Abstract: According to the invention, a software tool such as an authoring tool provides a mechanism for manipulating transient events within a multimedia product or other content having one or more state machines, each state machine having one or more states and one or more transitions, each transition connecting a first state with a second state, the first and second states being the same as or different from each other, each transition capable of being associated with one or more transient events and a trigger such that when said trigger occurs it initiates a transition from the transition's first state to the transition's second state, the transient events associated with the transition occurring on the computer system during the transition. The invention provides a mechanism for locating a transient event and displays a graphic reference for the located transient event so that the graphic reference can be used to manipulate the transient event.