Writer

Stage plays, musicals and screenplays, formatted correctly as you type. Writer predicts the next element as you go, so you rarely touch the formatting, and what you see on screen is exactly what prints. Your script is a plain Fountain file you own, readable in any text editor.

1. Getting started
2. Stage play, musical or screenplay
3. Elements
4. Think-ahead typing
5. Typing tips
6. Songs
7. Notes
8. Front matter
9. The navigator
10. Pages and the PDF
11. Your files
12. Your script in a show
13. Themes
14. Keyboard shortcuts

Getting started

1. Choose Stage Play or Screenplay, beside the app's name. For a musical, tick Musical.
2. Start typing. Press Enter at the end of a line, and Writer gives you the element most likely to come next. See Think-ahead typing.
3. To change a line's element, click one on the formatting bar, or press its shortcut.
4. Choose Front Matter…, in the File menu, for the title page, the cast of characters and, for a musical, the musical numbers.
5. Choose Save to keep your script as a .fountain file, and Export PDF… for pages to print or send.

Stage play, musical or screenplay

• Stage Play follows the Dramatists Guild's formatting guide. Screenplay is film and TV format. Choose with the switch beside the app's name.
• A musical is a stage play with songs: tick Musical to add Song Cue and Lyrics. Screenplays have Lyrics too, for film musicals.
• Switching format converts the script: stage directions become action, and blackouts and curtains become transitions, and back again. Undo can't take back a switch, so a script with writing in it asks first. An empty script simply starts over in the new format: a screenplay on a Scene Heading, a stage play on an Act Heading.
• New starts in the format you're in. The first time you open Writer, it starts in Stage Play.

Elements

Every line has one element, such as a character name, a line of dialogue or a stage direction. The element decides how the line looks on the page.

• The formatting bar, under the toolbar, shows the elements for your format. The one you're on is marked. Point at any of them for a line on what it's for.
• Click an element to change the line you're on. The first nine on the bar also have shortcuts: Ctrl+Alt+1 to Ctrl+Alt+9.
• Ctrl+Alt+E opens a menu of every element. Type a letter or two, then Enter.
• Help lists every element for the format you're in, with its shortcut.

In a stage play

• Act Heading and Scene Heading start a new page. Setting and At Rise open every scene.
• Character, then Dialogue. A Parenthetical is a short direction for how a line is said.
• Stage Direction is action and movement, in parentheses. Character names in it are capitalized for you.
• End Cue ends an act, a scene or the play: BLACKOUT, CURTAIN, INTERMISSION, END OF PLAY.

In a screenplay

• Scene Heading says where and when (INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT). Action is what we see and hear.
• Character, Parenthetical and Dialogue, as in a play. Transition is a cut between scenes (CUT TO:).
• Screen Text is a centered line on its own: THE END, a time card or an epigraph. Act Heading is for TV scripts.

Think-ahead typing

Writer predicts the next element, so the right one is usually a keystroke away. Pressing Enter on an empty line changes its element rather than adding a blank line.

Stage play

• Tab on an empty line cycles Character → Stage Direction → Song Cue (in a musical) → Scene Heading. Shift+Tab goes back.
• Inside dialogue, Tab inserts a Parenthetical; Enter after it carries on the same speech.

Screenplay

• Tab on an empty line cycles Action → Character → Scene Heading → Transition. Shift+Tab goes back.
• Inside dialogue, Tab inserts a Parenthetical, as in a play.

Typing tips

• Names and places are offered as you type, from those already in the script. Enter takes the highlighted name and goes straight on to Dialogue; Tab takes it and stays put. Esc closes the list, so a new name that starts like a known one (MAX and MAXINE) is kept.
• Capitals are done for you. Character names, scene headings and other capitalized elements are saved in capitals. In a stage play, known names typed in a stage direction are capitalized when you finish the word.
• Parentheses are drawn for you around parentheticals and stage directions. Typing ( on an empty Dialogue line makes a Parenthetical.
• In a screenplay, a line starting INT. or EXT. becomes a Scene Heading, and a capitalized line ending in TO: becomes a Transition.
• A direction partway through a speech (Tab inside dialogue) gets space around it on the page, as the Dramatists Guild asks, and the speech carries on without repeating the name.
• A wavy red underline under dialogue means it has no character name above it. Fountain only knows dialogue by its name, so without one the line won't stay dialogue when saved. The underline never prints.
• Bold, italic and underline (Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+U) print as typed. In a stage play, keep italics for emphasis in dialogue.

