Screenwriting

The screenplay is the heart of a FilmKit project. Everything else — scenes, shots, schedules, casting — connects back to it.

Screenplays

A project can hold several screenplays. From the Screenplays list you can:

  • Create a screenplay with Create screenplay, choosing a template and a title.
  • Import an existing script — FilmKit reads .fountain, .txt, .fdx (Final Draft), and .json. Import runs a parse and then an Import review step where you confirm the title, the detected characters and places, whether mini-slugs become shots, and whether mentions are auto-linked.

The editor

FilmKit's editor understands screenplay structure: scene headings, action, character cues, and dialogue are formatted for you as you write, on true US-letter pages, so you focus on the story rather than on tabs and margins.

The screenplay editor with live, real-time collaboration.
The screenplay editor with live, real-time collaboration.

The toolbar

The toolbar across the top gives you the common writing controls:

  • Undo / redo with and , or ⌘+Z and ⌘+⇧+Z.
  • Inline formatting — bold (⌘+B), italic, and underline.
  • Insert a page break, center text, and toggle dual dialogue for simultaneous speech.
  • Link an entity with to connect a character, place, or item to the text.
  • Add a comment with , jump between bookmarks, and open the title page metadata.
  • Export the script with and open the Breakdown view.
  • Toggle the right-hand panel with or ⌘+..

Edit, Suggest, and View modes

An editor-mode switch changes how your keystrokes land:

  • Edit — the default; you write directly into the script.
  • Suggest — your changes are recorded as tracked suggestions that someone accepts or rejects, rather than landing immediately. This is also how an AI assistant proposes edits.
  • View — a clean, read-only reading mode.

The side panel

The trailing side panel has tabbed views for everything derived from the script — Scenes, Beats, Characters, Places, Statistics, Comments, and Suggestions. Open the Suggestions tab to review proposed changes: each one shows the struck-out old text and the proposed new text, who authored it (and, for AI edits, which agent), and / buttons to accept or reject it. Nothing reaches an export or PDF until a person accepts it.

Scenes and characters

As you write scene headings, FilmKit derives the project's scenes, and the characters who appear become part of the project's character list — automatically.

  • Scenes are projected from the script and drive downstream planning — shots, scheduling, and storyboards all reference them. Scenes can be active, omitted, or removed, and those states are reflected everywhere they appear.
  • Characters are recognized from the script and carried across the project, so casting and breakdowns refer to the same character you wrote.

Because scenes and characters are derived from the script rather than maintained by hand, the plan stays honest to the writing. Learn more in Characters, Places & Items.

The breakdown

The Breakdown view turns each scene into a breakdown sheet, listing the characters, items, and places linked to it as chips that jump to those catalog entries. It's a read-only, always-current summary of what each scene needs.

The breakdown view — each scene with the characters, items, and places it needs.
The breakdown view — each scene with the characters, items, and places it needs.

Revisions and publishing

FilmKit follows the industry colored-pages workflow. In a screenplay's settings you control the publish mode, scene-numbering policy, and revision colors — the current color and the next color to roll to. You can also lock scene numbers so they stay stable as the script keeps changing. Published script revisions and sides become publications your crew can download.

Real-time collaboration

Editing in FilmKit is collaborative and live. When two people open the same screenplay, they see each other's changes as they happen — cursors and all — with no "save and refresh" and no version-merge headaches. FilmKit uses conflict-free collaborative editing under the hood, so simultaneous edits merge cleanly and your work syncs even after a spell offline.

Next steps