Story View

The story view is where you write, plan and present a story. It shows the same story in several views, each suited to a different job: an overview, a scene-by-scene timeline, cards, the script, the cast and the statistics.

The sidebar on the left switches between the views.
The header at the top holds the story's name and the tools that work in every view.
The view itself fills the rest of the screen.

Each story's template decides which views it has and what each one shows. The owner can change what a view shows in Advanced Settings, so your story may look different from the pictures here. Templates also name things their own way: in a podcast template, scenes are Segments and characters are Personalities, and the views and buttons use those words.

The Sidebar

The Prewrite logo at the top takes you back to where you came from (Back).
A button for each view. Point at one to see its name. The view you're in is highlighted.
Slideshow, below the views, plays the story as a slideshow. See Slideshow.
A lock icon shows the owner and editors of a shared story who is editing it: only one person edits at a time. It's green when it's you and red when it's someone else; click it to hand the story over or ask for it. It also shows, muted, on any story you're editing in another window. When no one is editing, it isn't there. See Request Access to Edit a Shared Story.
At the foot, the support chat button and your account picture, which opens your account menu.

On a phone-sized screen, the story's name sits in a bar across the top, with the Prewrite mark (back to your stories) on its left and your account picture on its right. Below it, the sidebar becomes a bar: on its left, a menu showing the view you're in, which lists every view and the slideshow; on its right, undo and redo, the view's Show/Hide, the lock icon (when it shows) and the Menu. The menu also holds the header's other tools: Find, Share, the Stash, Help and Live chat. Print is in Export & Print….

In a narrow window on a computer, the header makes room in two steps: first Find, Help, Print, Share and the Stash move into the Menu, then, if it's narrower still (say, with a side panel open), the Scene and Character drag chips shrink to a plus and an icon. The chips work the same either way.

The Header

The story header: the story's name and edited time on the left, the + Scene and + Character chips in the middle, and the tool buttons on the right

On the left is the story's name. Under it, owners and editors see when the story was last edited. While your changes are saving it reads Saving changes…, and if you lose your connection it reads Offline. Saving locally.: your changes are kept in your browser and saved when you're back online.

If you open a story while changes are still kept in your browser, and someone has edited it elsewhere since, Save Conflict Detected asks which version to keep, with the time of each. Keep My Changes saves your version, replacing the edits made elsewhere. Use Server Version drops your changes and opens the story as it is now. The story opens once you choose.

When a new version of Prewrite is released while you have it open, Prewrite has been updated asks you to reload. It can't be closed: click Reload, and your changes are saved before the page reloads.

If the story has a different name in My Stories, owners and editors see that name here. Click it to show the story's title instead, and click again to switch back.

In the middle are the + Scene and + Character chips, for the story's owner and editors. Drag one into the view to add a scene or a character where you drop it. In the Home, Characters and Stats views, a small map of the story's scenes opens while you drag, so you can drop onto it. See Add a New Scene and Add a New Character.

While someone else is editing a shared story, the chips are hidden until it's your turn.

On the right are the tools, described below. Owners and editors see all of them (Undo and Redo only while they can edit). Visitors and viewers see Show/Hide, Find, Share and, on a story they may copy, the Menu.

Undo and Redo

Undo takes back your last change to the story, in any view or in the Edit Window. Redo puts it back. The keyboard works too: Cmd + Z to undo, and Cmd + Shift + Z or Cmd + Y to redo (Ctrl on Windows).

If the change is somewhere you can't see, the first press takes you to it and the second one undoes it.

When there's nothing left to undo or redo, the button is greyed out and does nothing.

Show/Hide

The eye button (Show/Hide) lists the parts of the view you're in, such as the Images, Body or Plot Threads rows of the Timeline. Untick one to hide it, and tick it to show it again. A red dot on the eye means something is hidden.

Hiding changes only what you see. Your choices are saved to your account for this story, one set per view. The story itself doesn't change, and nobody else's view does. To choose what visitors can see, the owner uses Presentation in Advanced Settings.

In the Characters view, this button is a Filter with more options (see Filter Characters).

