Screenplay outlining software for a connected film
An outline should help you understand the film before you write every page. Screenplay.Company is being built to connect each beat with the characters, choices and scenes that give it meaning. The desktop Studio is coming soon.
See what changes at each beat
A list of events can leave you with a second act that goes nowhere. A useful beat names a change: someone chooses, learns, loses, gains or makes a situation harder to reverse. Its place in the outline follows what made that change possible and what it makes necessary next.
Outline is the Studio’s place for developing and arranging those moments. A beat can begin as a loose image or an unresolved possibility. Developing the film means finding the character action and consequence that make it belong.
Connect a choice to its consequence
Consider the difference between three events and a chain of decisions. In the illustrative example below, each beat changes the conditions of the next. Moving the middle beat is a story revision because the later confrontation depends on it.
- She refuses the transfer
- A station supervisor stays to search for a missing passenger instead of leaving with the evacuation crew.
- She opens the closed platform
- Finding a bag beyond the gate, she overrides the closure. Her choice leaves a record that she was there.
- She has to explain the record
- When the bag becomes evidence, hiding her involvement would put a colleague under suspicion. She must decide whether to admit what she did.
Keep alternatives visible
Outlining is also where you discover that several different films could grow from the same material. What if she hands the bag over immediately? What if the colleague saw her open the gate? Those are alternatives to explore, not settled facts to mix into one version.
The Studio’s intended collaboration keeps possibilities distinct from your choices and carries the reason for a choice forward. A structural suggestion should help you assess the whole film, including what the audience knows and what a later moment pays off.
Carry the outline into Scenes and Script
A beat is a starting point for a scene, not a finished scene. Scenes is where you develop how it will play: the situation, intentions, pressure and change. You approve the direction before turning it into action and dialogue.
Script is the assembled film on the page, ordered by the outline. This connected design is intended to make structural revision understandable: see the part you moved, the scenes it affects and the writing that deserves review. A changed outline does not authorize an automatic rewrite of approved pages.
Start outlining today
The Studio is not yet publicly available. You can use our outlining guide with paper cards or your current writing tools. It includes a practical way to turn an idea into a chain of choices and to diagnose a sequence that stalls.
You can also read a screenplay in the Reading Room and make a reverse outline of a short scene range. First record what the pages actually show, then distinguish your interpretation of why the sequence works.
Questions before you begin
Must I use a three-act template?
The planned Outline workspace develops the film from your material. A structural method can help you ask questions, but it is not a requirement for beginning.
Is this a free online outline generator?
This page explains a coming-soon desktop Studio. The outlining guide and Reading Room are free to use now; the Studio has no announced public pricing.