Start writing your first pages

Press Create project, the square with a pen in the strip on the left. Your own blank page opens, headed Start where you are. It offers four ways in: drag a script onto it or click to choose one, Start with story cards, Read a familiar script, or Ask the Advisor. To write from nothing, click the page below them and start typing. The four ways go away once you type your first word.

Every scene starts with a heading that says where and when it happens. Press Cmd+Option+1 (Ctrl+Shift+1 on Windows) to make the line a scene heading. Press Tab: INT. is written for you, and you're in the location. Type the place and press Tab again. The dash is written, and you're in the time of day. For an exterior, type EXT. yourself, and Tab moves you on to the place.

Each key takes you to the element a script usually needs next.

The one difference you'll feel: Enter after dialogue goes to action, not back to a name. Press Tab on that empty line to start the next speaker. Typing ( in the middle of a speech also starts a parenthetical, on its own line, and the speech carries on below it.

To see every element at once, press the mark in the left margin of the line you're on. Its shape shows what kind of line it is. On an empty line, typing / opens the same list.

On a character line, start typing a name your pages already use. The rest of it appears in gray. Press Tab to take it, or keep typing and the gray goes away. Only names from your own pages are offered, the one who speaks most first. On an empty character line, the name most likely to speak next is already there in gray, and Tab takes it.

Select the words. A small bar appears over them. Its first three buttons, B, I and U, are bold, italic and underline. Cmd+B, Cmd+I and Cmd+U do the same. There is no font or size to choose. Every page is Courier at twelve point, so a page still runs about a minute of screen time.

Your pages save themselves a moment after you stop typing, so there's nothing to press while you write. If a save ever has to wait, a notice at the foot of the page says Not saved yet. StoryFlow will keep trying. It tries again on its own, and again when you come back to the tab.

When the pages reach a point worth keeping, press the Save icon beside Undo and Redo, give the Draft a label if you like, and press Save. Your pages are kept as Draft 1, a dated copy nobody can change, and StoryFlow starts reading them for the Structure. You go on writing in your Working Pages, and from now on the Structure shows when they were last saved.

Changed your mind about a line? Undo and Redo are the two arrows at the top left, beside the StoryFlow name. Cmd+Z and Cmd+Shift+Z do the same. An arrow is gray when there is nothing to undo or redo. The button beside them turns the browser's spell check on or off.