Find

Find (the magnifying glass, or Cmd + F) searches the story's text and shows each match in the view. Owners and editors can also replace text. See Find and Replace.

Help

Help (the graduation cap) opens this guide in a panel beside the story, at the section for the view you're in. Click it again to close the panel. It's there for the story's owner and editors. To read with more room, click Open full knowledge base (the arrows beside the panel's search): the whole knowledge base opens over the story, with the sidebar, at the article you were reading. Close it and the panel shows where you left off.

Print

Print Screenplay (the printer) prints the story's script, broken into pages the way the Page view shows it. To save a PDF, choose Save as PDF in your browser's print window. Cmd + P (Ctrl + P on Windows) does the same. The pages always print in black on white, whichever theme you use on screen. See Print or Save as PDF.

Share opens the story's link, sharing buttons and embed code, for anyone who can see the story. If the story isn't shared yet, it says so, and owners and editors can turn sharing on from there. See Share.

Stash

Stash (the box) opens the Stash, a side panel where you keep scenes and characters out of the story without deleting them. It's for owners and editors. See Stash.

The Menu (☰) holds the story's settings. For the owner and editors it has:

The story menu open, with Make a copy, Sharing & Permissions, Scene Images, Advanced Settings and Export & Print

Make a copy…: copies the story, with a new name and the parts you choose. See Copy a Story. The owner always has it; editors, when the story is copyable. The story's details (title, logline and the rest) open from the Home view: see Edit Home View Content.
Sharing & Permissions…: who can see and edit the story. See Sharing & Permissions.
Scene Images: the shape and framing of scene images. See Change Image Orientation.
Advanced Settings…: the story's views, structure, labels and more. See Advanced Settings. It isn't offered on phone-sized screens.
Clean Up Characters…: finds the characters who are in no scene and nowhere in the script, so you can delete them. See Clean Up Unused Characters.
Export & Print…: PDFs, script files, pitch material, wall pieces and a report. See Export & Print.

On a story its owner has made copyable, visitors and viewers get a shorter menu: Make a copy… and Export & Print…. See Make a Story Copyable.

Right-Click Menus

If you can edit the story, right-click a scene or a character for a menu of things to do with it:

Scenes, in the Timeline and Cards views and the Page view's Overview: edit, insert a scene before or after, duplicate, choose the scene's characters, stash, delete. Right-click empty space in an act to add a scene there. See Right-Click a Scene.
Characters, in the Characters view: edit, duplicate, stash, rename everywhere, delete. See Right-Click a Character.
The Stash: duplicate or delete a stashed scene or character. See Work with the Stash.

With several scenes or characters selected, right-click any of them to act on them all. Shift + F10 (or the menu key) opens the menu on the card you've tabbed to.

Text you're typing in, like the Page view's Text Editor or a field in the Edit Window, keeps your browser's own menu, for spelling suggestions and paste. To get the browser's menu anywhere else, hold Alt (Option on a Mac) when you right-click.

Home

The Home view is the story's front page, always on a dark background. It shows the story's details (title, genre, logline, theme and whatever else the template includes), buttons for the other views, Slideshow and Share, and galleries of the scenes and characters.

The story's details: owners and editors click any of them to edit the details in the Edit Window. See Edit Home View Content.
Scene Slides shows the scenes that are in the slideshow. Owners and editors click a scene to edit it, and use the list button (Edit) to choose which scenes are slides. A visitor's click opens the slideshow at that scene.
Characters shows a picture of each character. Click one to open it.
The primary image is the background. Owners and editors set it with Add Primary Image (or Change Primary Image) at the very bottom of the left column. See Add a Primary Image.

Timeline

The Timeline lays the story out from left to right, the way it will be experienced. Each column is a scene, grouped under its act, and each row is one part of it: its images, its text, its characters, its tone, its plot threads, and whatever else the template tracks.

Click a scene to open it in the Edit Window.
Drag a scene to move it, or drag the + Scene chip to add one. See Move a Scene.
Long text is cut short. Click More under it to read the rest.
The strip along the bottom has a mark for each scene, colored by act. Point at a mark to preview the scene, and click it to jump there.
Plot threads run across the scenes as colored bars. Point at a scene's event to show arrows that jump to the thread's previous or next event.

