Get started

One project from an empty page to a PDF. Nothing to install, and no account needed for any of it.

Before anything else

Open app.fabulaone.com. That is the whole setup. The app runs in the tab, and what you write is saved in this browser as you type — there is no Save button and nothing to lose by closing the tab.

The fastest way to see what the app does is the sample. In the Projects panel on the left, press Load sample: a short adaptation of The Cask of Amontillado, with a story line, a treatment, a structure, cards and character profiles already filled in. Poke at it, and delete it when you are done — it is a project like any other.

The four views

Across the top of the workspace are four views of the same project. Nothing is copied between them: they are four ways of looking at one set of material, and a change made in one is immediately true in the others.

Tab	What it holds
Story	Everything a project holds that is not the screenplay: the story line, the treatment, the cast and the settings, on four tabs of their own.
Structure	Acts, sequences and beats, with a synopsis under each and the page it currently falls on.
Cards	One card per scene, in order, grouped under the structure headings. Drag to reorder.
Script	The screenplay itself, laid out on a US Letter page at industry-standard margins.

The structure, the cards and the script are not three documents. They are one list of lines, shown three ways — which is why moving a card moves the scene, and why an act heading knows what page it is on.

Not three documents. The act heading, its synopsis, the scene heading and the action are one list — the tabs are three ways of looking at it, which is why moving a card moves the scene.

Inside Story

Four tabs, and between them the whole of what a screenplay needs beside itself. The first two are prose you write; the last two are read off the script and then written about.

Tab	What it holds
Story line	The film in a breath. A paragraph or two of plain text.
Treatment	The film in a few pages, told in the present tense.
Cast	Everybody who speaks, how much, and a profile for each of them.
Settings	Everywhere the film happens, taken from the scene headings, and what you know about each place.

A first pass, in order

1 · Start the project

+ New project in the Projects panel. Name it in the title field at the top of the window — that name becomes the file name when you export, so it is worth setting early.

2 · Say what it is — Story

The story line is a paragraph or two: who this is about, what they want, and what stops them. It is plain text on purpose. A logline that needed formatting would be doing too much.

The treatment, on the tab beside it, is the film told in the present tense, in prose, at whatever length it takes. Most people write this after the story line and before the structure, but nothing enforces an order.

3 · Choose a shape — Structure

Pick a template. Seventeen are offered, from Three Act to Kishōtenketsu, grouped by what they are for. Applying one puts its headings into the script with a synopsis under each; you then write what each act or beat is going to do.

If you already know your shape, take Blank and add the headings yourself. And if you are not sure, take Three Act — it is three boundaries and no further instruction, and you can swap it later without losing a scene.

4 · Lay out the scenes — Cards

Add a scene at the end of any section with + Add Scene, give it a heading, and write a line of synopsis saying what happens in it. Drag cards to reorder. This is where a film gets its running order, and it is much cheaper to move a card than a written scene.

5 · Write it — Script

Click any card to open that scene in the page. Then it is typing, and three keys:

Key	Does
`Enter`	New line, in the element that usually follows — a character cue is followed by dialogue, a scene heading by action.
`Tab`	Change the current line's element. `Shift`+`Tab` goes back.
`Ctrl`+`1`–`9`	Jump straight to an element. `Cmd` on a Mac.

That is enough to write a screenplay. The script has the rest — every element, character autocomplete, and what does and does not print.

6 · Get it out — Export

Export in the toolbar offers three things:

Fountain — the screenplay as plain text, which any other screenwriting tool will open.
PDF… — opens a dialog. Tick which parts you want (story, structure, script, characters, notes) and whether they come as one file or several.
Bundle (zip) — the whole project as a folder of ordinary files. This is the one to keep.

How it looks, and who you are

Account ▾ → Preferences…, and two tabs behind it.

Appearance. Dark, light, or follow the machine — the app has been dark since it existed, so it stays dark until you say otherwise rather than repainting itself to match your desktop. Then an accent: Amber, Blue, Sage or Violet. There is also an optional typewriter sound — a mechanical clack as you type and a bell at the end of a line — off unless you turn it on. All of it is kept in this browser and none of it in the screenplay, so somebody opening the same project elsewhere sees it their own way.
Profile. A name, a username and a picture. This one needs an account, because it is what other people see: your name on a draft you send out, and your face beside every note you write on somebody else's. A picture is cut to a square in your browser before it is sent.

Whatever you choose, the page stays white with black type. That is what will print, and a screenplay that looked different on screen from the file you send would be the wrong kind of choice to offer.

Where your work lives

In this browser, on this computer. That is true from the first keystroke, with no account and no upload.

It also means the obvious things. Clearing your browser data clears your projects. A project written on a laptop is not on your phone. Two browsers on the same machine are two separate libraries.

There are two answers, and they are not exclusive:

Export a bundle now and then, and keep the .zip wherever you keep things. It needs no account and depends on nobody.
Sign in — an email address and a code, no password — and your projects are copied to the server as you write, so they open on any machine you sign in from.

Signing in changes nothing about how the app works. It is backup, not a different mode. See Import, export and backup.