Writing & Formatting Scripts

This guide assumes The basics. Importing has grown its own review screen and its own guide: Importing scripts. Locking and revisions live in Script lock & revisions.

The Script Editor writes on real pages. What you see is a stack of US Letter page cards, 12 pt Courier, with the page number in the top-right corner and page breaks falling exactly where they’ll fall in print. There is no separate preview mode anymore, because the editor’s pages and the exported PDF come from the same layout. The page you’re looking at is the page.

There’s no Save button either. Every change is saved to your device within about half a second and synced to the cloud in the background.

The title page

Every script starts with a title page, and you edit it in place. It has eight fields: Title, Credit, Author, Source, Contact, Copyright, Draft date, and Notes. Empty fields show a greyed placeholder and print as nothing.

Tab moves to the next field with its value pre-selected, so you can type straight over it. Shift + Tab goes back. Tab on the last field drops you into the script body. Return inside a field adds a line within that field, and each field has a line budget so the title page always stays exactly one page.

A new document arrives with a small starter script and a seeded title page, with your name already in the Author field. Type over any of it.

Typing a script

CineLog uses the Fountain conventions under the hood, but you don’t need to know Fountain to write. Type naturally and the editor classifies each line as you go.

The Return key does most of the moving between elements:

After a scene heading, Return gives you action.
After a character name, Return gives you dialogue.
After dialogue, Return gives you more dialogue, so a speech grows paragraph by paragraph. To end the speech, press Return again on the empty line, and it becomes action in place. So the way out of a speech is Return, Return.
After a transition, Return gives you a scene heading.
Shift + Return breaks a line inside the same element.

Fountain elements

You can also force any element with Fountain’s syntax characters:

Scene headings: start a line with INT. or EXT., or force one with a leading period (.).
Action: standard text is action. Force it with a leading exclamation point (!).
Characters: type the name in UPPERCASE, or force it with a leading at-sign (@).
Dialogue: type on the line after a character name.
Parentheticals: wrap the text in parentheses (like this).
Transitions: standard UPPERCASE endings like CUT TO:, or force one with a leading >.
Centered text: > Center this text <.
Emphasis: *italics*, **bold**, _underline_.

Not supported in the editor yet: dual dialogue (^), boneyards (/* */), sections (#) and synopses (=), and inline notes ([[ ]]).

Manual override hotkeys

When the detection guesses wrong, set the element type yourself:

Cmd / Ctrl + 1: Scene Heading
Cmd / Ctrl + 2: Character
Cmd / Ctrl + 3: Dialogue
Cmd / Ctrl + 4: Action
Cmd / Ctrl + 5: Parenthetical
Cmd / Ctrl + 6: Transition
Cmd / Ctrl + 7: Lyrics
Cmd / Ctrl + E: Centered

How pages break

A page holds 54 lines, the same count Final Draft paginates. When a paragraph doesn’t fit, it splits at the last sentence that fits and the rest continues overleaf, instead of the whole paragraph jumping to the next page. A speech that continues across the break prints (MORE) at the bottom and repeats the character name with (CONT’D) at the top, and CineLog keeps at least two lines on each side of a split so you never get a stranded line.

The editor, the page counter, and the exported PDF all run on this one layout, so they can’t disagree.

Zoom

The zoom cluster sits in the middle of the top menu bar: minus, the current percentage, plus. Zoom runs from 50% to 200% in 25% steps, and clicking the percentage resets to fit the window width. Cmd / Ctrl + = and Cmd / Ctrl + - step in and out, Cmd / Ctrl + 0 fits the width, and Cmd / Ctrl + scroll or a pinch does the same on the pointer. Zoom scales the whole page, so lines always wrap at the same characters no matter the level, and the page count never moves because you zoomed.

Analytics

The analytics sidebar keeps live totals while you write: the page count in screenplay eighths (like 12 3/8), scenes, lines, words, and characters. Select some text and two more rows appear, showing the selection’s character count and its size in page eighths. That’s the fastest way to answer “how long is this scene”, because eighths of a page is the unit the schedule speaks.

Writing on a phone

The phone editor is a full editor, not a viewer. The script reflows to the screen at a comfortable reading size instead of shrinking a Letter page, and thin dividers labelled PAGE 7 mark exactly where the printed pages break. The page numbers match the desktop and the PDF, because they come from the same pagination.

Exporting

Click Export, the first button in the top menu bar. Pick a format:

PDF Document (.pdf) — paginated and industry-formatted, breaking exactly where the editor breaks.
Fountain Script (.fountain) — plain-text markup for maximum compatibility.
Final Draft (.fdx) — for moving the script into Final Draft or other production software.
Plain Text (.txt) — a simple reading copy.
JSON Data (.json) — structured data for integrations and custom tooling.
Scene Report (.csv) — a tabular scene listing for spreadsheets.

On a locked script with a revision round open, the PDF gains two options: Revised pages only exports the title page plus the pages the current round touched, which is the set a production actually distributes, and Revision paper color fills each revised page with its revision color. Leave the color off when printing on real colored stock. See Script lock & revisions.

If this isn’t working

Where did Preview go? It’s retired. The editor now shows final pages all the time, so there’s nothing separate to preview. Export opens the format picker directly.

Return won’t take me out of dialogue. Press it twice: once to open an empty continuation line, once more to turn that line into action.

The page count looks different from my old draft. CineLog paginates 54 lines per page with true paragraph splitting, matching Final Draft. Estimates from before v1.5.0 used a looser calculation.

I can’t type into a scene marked OMITTED. That’s an omitted scene on a locked script. Restore it first. See Script lock & revisions.