for your story. This is what readers will see on the app.
• Tap “Create.”

Characters

3 Create Characters

Once you’ve created your story, the first step is to create characters.

• On your story page, tap “Characters” under Step 1.
• Choose the art style of your characters, Ink or Original.
• From the list of sample characters, choose a character.  You can edit their look later.
• Give your character a name. This is how you refer to your character in the script.  
• Save your character.

IMPORTANT

1. The name you give your character will automatically act as their display name (or the name that is shown for them in the app), but if you’d prefer for their name to appear as something else in the app, you can change it. For example, maybe you want the script name of a character to be EXTRA1, but the display name to be BOB. On the screen where you can design your character, type the name that you’d like for your character in the “Display Name” box.

1. Character names must be at least TWO letters long.
   
   
2. The Original style will not get any additional updates.  The Ink style is currently what we are supporting the most.

4 Design Characters

After creating a character, you can design what you want them to look like. You can change how they look at any time.

Choose from the dropdown menus for various types of features. For Classic characters, you’ll have the ability to choose their outfit, hair, face, eyes, mouth and body. For Ink and Limelight characters, you’ll have the ability to choose their outfit, hair, face, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth and body.

Outfit: Unless you specify otherwise in the script (@CHARACTER changes into OUTFIT), this is what your character wears. 

IMPORTANT

1. Male characters MUST use male features. Female characters MUST use female features.
   
   
2. You can go back into the Characters portal at any point while working on your story to create new characters. This isn’t something you must complete fully before starting your story.

Outfits

5 Create Outfits

Move on to creating outfits for your characters after designing your characters.

• On your story page, tap “Outfits” under Step 2.
• Tap “New Outfit.”
• Give the outfit a name.
• Add and remove various articles of clothing to design the outfit by clicking on them. Each outfit should have at least a top, bottom and shoes (or full dress and shoes).
• Save the outfit.

IMPORTANT

1. If you chose Classic characters, you’ll be designing outfits from the Classic clothing options, and same for Ink or Limelight. If you’re working with Ink or Limelight options, you’ll need to add the “Prop” to each outfit, so that any time a character is holding an object in their animation, it will show up in the app.
   
   
2. Outfits are gender specific. Putting a female article of clothing in a male outfit will not work.
   
   
3. Some clothing pieces do not work together (like tanks and dresses). You’ll be able to see when layering clothing does not work correctly in the preview bar on the right, or in the app when you play through your story.
   
   
4. You can go back into the Outfits portal at any point while working on your story to create new outfits. This isn’t something you must complete fully before starting your story.

6 Outfit Changes

You can change a character’s clothes by switching their current outfit for another one. Generally, characters should change outfits off-screen; otherwise, they will appear to “pop” into the new outfit. You can see an example of this in the Example Script: Basic Direction. Hit “preview” in the upper right hand corner to view the script in the Web Previewer.

Outfit Change Syntax:

@CHARACTER changes into OUTFIT

Examples:

@ANGIE changes into Classy

@HAYES changes into DirtyM6

As mentioned in above, each of your stories will have their own collection of outfits that you make from our catalog. The name of the outfit that you type into the script (i.e. “Classy” or “DirtyM6” above) will have to be the exact names that you gave them in the Outfit portal.

Starting An Episode

7 Start A New Episode

Once you’ve created a story, characters and outfits, you’re ready to start for your first episode.

• Start on the main page for your story.
• On the right-hand side, tap “New Episode.”

8 Save and Test Your Story 

Once you have something you want to test, be sure to save it!

• Tap “Save” in the upper right corner of the script. This will give you any errors your script has. Fix all of them or your script won’t play.
• Play through your entire story on the app with every update, watching for errors.

Deleting Items

Deleted items cannot be restored, so be careful!

Deleting Outfits

Outfits can be deleted whenever they are NOT currently being used in your script. You can use the “DELETE” button on the outfit screen. If the outfit is currently being used at some point in the script, it will not be deletable.

Deleting Characters

Similar to outfits, characters can be deleted only if they are NOT currently being used in your script. You can delete them from their character editing screen using the DELETE button.

Deleting Episodes

You can only delete the LAST episode in your current script, and only if it is NOT published or shared. To delete an episode, open that episode and click the “DELETE” button in the upper right corner.

Deleting Stories

You can only delete a story if it is NOT published or shared. You can delete a story using the DELETE button in the upper right corner.