Line breaks and spacing

Fountain is plain text, so the blank lines in it mean something: a blank line is what separates one paragraph of action from the next, or a speech from the action after it. In Calmly Script you never type those blank lines. You write paragraphs, and the app puts the blank line between them in the file for you.

Paragraphs, not blank lines

Every paragraph in the editor is one element of the screenplay: a scene heading, a line of action, a character’s name, a line of dialogue. Pressing Enter↩ ends it and starts the next one (see Enter and Tab).

In the file, Calmly Script writes a blank line between one paragraph and the next, except in two places where Fountain wants none:

• between the lines of a speech: the character, their parentheticals and their dialogue follow one another with no blank line;
• between the lines of the title page.

So this, typed as five paragraphs in the editor, is saved like this:

EXT. HARBOUR - DUSK

Maya waits by the last bollard.

TOMÁS
(out of breath)
You came.

More space between paragraphs

An empty paragraph is not an element: it is one more blank line. Press Enter↩ on an empty line of action and you get another empty line, and every empty line you leave between two paragraphs is a blank line more in the file and on the printed page. Fountain keeps them, and so does Calmly Script: a file with several blank lines in a row, written anywhere, opens with them as empty lines and is saved back with the same number.

The engine dies.



Silence. Then the gulls.

The space the format gives an element is the least it gets, not something the empty lines add to. In a screenplay a scene heading prints with two blank lines above it however it is written, so one empty line above a heading changes nothing on the page, and two make it three.

On screen an empty line is drawn like any other paragraph, with the same space above it, so a run of them looks roomier in the editor than on paper. The Preview shows the space as it prints.

A new line inside a paragraph

Shift+Enter⇧↩ (Format › Line break) starts a new line without ending the paragraph. That is how a speech runs to a second paragraph: Enter↩ after a line of dialogue would start the next character, but a line break stays in the same speech.

TOMÁS
I waited all winter.
I would have waited all spring.

In action, lyrics and centered text it is also how lines stay together on the page: lines written one under the other print one under the other, while two paragraphs print with a blank line between them. A file that already has such lines, with no blank line between them, opens with them in one paragraph, joined by line breaks, and is saved back the same way.

A line break is only for those four: action, dialogue, lyrics and centered text, whose lines the file reads back as one element. Under a scene heading, a character, a parenthetical or a transition, the next line would come back from the file as an element of its own, so there the keys work as Enter↩, starting the next element, and Format › Line break is greyed out.

Pressed twice in a row in action, lyrics or centered text, the second line break ends the paragraph: the line under it starts a paragraph of its own, which is how the file will read it back. BackspaceBackspace straight after takes it back to a single line break. In a speech, twice in a row leaves a pause instead (see below).

Making one line of a paragraph a scene heading, a character, a parenthetical or a transition, with TabTab, the menu or a shortcut, takes that line out of the paragraph on its own: the lines above and below it stay what they were.

On a touch keyboard such as Gboard the same line break is Shift and then Enter, and there is also a button for it at the foot of the window.

Emphasis does not run across a line break: close the * or _ on the line you opened it on (see Bold, italic and underline).

A pause inside a speech

A blank line would end a speech. To leave an empty line inside one, Fountain uses a line holding only spaces: the speech goes on under it. Calmly Script keeps that line in the file, so the speech is not cut in two, and prints it as a blank line inside the speech, as the example shows.

To leave one as you write, press Shift+Enter⇧↩ twice: the empty line stays inside the speech, and the file gets a line of two spaces there. Several empty lines in a row make one pause, and an empty line at the start or the end of a speech is not kept.

MAYA
I can wait too.
  
For no reason at all.

Indenting a line

The start of a line can be indented, but only where Fountain keeps the indent: on a line of action, and on the lines of a title page, where an indent is how an entry runs to a second line.

• Ctrl+Tab⌥Tab (Format › Indent line) indents the line with a tab.
• Ctrl+Shift+Tab⌥⇧Tab (Format › Remove indent) takes the indent off. It works on any line, even one indented in a file that came from somewhere else.

On other lines, Format › Indent line is greyed out: the indent would not survive the next time the file is saved, because those lines are read by what they say, and an indent is not part of that. An indented INT. HOUSE is still a scene heading, and an indented name in capitals is still a character. To make a line action whatever it says, put a ! in front of it, not spaces.

On a touch screen, where there is no Tab key, the Format menu is the way to indent.

Spaces

A space you type is an ordinary space in the file, and several spaces in a row stay several spaces: Calmly Script adds no invisible characters to keep them. In a line of action they are kept as you typed them, so you can line words up. Text you paste keeps its spaces and its indents too.

Spaces at the end of a line mean nothing in Fountain, and Calmly Script drops them when it reads a file.