Overview

Floor Plans are story-space maps. They help you understand where important rooms, corridors, gardens, staircases, characters, assets and hidden routes sit in relation to each other.

They are not CAD drawings. You do not need exact architectural scale, perfect wall thickness or every cupboard in the building. The aim is to answer practical story questions: Who is where? What can they reach? Which room is above this one? Could someone move from the hall to the garden without being seen?

When To Use Floor Plans

Use a Floor Plan when a location's layout affects scenes or continuity. A mystery house, school, office, hospital ward, hotel, spaceship, theatre, castle or apartment block may all benefit from a simple map.

Floor Plans are especially useful when:

• characters move between rooms during a scene
• secrets depend on doors, windows, stairs or hidden passages
• assets are hidden, moved or discovered
• different floors need to line up
• you want to check where everyone and everything is at a specific point in the story

Structure Mode And Occupancy Mode

Structure mode is where you build and edit the plan. You add floors, place room blocks, resize them, connect locations with doors or passages, and use grid guides or background images.

Occupancy mode is where you review a scene. It shows character and asset tokens on the plan so you can see who is in which location at that moment in the story.

How Floor Plans Connect To Locations

Every block on a Floor Plan links to a Location. That means your map is connected to the same story places used by scenes, characters and assets.

A location can appear as one block or several blocks. If a room is L-shaped, long and thin, or otherwise awkward, you can use multiple blocks linked to the same Location. PlotDirector treats them as one room and hides internal joins where those blocks touch.

Continuity Value

A good Floor Plan lets you ask, "Where is everyone and everything at this point in the story?" It gives you a visual check before a scene creates an impossible movement, a forgotten character, or a secret route that does not quite make sense.

Related Guides

• Creating Floors and Rooms
• Transitions, Doors and Entrances
• Occupancy Mode