Action

Action describes what the audience sees and hears: who comes in, what they do, what the place looks like, the sound that makes everyone turn. It is written in the present tense and runs the full width of the page, from the left margin.

Oars hang from the rafters. A bare bulb swings on its cord.

Nora steps in, shaking the rain off her coat.

Writing it in Calmly Script

Action is what a line is when nothing says otherwise, so most of the time there is nothing to do but write. After a scene heading, Enter↩ starts the action under it, and Enter↩ at the end of a paragraph of action starts the next one. When Enter has started something else (a character, after a speech), Enter↩ again on the empty line turns it back into action. On an empty line of action, Enter↩ adds another empty line, which is a blank line more on the page (see Line breaks and spacing).

To make an existing line action, use Format › Action (Ctrl+2⌘2), or TabTab and Shift+Tab⇧Tab until it is. See Enter and Tab.

A line in capitals stays action

Screenplays put some action in capitals: a sound, a sudden event, a character seen for the first time. In Calmly Script a line of action typed in capitals stays action. The app never turns a line into a character on its own: only Enter↩ and TabTab start a character.

Below, a heading, a paragraph of action, and a second one typed in capitals that is still action.

Forcing action with !

In a Fountain file, a few lines of action would be read as something else by their words alone. The usual one is a line in capitals with a blank line above it and text right under it, which is what a character’s name looks like. An exclamation mark at the start of the line says “this is action”:

The alarm goes off.

!EVERYONE FREEZES.
Then the lights come back on.

The ! stays on the line in Calmly Script, dimmed, and is not printed. Delete it and the line goes back to being whatever its words say.

You rarely need to type it yourself. When you make a line action with the menu, the shortcut or Tab, and its words would otherwise make it something else (it starts with INT., for example, or ends in TO: in capitals), Calmly Script writes the ! for you, so the line is still action the next time the file is opened. Where the words already read as action, nothing is added.

The same is done for a paragraph of action set on several lines with Shift+Enter⇧↩. A first line in capitals with a line under it is the example above, and a later line that opens with #, =, INT. and the like would be read as a section, a synopsis or a heading. When the file is saved, that line gets its !. You do not see it while you write; it is on the line, dimmed, the next time you open the screenplay.

How it prints

Action prints in the full width of the text, starting at the left margin, with one blank line above each paragraph, or as many as you left above it. The lines of one paragraph print one under the other, with no blank line between them: in the file they are written one under the other, as the last two lines of the example above are. In Calmly Script you start a new line inside a paragraph with Shift+Enter⇧↩ rather than Enter↩, which starts the next paragraph (see Line breaks and spacing).