Prompt Book

The stage manager's binder on screen: the pages of your script, set in clean pages with a margin for cues, the show's cues and standbys marked in it, the book ready to print, and a cue sheet for each department. Blocking comes in a later version.

1. Getting started
2. Adding the script
3. A script from Writer
4. Setting up the pages
5. Trimming the copier edges
6. Lightening a gray scan
7. Page numbers
8. The book
9. Adding a cue
10. Standbys
11. Cues taken together
12. Changing and deleting cues
13. Printing the book
14. Cue sheets and the calling sheet
15. Departments
16. The keeper
17. Dark, for the booth
18. Your files and sharing
19. Keyboard shortcuts

Getting started

1. Choose New show, or Open a show folder for a show you already keep in Worklight.
2. Choose Add the script…, and pick the PDF of your script.
3. In Set up the pages, check five things: sheets with two pages, sheets the wrong way up, the copier's dark edges, a gray background, and where the play starts.
4. Choose Open the book, and turn its pages.
5. To add a cue, click a department above the page, click the moment on the page, and press Enter.
6. Print… saves the book as a PDF, with the cues in the margins, or cue sheets for each department.
7. Choose Save when you're done.

Adding the script

Most companies, and nearly every school, work from a photocopy of the published acting edition, saved as a PDF. That's what Prompt Book expects. It's fine if the copy was made two pages at a time, face down on the copier, or one page at a time; if some pages are crooked, sideways or upside down; or if the copier left dark edges.

1. Open the show. If the show's folder already has the PDF in it, choose Use and its name. Otherwise choose Add a PDF…, and pick the PDF. (For a script from Writer, see A script from Writer.)
2. Prompt Book copies it into the show's folder as prompt-book script.pdf, so everyone who shares the folder has the same script. Your original isn't changed.
3. Set up the pages opens, ready for the five checks below.

To use a different PDF later, click the show's name in the black band and choose Use a different script…. Its pages are then set up again from the start.

A PDF locked with a password can't be read. Save a copy without the password, and add that instead. Prompt Book never reads the words on the page, so a scan with no text in it works just as well as one with text.

A script from Writer

For a new play written in Worklight Writer, Prompt Book draws its pages straight from the script, with no PDF and nothing to set up.

1. Keep the script in the show's folder. In Writer, Open a show's script… does this for you.
2. In Prompt Book, under The script from Writer, choose Use and the script's name.

The pages are laid out exactly as Writer lays them out, and numbered as Writer numbers them. As the play is rewritten, its pages move, and the book moves with them.

Cues follow their lines. Each cue is pinned to the line it's beside. When the writer adds or cuts lines and saves, Prompt Book lays the pages out again the next time you open the book or come back to its tab, and every cue moves with its line, to whatever page it's now on. A line with a word or two changed is still found. The line above the page says what moved.

If a cue's line is cut from the script, the cue stays where the line was, outlined in red, and marked its line was cut in the list. Click it and choose Move the cue to put it at its new moment, or Delete it. Nothing is lost.

To change scripts, click the show's name in the black band and choose Use a different script…. Cues already placed are kept, listed first under To be moved to their moments, until you move each one.

Setting up the pages

Every sheet of the PDF is shown small, labeled with the pages Prompt Book has worked out from it. Click a sheet to choose it, or one side of a split sheet. The panel on the right goes through five things to check, in order. Nothing here changes the PDF; it only records how to read it, and all of it can be changed at any time from Set up the pages… in the black band.

1. Two pages to a sheet. Sheets wider than they are tall are split into two pages at a red line. Drag the line to move it, if the binding isn't in the middle. To keep a sheet whole, click it and choose Keep this sheet whole; to split one, Split this sheet in two.
2. The right way up. Click a sheet that's sideways or upside down, and choose Turn ↺ or Turn ↻ until it reads the right way. A page that isn't part of the book, such as a second copy of a page or the blank half of a split sheet, can be left out: click it and choose Leave this page out. On a split sheet, only the side you clicked is left out; Put this page back undoes it.
3. Trim the copier edges. See Trimming.
4. Lighten the background. If the copier left the paper gray, choose Some or More. See Lightening a gray scan.
5. Where does the play start? Click the first page of the play, choose The play starts here, and type the number printed on it in First page is. Acting editions often start the play on page 5 or 7, after the title page and the characters. Pages before it are kept as front matter, so the stage chart and props list are there when you want them.

The summary at the bottom says how many pages of front matter and of the play there are. Open the book goes to the book.

