Import & Export

Storyarn can export your narrative content to 7 formats covering every major game engine and dialogue system. Whether you are building with Unity, Unreal, Godot, or using Ink or Yarn Spinner as your runtime, Storyarn has a serializer ready for your pipeline.

Export formats

The Storyarn JSON format is the only one that supports the full project – all entity types including scenes, screenplays, and localization data. The engine-specific formats focus on flows and sheets, which is what game runtimes need for dialogue and variable state.

How to export

1. Navigate to Export & Import from your project sidebar.
2. Choose a format – Select from the 7 available formats. The content checkboxes update to show which sections that format supports.
3. Select content sections – Check or uncheck Sheets, Flows, Scenes, Screenplays, and Localization. Sections not supported by the selected format are disabled.
4. Choose asset mode – Control how asset files (images, audio) are handled:

5. Set options – Toggle “Validate before export” and “Pretty print output” as needed.
6. Download – Click the download button to get your file.

Pre-export validation

Before downloading, you can run validation to catch issues that would cause problems in your game. Click Validate to check your project. The validator runs 9 checks and reports findings at three severity levels:

Errors (will likely break your game):

• Flows missing an Entry node
• Broken references: jump nodes pointing to non-existent hubs, subflow nodes referencing deleted flows, slug lines linked to missing scenes

Warnings (potential issues):

• Orphan nodes with no connections
• Unreachable nodes (not reachable from Entry via BFS traversal)
• Empty dialogue nodes (no text content)
• Dialogue nodes with no speaker assigned
• Circular subflow reference chains (A references B references A)
• Missing translations for configured languages

Info (worth knowing):

• Orphan sheets with no references from any flow or scene

Import

Storyarn can import project data from .storyarn.json files – the same format produced by the Storyarn JSON export. This is useful for migrating projects between workspaces, restoring backups, or merging content from different team members.

Import workflow

1. Upload – Select a .json file (maximum 50 MB). Click “Upload & Preview” to parse it.

2. Preview – Storyarn shows you what the file contains: counts of sheets, flows, nodes, scenes, screenplays, and assets. If any entity shortcuts conflict with existing content in your project, they are listed here.

3. Resolve conflicts – When shortcut conflicts are detected, choose a strategy:

4. Execute – Click Import to apply. The import runs inside a database transaction, so it is all-or-nothing. If any step fails, everything is rolled back and you get an error message explaining what went wrong.

Import safeguards

• 50 MB file size limit – Enforced at upload time.
• JSON structure validation – The file must be a valid JSON object with the expected top-level keys.
• Entity count limits – Prevents importing excessively large datasets that could impact performance.
• Transactional execution – All-or-nothing. No partial imports.
• Edit permissions required – Only project owners and editors can import. Viewers see a locked state.

Other export paths

Beyond the main Export & Import page, Storyarn offers specialized export features in other areas:

Localization export – From the Localization page, export translations as Excel (.xlsx) or CSV filtered by language. Import translated CSV files back with ID-based matching. See the Localization Overview for details.

Screenplay export – Export individual screenplays to Fountain format (.fountain) for use in screenwriting tools like Final Draft, Highland, or WriterSolo. Import existing Fountain files to create new screenplays in Storyarn.