Calmly Script

Writing

The Format menu and the element shortcuts

The six elements of a scene in the Format menu and on Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+6, the rarer ones under More elements, and the element menu in the footer.

On this page

Most of the time Enter↩ and TabTab choose the element for you. When you want to go straight to one, it is in the Format menu, and the element menu in the footer.

The six elements of a scene

The first six entries of Format are the elements a scene is made of, each with a shortcut. They change the line the caret is on, and pin it (see How the editor decides).

Element Shortcut
Scene heading Ctrl+1⌘1
Action Ctrl+2⌘2
Character Ctrl+3⌘3
Parenthetical Ctrl+4⌘4
Dialogue Ctrl+5⌘5
Transition Ctrl+6⌘6

The numbers follow the order of a scene: the heading, what we see, who speaks, how, what they say, and the cut to the next one.

More elements

Format › More elements holds the rest of Fountain. Each of them is written with a character at the start of the line, and choosing it from the menu types that character for you:

  • Format › More elements › Section: a # in front. Sections are the script’s own outline (acts, sequences) and do not print in a screenplay.
  • Format › More elements › Synopsis: an = in front. A line saying what happens in a scene or section; in a screenplay it does not print either.
  • Format › More elements › Lyrics: a ~ in front, for lines that are sung.
  • Format › More elements › Centered: > before the text and < after it.
  • Format › More elements › Page break, under a line of its own because it does not change the line you are on: it inserts a page break, ===, on a new line.

There is no entry for the title page: it is not a kind of line but the Key: value lines at the very top of the script (see Title page).

The footer at the bottom of the window starts with a button that names the element of the line the caret is on. Click it to open the list of the six elements of a scene, with the current one ticked, and choose another. When the caret is on one of the rarer elements (a section, lyrics…), that one is added at the end of the list, so the button never names something the list does not have.

On a touch screen

On Android, and on a computer used as a tablet, the footer rides just above the on-screen keyboard while you write, in two rows: the counter above, the controls below. There, the controls also have:

  • a line break button, because nothing on a touch keyboard shows Shift+Enter⇧↩ (on Gboard, Shift and then Enter does the same);
  • Undo and Redo.

A touch keyboard has no TabTab key either, so on a touch screen the element menu and the Format menu are the way to change what a line is.