The Writers' Room — a manual

The Writers' Room is where the screenplay lives: written, revised, broken into scenes and sent out. It is a real screenplay editor rather than a text box — it knows what a scene heading is, what a character cue is, and what should happen when you press Enter after one.

This is the manual. Four parts, in the order you will meet them.

1. Starting a script — from a template, from a file you already have, or from nothing. 2. Writing in the editor — the elements, the keyboard, and what the editor does for you. 3. Drafts and revisions — autosave, the editing lock, and the colour system. 4. Sides and distribution — getting pages to the people who need them, and only those pages.

Two things sit alongside it and have their own articles: who can read your script and from story to script, which explains how the Story Room and the Writers' Room fit together.

What it does without being asked

Worth knowing before you start, because they are the things people are surprised by:

- It reads your script. Scenes, page counts and every speaking character are extracted from the text — you never type a scene list. - It formats as you type. Scene headings, character cues and transitions go upper case on their own. You are writing plain text; it looks like a screenplay. - It saves constantly. A draft is written every thirty seconds while you have the script open. - It stops two people overwriting each other. One person edits at a time.

Start with starting a script.