Trimming the copier edges

A photocopy often has a dark band where the copier lid didn't close, and the binding's shadow down one side. Trimming hides them.

1. In Set up the pages, click a page that shows the edges well, and choose Trim….
2. Drag each amber handle in, past the dark edges, but not into the text.
3. Choose Every page, so the same trim goes on the whole book, or Just this page, for one page that was copied differently. No trim takes the trim away.
4. Choose Done.

Beside Trim…, the panel says what's trimmed: No trim yet, or Trimmed on every page, with how many pages have a trim of their own. If you choose Done without moving an edge, Prompt Book says nothing is trimmed and offers to try again.

On a scan copied a page at a time, the dark bar or a thumb may reach further on some pages than others. When you find one in the book, choose Trim this page… above the page, and trim just that page.

Lightening a gray scan

Many copiers turn white paper gray, sometimes with grain and specks, which makes a page harder to read and uses a lot of toner when the book is printed. Lighten the background, in Set up the pages, fixes that for the whole book.

• Off shows the scan as it is.
• Some turns gray paper white and makes the print a little darker. It's gentle, so pencil marks and faint print in the scan stay readable. Try this first.
• More is for the grayest, grainiest copies. Check that any pencil in the scan is still clear.

The book on screen and the printed book are lightened alike, and the printed pages stay as sharp as the scan. Your PDF itself isn't changed, so you can choose again at any time. Dark copier edges stay dark; trim them instead.

Page numbers

Every page of the play is numbered by counting on from where the play starts, so page numbers match the acting edition that everyone in the room is holding. When the count goes wrong, say because a page was never copied, click the page and type its real number in This page is p.. The pages after it count on from there. A revision page such as 34A works too, and the page after it is 35.

• When pages jump, say from 8 to 10, Prompt Book says that p. 9 isn't in the scan, both here and in the book's list of pages.
• When two pages have the same number, Prompt Book says so. Leave out the extra copy, or change its number.
• Prompt Book can't read the page, so it can't tell that a sheet is a second copy of the one before. Look for two pages that match, and leave one out.

The book

Each page sits in its window on a US Letter sheet, with the show's title and the page number along the top and the cue margin on the right, just as it prints.

• ‹ and ›, or the ← and → keys, turn the pages.
• Go to page: type a page and press Enter.
• Pages, beside the book, lists every page of the play, and the front matter; click one to go there.
• Zoom: − and + make the sheet smaller or larger; Fit shows the whole sheet.
• Trim this page… trims just the page you're on, where the copier's edges reach further than the trim covers. See Trimming.

Adding a cue

A cue goes in with a department, a click and Enter.

1. Above the page, under Add a cue, click the department: LX (lights), SQ (sound), Fly, Deck (shifts), Spot or Proj (projections). Or press its letter, shown on the button.
2. Click the moment on the page: the word, or the space between words, where the cue is called.
3. A small card opens in the margin with the number filled in: one more than the department's cue before it, or halfway between two (5.5 between 5 and 6). Type another number if you like; 12A works too.
4. Type a few words for what the cue does, if you like, such as Parlor, evening.
5. Press Enter, or choose Add cue. Esc, or Cancel, leaves it out.

The cue appears in the margin beside its moment, with a small mark on the page and a line out to its label: LX 5 GO, with its words beneath. Where the line crosses the script it's faint, so the words stay easy to read; point at a cue's label, or click it, and its whole line comes up in full. A cue clicked at the end of a line of text has a line that runs through white space. Each department has its own color on screen; the printed book is black and gray. A cue number out of order for its department is underlined in red, in the margin and the list, so you can renumber it.

The list of every cue, page by page in the order they're called, is under Cues beside the book; the cues on the page you're on are shaded. Click one to go to it.

Standbys

1. Click the cue, in the margin or the list.
2. Choose Add a standby, then click the moment the standby is given. It can be on the page before: turn back with ‹ first, then click.

The standby shows in the margin as SB LX 5, in italics, with a hollow mark on the page. When it's on the same page as its GO, a bracket joins them. Move the standby and Remove the standby are beside the cue.

Cues taken together

When two cues are called as one, such as LX 6 and SQ 4, go, click one of them and choose the other in Taken with. They move to the same moment, and stand together in the margin, joined by a bracket, with + after each one but the last. Choose No other cue to part them.

Changing and deleting cues

Click a cue, in the margin or in the list. Beside the book you can change its number, what it does and its notes; move it, with Move the cue and a click on its new moment; or Delete it. Delete on the keyboard deletes the cue chosen too. Undo brings back anything.

