Your first scene

This is the whole of Calmly Script’s way of writing, in one short scene. You only need two keys besides the letters: Enter↩ and TabTab.

1. A new document

Calmly Script opens on a blank page, ready to type. For another one, choose File › New (Ctrl+N⌘N). On a computer each new document opens in a window of its own.

2. The scene heading

Type the heading in capitals, starting with INT. (inside) or EXT. (outside):

INT. LAUNDROMAT - NIGHT

As soon as you type INT., the line becomes a scene heading. You did not have to choose anything. Scene heading has the rest.

3. Action

Press Enter↩. After a heading the next line is action: what we see. Write it in the present tense.

A dryer thumps. JUNE folds a shirt.

4. A character

Press Enter↩ for a new line, then TabTab. The empty line becomes a character, the name above a speech. Type the name; it comes out in capitals even if you type it in lower case.

5. Dialogue

Press Enter↩. Under a character’s name the next line is dialogue, set in its own narrower column:

Not mine. Not tonight.

6. Back to action

Press Enter↩ after the speech and the new line is ready for another character, the way a conversation goes. Press Enter↩ again on the empty line and it turns back into action.

That is the rhythm: Enter moves on to what a screenplay usually has next, and Tab changes the line when you want something else. Enter and Tab has the whole pattern, and The parts of a screenplay shows every element on a page, labelled.

7. Save it

Choose File › Save (Ctrl+S⌘S). The first time, the app asks for a name and a place. The screenplay is saved as a .fountain file: plain text that other screenwriting apps can open too (see A screenplay is a .fountain file).

After that, Ctrl+S⌘S saves it again in the same place, and File › Save as saves it under another name. If you would rather not think about saving at all, turn on Save documents automatically in Settings › Saving. It is on from the start on Android. Saving has the details.

A sample screenplay

To see a whole screenplay written this way, choose Help › Open Sample Screenplay. It is Sintel, the screenplay Esther Wouda wrote for the Blender Foundation’s short film of 2009, shared under a Creative Commons licence; its title page gives the credits. The film itself can be watched on the Blender Foundation’s site.

It never takes the place of what you are writing: on a blank page it opens there, and on a computer, with text of yours on screen, it opens in a window of its own. On Android, which has one window, it takes the place of the document on screen as File › New does, asking first if it has unsaved changes.

It is a document of its own, with no file: read it, change it, print it. Closing it unchanged asks nothing, and if you want to keep your changes, the first save asks where to put it.