Enter and Tab

In Calmly Script you rarely say what a line is. Enter↩ starts the line a screenplay expects next, and TabTab changes the line you are on when you want something else. These are the moves a screenwriter’s hands already know from Final Draft.

Enter

Press Enter↩ at the end of a line and the new line is already the right kind: dialogue under a character’s name, the next character after a speech, action after a scene heading.

Enter on an empty line takes it back to action, and adds no new line. That is the way out when Enter has started something you did not want: after a speech, Enter offers the next character, and a second Enter on the empty line makes it action instead. On an empty line that is already action, Enter does add a line: each empty line between two paragraphs is a blank line more, in the file and on the page (see Line breaks and spacing).

BackspaceBackspace on an empty character line takes back what made it. Under a speech, where Enter starts the character line, Backspace removes the line and leaves you at the end of the speech, ready to go on with it. Anywhere else the character line was asked for with Tab or the menu, and Backspace keeps the line and turns it back into action, as if you had taken the indent off.

A line in brackets under a character’s name is a parenthetical. Calmly Script settles whether it is one when you press Enter at the end of it, so the next line is the speech it belongs to.

To start a new line inside the same element, as in a speech that runs to a second paragraph, press Shift+Enter⇧↩ (Format › Line break; see Line breaks and indents).

Tab

TabTab changes the line the caret is on to the next element in the cycle, and Shift+Tab⇧Tab to the previous one. The line keeps its text; only what it is changes.

An element chosen with Tab is pinned: it stays what you made it, even when the words on it would say otherwise. Where the text alone would not say it, a Fountain character goes in front of the line, dimmed, so the file says it too. For a scene heading that is a full stop (see Scene heading); the others are in How the editor decides.

When a suggestion from your own script is showing in grey (a character’s name, a place), TabTab accepts it instead. Shift+Tab⇧Tab never does (see Autocomplete).

On the continuation lines of a title page, Tab indents the line and Shift+Tab⇧Tab takes the indent back off, because an indented line is how a title page entry runs to a second line.

Straight to an element

The six elements a scene is made of have a shortcut each, and they are the first six entries of the Format menu:

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 rest of Fountain’s elements (sections, synopses, lyrics, centered text) are in Format › More elements, and so is the page break. See Elements and shortcuts.