Our goal is to make DramaQueen run intuitively so that the writer doesn’t even notice many of its features.  Several DramaQueen features don’t even have a button but run invisibly under the surface. Our latest feature the automatic character recognition is a good example of that.

Automatic character recognition

What does ‚DramaQueen automatically recognises characters as well as their gender and age’ actually mean? First of all DramaQueen has to figure out which words actually signify characters: DramaQueen looks for the first appearance of characters in the synopsis, treatment and script. Why? Because a character appearing for the first time is written in all-caps – as the convention goes. With a script DramaQueen also looks for characters having lines of dialogue because they start with their own kind of paragraph spacing.

After DramaQueen has found a character it checks whether there’s a number in brackets directly after the name. If that’s the case the number is put down as the character’s age in the character list.
Afterwards DramaQueen checks the character’s name against a very comprehensive database of first names – separated into female and male. Should the list contain the given name DramaQueen will assign the gender appropriately and record it in the character-panel.

So far, so good. The next step is about not just recognises the character for the first time but to detect all their appearances.  This way the outline-panel is able to list exactly which character appears in each single scene. For this to work DramaQueen needs to be able to match all versions of the character’s name:  the full name of a character when they first appear (e.g. ‘JANE SMITH’) and the name used for any further appearance (‘Jane’). Unfortunately, it’s a bit more complicated…  Not every first part of the name is a first name and not every second part of the name is the family name. Characters can be called ‘Ms. Smith’, ‘Sister Jane’ or ‘Female Police Officer 1’.   That’s why DramaQueen contains another key-word list with titles and official titles (e.g. ‘Father’, ‘Princess’, ‘Professor’ etc.) so that DramaQueen can figure out that ‘Inspector James Miller’ is not ‘Inspector James’, but ‘Inspector Miller’.

But what happens when the writer decides to rename ‘James’ and call him ‘Jonathan’? Then it is DramaQueen’s aspiration to not only change the name in the character-panel or in the script but everywhere the character appears within the DQ-file – all text-levels and all panels.
As if that weren’t enough: DramaQueen even makes it possible to substitute all possible name variations (e.g. nicknames) and already suggests the grammatically correct possessive form (e.g. “Alexis’, “Joyce’).

All these processes – the constant searching, finding, matching, transferring, correcting etc. – are optimised in a way that DramaQueen manages them in real-time – second by second. The writer doesn’t need to press any synchronising-button because the character recognition always runs synchronously.

Smart-Import

Another example for DramaQueen’s ‘deeper levels‘ is the smart-import service for scripts which is much more than a simple import. In reality our importer analyses the outer form of the script and obtains all kinds of further information contained in the imported script:  all single scenes are gathered and listed, as well as all characters (along with their age and gender).  It also gathers all information contained in scene headings: location, interior or exterior setting, time of day. Again the importer doesn’t just transfer the text but interprets it: regardless of whether the time of day is ‘EARLY IN THE MORNING’, ‘MID-DAY’ OR ‘LATE AFTERNOON’ DramaQueen will extract the significant information – meaning that this scene takes plays during day light. All ‘DAY’ scenes are marked with a sun-icon while all ‘NIGHT’ scenes get a moon and all ‘DUSK’ and ‘DAWN’ scenes receive a setting/rising sun. This way the outline-panel offers a quick overview of all scenes and their times of day as well as the alternation between different times. (By the way:  the smart-import is managed within seconds as well).

Automatic storyline recognition

It gets even more convenient when single DramaQueen tools work in unison.  Because when we combine and mesh both features – the automatic character recognition and the smart-import – DramaQueen will be able to automatically detect single storylines in the script during its import. This is possible because every storyline tells the story between particular characters. And when it is known which characters interact in each scene the deduction of scene-storyline-affiliation is no longer a problem!

That’s the theory… In practice we will find that the implementation of this feature – coming up in our next update – won’t be that straight forward and that we’ll have to consider and deal with a bunch of special use-cases.  But don’t worry – we’ll make sure to come up with very ‘intuitive’ solutions.

Listing and sorting of characters*

What is this about?
You’re writing a text.
DramaQueen detects all characters appearing for the first time in all-caps or having dialogue lines in the script. Furthermore the gender and age (as long as it is listed behind the character’s name in brackets) are recorded.

What for?
All characters are recorded in real time in the character-panel (if possible with age and gender). The character column in the outline-panel automatically displays which characters appear in which scene.

What’s the advantage?
Characters no longer need to be manually set up and attributed to each scene.

Furthermore all characters can be sorted in order of appearance or according to the number of appearances (in general or per scene). Without having to do anything writers get an even better overview over their story‘s character constellation and are able to find scenes even faster.

What comes after that?
The automatic character recognition is the basis for the automatic plotline recognition via its character constellation.
This means: DramaQueen Pro can quickly attribute single scenes to different plotlines. The writer doesn’t have to do this manually for each scene anymore.
This function will be part of the next update!

Central linkage and global renaming of characters*

Do you want to rename a character?
Simply go to the character-panel and overwrite the character with their new name. DramaQueen replaces with just one click all name appearances (including all name variations) in the entire document, i.e. in all panels and text-levels!

ramaQueen replaces with one click all occurrences of the name (including all name variations) in the entire document, i.e. across text in all views and text layers!

*in PLUS and PRO

The next post will look a bit closer at what exactly DramaQueen is doing to recognize and rename characters.

Our hire-purchase unites the advantages of a substription and hire-purchase!

It works like this:

• You pay a manageable monthly amount.
• You can immediately start working with PRO or PLUS.
• You get all ongoing upgrades up to the version included.
• You can cancel at any time without notice period.
• After 9 respectively 18 months you own a permanent DramaQueen 3 license!

In another words:

You pay a monthly amount only for as long as you want and you don’t need to bind yourself. You can simply cancel your payments without notice period, and thereby terminate your license contract. Simply send us a note. Or you can decide to pay all 9 (PLUS) or 18 (PRO) rates without break and right after the last payment your license automatically converts to the lifetime-license 3.x The hire-purchase is automatically completed, you do not need to cancel manually.

This is how much it costs:

$11,90 x   9 Month for DramaQueen PLUS
$17,90 x 18 Month for DramaQueen PRO

On a side-note: The instant-purchase of DramaQueen also includes all feature-upgrades of the version!

How to cancel early:

Simply send us a note via our contact formular, or use the feature Help -> Send feedback directly from within DramaQueen, and tell us that you want to cancel. We will then stop the automatic payments.

The next post shows you all advantages of hire and instant-purchase side by side.

Most people experienced no problems downloading our DramaQueen beta-version (as far as we know). But we’ve notices that sometimes it took several attempts to download. We’ve also received some feedback that DramaQueen could not be fully downloaded when having to work with a bad internet connection or being at a remoter place in the world. The main problems has been that our web-host’s server did not support a continuation of interrupted downloads. Had this function been available you wouldn’t even have noticed any connection problems. DramaQueen being a complex software of an extensive size increases the chances of encountering problems during the download time.

That’s why we’ve decided to change the download server to getdramaqueen.com which supports the continuation of interrupted downloads. This will also have a positive effect on the automatic software update. Should you close DramaQueen during an update download, the download will continue where it left off the next time you open DramaQueen.
We hope that this new measure will ensure a reliable download and update service for you!

Click here to access the download site.