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Script Outline

Who can do this: Free plan on your first project, Supporter plan on every project. Editing the outline needs the organization owner, an admin, or a member with Edit script; anyone on the project can read it.

The outline is the beat sheet that lives next to the script. Use it to work out the story before there are pages, or to check a draft against a structure once there are. When a beat is written as a scene, you link the two, and the outline shows which beats the script has covered. Where to find it: click Writing in the project nav, then Outline.

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Pick a structure

1. Open Writing, then Outline.
2. Click a structure. The outline fills with that structure’s acts and beats.
3. To build your own structure instead, click Start with a blank outline.

• Three-Act Structure: setup, confrontation, resolution. Features and shorts of any genre.
• Save the Cat: Blake Snyder’s 15 beats, each with the page it usually lands on.
• Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell’s 12 stages, for adventure, coming-of-age, and any transformation arc.
• McKee’s Story: Robert McKee’s value-driven framework, building through complications to the Crisis and the Climax.
• TV Pilot: four acts for a pilot episode, with the cold open, the A and B story setup, and the act breaks.
• Short Film: a compressed two-act structure for 5 to 15 minute films, built around one dramatic question.
• Story Circle: Dan Harmon’s 8 beats, from the comfort zone down into unfamiliar territory and back.

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Write the beats

Each beat shows its name, the template’s prompt in italics, and a space for your version.

1. Click into a beat.
2. Type your version. The prompt dims as you write.
3. Click the × beside a prompt to hide it.

The progress bar in the toolbar counts the template beats you have written against the total. To add an element:

• Hover between two elements and click the + that appears on the line.
• Click Add in the toolbar, or Add element at the bottom of the page, to add one at the end.

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Change an element’s type

1. Click the colored pill on the element (Act, Scene, Beat, or Note).
2. Pick the new type.

With your cursor in an element, Tab moves to the next type and Shift+Tab to the previous one.

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Switch between list and card view

Click the list icon or the grid icon in the toolbar. The list reads as one document. Cards color by type: amber for beats, blue for scenes, green for notes, with acts as full-width banners. Both views are editable. Spell Slate remembers which one you were in.

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Reorder elements

• In list view, drag the handle on the left of an element.
• In card view, drag the card.

The outline saves on its own after a move.

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Add an image to a beat

A beat can carry one image: a reference photo, a mood frame, a location still.

1. Click Add image on the card, or the small square at the left of the row in list view.
2. Pick an image from Project Library, or click Upload New and choose a file.

You can also drop an image file straight onto the card’s image area. Hover the image to Change it or Remove it. Remove takes the image off the beat and leaves the file in your media library. In card view, the field under the image is its label, which is the file’s name in the media library. Click it to rename, and the change saves when you click away. Images added here count toward the project’s media storage like any other upload, and appear in the Media Gallery under the Reference tag. Attaching an image that is already in the library uses no extra storage.

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Switch templates

1. Click the structure’s name in the toolbar.
2. Pick another structure. No template at the bottom keeps your written beats and drops the template’s unused prompts.

Your written beats stay. Beats that match a slot in the new structure move into it, and the rest collect at the bottom as unplaced, with a badge in the toolbar counting them. Drag an unplaced beat to where it belongs, or type in it, and the badge goes down. Click Undo in the toast at the bottom of the screen to put the previous structure back.

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Link a beat to the scene that covers it

Linking happens in the script editor’s navigator panel.

1. Open Writing, then Script.
2. Click the navigator icon in the toolbar, the four horizontal lines.
3. Click into the scene in the script, or click the scene’s row in the panel.
4. Click the beat in the panel to expand it.
5. Click Link to followed by the scene’s heading.

The panel then shows a checkmark and the scene’s heading under the beat, with unlink beside it. Back in the outline, the beat gets a green footer with the scene’s number and heading. To remove a link from the outline, hover the green footer and click the × at its right. Linking a template beat makes it yours: it leaves the placeholder state and counts as written, with the prompt still there to read.

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Use the navigator panel

The panel floats over the editor and shows the outline beside the script.

• Acts appear as headings, with their beats under them and the script’s scenes grouped by where they fall in the story.
• The scene your cursor is in highlights as you write and scroll.
• Click a scene to jump to it. Click a beat to expand it, and again to collapse it.
• Type in Filter scenes to narrow the scene list by heading.
• Drag the panel’s header to move it. The dash collapses it to its title bar; the × closes it. Spell Slate remembers whether it was open.

Before the project has an outline, the panel says No outline yet and links to the outline page.

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Start a script from the outline

Before the project has a script, the toolbar’s ⋮ menu can turn the outline into one.

1. Click ⋮ in the outline toolbar.
2. Click Start a script from this outline.
3. Click OK to confirm.

The new script opens in the editor with your acts as act headers and your Scene elements as scene headings. Beats and notes stay in the outline. Once the project has a script, the menu is replaced by a plain Export PDF button.

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Export the outline as a PDF

Click Export PDF in the toolbar. On a project with no script yet, it is inside the ⋮ menu.

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Related

• Script and Editor
• Using the script editor
• Media gallery