Writing

A short guide to how writing works here.

Everything is a block

A script is a stack of paragraphs, and every paragraph has a type — scene heading, action, character, dialogue, chapter, stage direction, whatever your format defines. The type decides how the paragraph looks and where the keyboard takes you next. You never style lines by hand; you tell the app what a line is and the format dresses it.

Tab and Shift-Tab cycle the current paragraph through your format's types. ⌘1–⌘9 jump straight to a type; the label in the right margin opens the full list.
Enter follows the flow the format defines — after a character name comes dialogue, after a scene heading comes action.
Shift-Enter breaks a line without starting a new paragraph.

Marks: meaning inside a line

Select text and a small toolbar appears. Besides the classics — bold (⌘B), italic (⌘I), underline (⌘U), strikethrough (⌘⇧X), code (⌘E) — you can:

Highlight (⌘⇧H) — one keystroke gives the standard accent wash; pick a color for anything else.
Color text with a named color, small caps, superscript, subscript, or a different typeface for a run of words.
Link to the web, or jump-link to one of your own scenes — the link survives moving scenes around.
Attach a tooltip note — hidden text that shows when you hover it. Your quiet margin-notes to yourself.
Add a footnote — the reference stays in the text; the note itself lives on the Footnotes page of the script.

A format can limit which marks a paragraph type allows (a character cue that refuses italics, say) — the toolbar simply offers less there.

Sizes are steps, colors are names

In the format editor, sizes aren't numbers — they're steps away from your base size: s is a step smaller, xl a couple larger. Change your reading size and everything scales together.

Colors are named — teal, maroon, gold… Each name knows a light-mode and a dark-mode version of itself, so your choices adapt when the theme flips. A format can also carry its own named colors, each with a light and a dark value. (You can still type a raw color code, but it won't adapt.)

One script, several pages

A script isn't just its body. Every draft also carries a title page, a synopsis, notes, and footnotes — switch between them with the tabs above the editor. Notes and footnotes stay out of print and export unless you ask for them. Formats can add or remove these pages.

Lists, dual dialogue, grids

Any paragraph can become a bullet or numbered list item (from the type menu in the right margin). Tab indents a list item instead of changing its type.
Dual dialogue puts two speeches side by side — insert it from the type menu, write in each column, and press ⌘Enter to step back out. Formats can define other side-by-side layouts with up to four columns.

Page breaks

Two kinds, on purpose: a format can rule that a type always starts a new page ("chapters begin on a fresh page"), and you can force a break before any single paragraph from the type menu. On screen it's a subtle dashed line; on paper it's a page.

What exports include

Export gives you one portable file with the whole script: every page of the current draft — body, title page, synopsis, notes, footnotes — plus the format itself. Import it anywhere (another account, a guest session) and everything comes back exactly as it was, formatting included.

Formats are yours

The shipped Screenplay, Play, and Story formats are just starting points. Every script owns an editable copy: rename types, restyle them, change the Tab and Enter flow, add new types, define your palette — from the script's format page. Save any format as a preset to reuse on the next script.