Cues remember their spot on the scan itself, so correcting a page number in Set up the pages leaves them on the right line, and changing the trim doesn't move them off their word.

Printing the book

1. Choose Print… in the black band, and choose The book.
2. Choose the whole book, with the front matter, just the page you're on, or a range of pages.
3. Choose Save the PDF, and say where. It starts in the show's folder.
4. Open the PDF and print it, on US Letter.

The pages are placed from your PDF itself, never redrawn, so they print as sharp as the scan. The cues print in the margin, in black for each GO and gray for each standby, so the book survives a photocopier.

Cue sheets and the calling sheet

Both are in Print…, in the black band, as PDFs saved wherever you choose, starting in the show's folder. Black and white on US Letter, they run onto more pages as the show needs.

• Cue sheets: a sheet for each department, for its board operator and designer, with every cue in calling order: its number, page, the page of its standby, what it does, and notes. A cue taken with another says so ("with SQ 2"). Tick the departments you want; those with cues are ticked already, and each says how many cues it has. Several departments make one PDF, a department to a page.
• The calling sheet: every cue in one list, page by page, in the order you call them. Each standby comes just before its GO, in gray, and cues taken together share a line: LX 3 + SQ 2. It's a quick check of the whole show, or a backup for the booth.

Departments

Prompt Book starts with six: LX (Lights), SQ (Sound), Fly, Deck (shifts), Spot and Proj (Projections). Choose Change these…, beside the department buttons above the page, to make them this show's own:

• Change a department's Label (what the margin says), its Name, or its Key, the letter that starts a cue. Two departments can't share a letter.
• ↑ and ↓ put them in order: the order of the buttons, and of cues taken together.
• Hide a department this show doesn't use, and Show it again. At least one always stays shown.
• + Add a department adds your own, such as FX, with a color and letter of its own. A department you added can be deleted until it has cues; after that it can be hidden, so no cue loses its department.
• Copy from another show… brings in the departments from another show's folder, in place of these. Its cues are never copied.
• Back to the standard set brings back the six as they began, keeping any you added that have cues, hidden.

Departments are saved with the show, so whoever opens it next sees the same ones. Undo takes back any change.

The keeper

The prompt book is changed by its keepers, usually the stage manager, and anyone else who needs to change it too, such as the director. Everyone else who opens the show's folder, such as an ASM, a designer or a board operator, can turn its pages, read the cues and print, but not change it. There are no accounts: the book records its keepers' names, and each keeper's computer remembers that the book is theirs.

• Naming the keeper. The first time someone changes a book that nobody keeps yet, Prompt Book asks Who keeps this book?, with the stage manager from Production filled in. Pick anyone else in the company, or type a name and role, and choose I keep this book. Cancel takes the change back.
• Viewing only. On any other computer the book opens with a line above the page, such as "Kept by Jordan Ellis (stage manager) since Nov 10. Viewing only.", and Add a cue, Set up the pages… and Save aren't there. Clicking a cue shows what it says. Coming back to the tab shows the keepers' latest saved book, once your cloud folder has brought it in. Production stays open to everyone, as in every app.
• Become the keeper…, in that line, offers three choices. Keep it alongside them, so you can both change the book, each on your own computer: a director beside the stage manager, say. Take it over, for a new stage manager: everyone who kept it before then sees it for viewing only, so check with them first. And I'm …, on another computer, for a keeper's second computer, such as a laptop for the rehearsal room beside a desktop in the office.
• Kept by you…, under the show's name, lists the keepers. Correct my name… changes how yours reads, Take off takes another keeper off, and Stop keeping it hands it back. Changes to the keepers are saved straight away.

The keeper is a clear signal, like the name on a binder's spine, not a lock: anyone can choose Become the keeper…, after being asked. The sample show is always yours.

Dark, for the booth

Click the palette button, beside the ? in the black band, and choose Dark. The book's sheet stays white, like a lit page in the booth. The choice is shared with Breakdown, Rehearsal Planner and Stage Manager.

Your files and sharing

• Prompt Book keeps prompt-book.json and prompt-book script.pdf in the show's folder, beside the other apps' files. The show's title and first page are in production.json, shared through the Production panel.
• The prompt book's keepers, usually the stage manager, change it; others on the team can open the folder to read and print it (see The keeper).
• To share, keep the folder in a cloud service you already use, such as Google Drive. See Sharing with your team.

Keyboard shortcuts

On a Mac, use ⌘ in place of Ctrl.