Songs

1. Tick Musical, beside the format switch.
2. Where a song starts, add a Song Cue and type the song's title. Writer draws (Song: "…") around it.
3. Press Enter for Lyrics, which print in capitals in a stage play. Enter on an empty lyric line gives the next singer's name.

The songs are listed for you in Front Matter…, under Musical Numbers, where you say who sings each one. Renaming a song in the script updates the list.

Notes

• A Note is a reminder to yourself. Notes sit in a column beside the page, never print, and take no room on it.
• Notes such as [[Edition page 34]] mark where a published edition's pages begin, for the rest of the Worklight suite. Writer keeps them exactly as they are.

Front matter

Front Matter…, in the File menu, fills in the pages before the play. They print at the start of the PDF, unnumbered, and don't show in the page view.

• Title page: title, subtitle or genre, written by, contact details (bottom right) and copyright notice (bottom left).
• Cast of Characters (stage plays): every character who speaks is listed for you. Add age, a short description and any doubling.
• Place and Time (stage plays): two short lines on the cast page.
• Musical Numbers (musicals): built from your song cues, in order, with who sings each.
• Printing: the binding margin adds 0.5" on the left for bound scripts. It applies to every stage play in this browser, on screen and in the PDF.

The navigator

• The navigator lists your acts, scenes and songs, with their page numbers. Click one to go there.
• ☰, at the left of the toolbar, shows or hides it.
• In a narrow window, such as a laptop's, it floats over the left edge: open it with ☰, and it closes after a jump, a click elsewhere or Esc.

Pages and the PDF

One layout drives both the page view and the PDF, so what you see while writing is what prints. Export PDF…, in the File menu, saves it, with the front matter first.

Both formats

• Courier 12 point on US Letter.
• A heading, character name or song cue is never left alone at the bottom of a page.
• A long speech or direction breaks between sentences, never in the middle of one, with at least two lines on each page.

Stage play

• Every act and every scene starts on a new page.
• Pages are numbered through the whole play, with the act and scene at top right: I – 1 – 1, II – 1 – 51. Page 1 is the first page of the play.
• A split speech repeats the name on the next page with (Cont.).

Screenplay

• About 55 lines a page, roughly a minute of screen time.
• A split speech ends with (MORE), and the next page repeats the name with (CONT'D).
• Page numbers at top right; page 1 is unnumbered.

Your files

• Save keeps your script as a .fountain file on your computer: plain text, readable in any text editor, and in other screenwriting apps such as Beat and Highland.
• Save sits in the toolbar. Everything else for your files is in the File menu beside it.
• Open… opens any Fountain file. Save As… saves a copy under a new name. New starts a new script, and asks first if you have unsaved changes.
• Until you save, your work is backed up in this browser. If Chrome closes unexpectedly, Writer brings it back next time.
• Writer reopens the last script you worked on.
• To use your script with the other apps, keep it in the show's folder, and open it with Open a show's script…. See Your script in a show.
• Nothing goes to any server.

Your script in a show

A play written in Writer is ready for every other Worklight app as it stands: Breakdown drafts its chart from it, and Stage Manager, Rehearsal Planner and Prompt Book use its characters. Keep it in the show's folder, the folder the other apps open, and Writer works as part of the show.

• Open a show's script…, in the File menu, opens the script in a show's folder: the one Production names, or the folder's only script. If there are several, you choose. If the show has no script yet, Writer offers to save the one you have open into it.
• The show's name appears beside the script's, such as in Our Town.
• From any other app, choosing Writer in the app menu opens that show's script, and choosing another app from Writer opens it on the same show. The sample show opens the sample script.
• When you save, any character new to the script is added to the show's characters in Production, and Writer says so: Saved. Added CLARA and TOM to the show's characters. Writer only adds. A character renamed in the script arrives as a new one; remove the old one in Production, in any of the other apps.
• Prompt Book can draw its pages straight from the show's script, and its cues follow their lines as you rewrite. See A script from Writer in Prompt Book's page.
• A script opened with Open…, or saved somewhere else with Save As…, works on its own, outside any show.

Themes

The palette button, beside the ?, chooses how Writer looks around the page: Paper & Ink, the house look; Dark, for writing at night; or Simple, quiet and light, so the page stands out. In Dark, the page goes dark too, with light text, so the screen isn't one bright sheet. Themes never change the page's fonts, margins, line breaks or page breaks, so the screen still lays out exactly as the PDF, and the PDF always prints black on white. Your choice is remembered in this browser.

Keyboard shortcuts

On a Mac, use ⌘ in place of Ctrl, and ⌥ in place of Alt.