Rows and Pinning

The column on the left names each row, grouped into sections, under the Structure label that heads the act row.

The Timeline's row names, with the pin showing beside one of them

Pin a row to keep it in sight while you scroll the Timeline up and down. Point at the row's name and click the pin (Pin row). Click it again to unpin it. The Images row starts pinned. Pins are saved to your account for this story.
The Characters section starts condensed into a single row of pictures. Click its name to give each character a row of their own, and click again to condense it.
To hide rows you don't need, use Show/Hide.

Cards

The Cards view shows each scene as a card, grouped by act. It's a compact way to read the story scene by scene.

Click a card to open the scene in the Edit Window.
Drag a card to move the scene, or drag the + Scene chip between two cards to add one there. See Move a Scene.
More shows the rest of a long card, and Less shortens it again.
Point at a character's picture or a gauge to see its name or value.
The act header's ⓘ shows what the act is for, when the story's structure describes it.
The strip along the bottom jumps to any scene, as in the Timeline.

Page

The Page view shows the story as a script. It has two modes, switched in the header: beside the title for the story's owner and editors, and in the middle of the header for everyone else.

Overview shows each scene as a card, one under another. You can click, drag and add scenes here just as in Cards.
Text Editor lets you write the whole story as one continuous script, broken into numbered pages.

The Page view in Text Editor mode: the Overview / Text Editor switch and the formatting tools in the header, the scene strip down the left, and the script on a page

The switch shows in templates with a text editor, for everyone who can open the story. Anyone who can only read it can switch to the Text Editor to read the script, but can't edit it there and doesn't get the formatting tools. When the owner or an editor switches, the mode is saved with the story; anyone else's choice changes only their own view.

In the Text Editor:

the header holds the text format menu (Scene Heading, Action, Dialogue and so on) and the bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, alignment, list and link buttons. When the window is narrow, the ones that don't fit move into a ⋯ menu at the end of the row, and the Overview / Text Editor switch shows just its icons;
to add a link, select some text, click the link button, paste or type the address and click Apply. On a link, the same box has Remove to take it off;
the two Aa buttons at its end switch the script between Courier and Open Sans. This is saved with the story too;
each scene's number, at the right of the page, opens a menu for that scene. See In the Page View.
selecting across scenes (or all of them, with ⌘A) and deleting clears their text but keeps every scene, each as one empty line: its images, characters and plot threads stay. Undo brings the text back.
pages break the way Final Draft's do: a character's name, a parenthetical or a scene heading never ends a page alone, and a long speech or action paragraph carries on to the next page instead of leaving a gap. A speech that does gets (MORE) at the foot of the page and the character's name with (CONT'D) at the top of the next. These are only how the page shows: nothing is added to your text. Printing breaks the pages the same way. In a window too narrow for the full page, the text wraps to fit and pages grow taller, but they break in the same places: the same page numbers and the same speeches split as in print.

The same format tools show above a scene's Body in the Edit Window, for owners and editors.

In both modes, the strip down the left has a mark for each scene. Click one to jump to it.

Characters

The Characters view shows every character as a card, usually with a headshot, their name and a few details. The template decides which details. Many templates also count the scenes each character appears in and their lines of dialogue.

Click a card to open the character in the Edit Window.
Drag a card to change the order. See Change Character Order.
Drag the + Character chip into the grid to add a character there. See Add a New Character.

Filter Characters

The eye button in this view is a Filter. It narrows the cast down, so you can focus on the characters who matter most.

The Characters view's Filter menu, with No. of Appearances open to show its More than options

Content shows or hides parts of every card, like Show/Hide in the other views.
No. of Appearances shows only the characters who appear in more than a number of scenes.
No. of Lines shows only the characters with more than a number of lines.
Custom lists every character: untick the ones to hide, and tick them again to bring them back. With five or more characters, Show All at the top brings them all back at once.

The character filters aren't saved: they reset the next time you open the story. A red dot on the eye means a filter is on.

Stats

The Stats view (Story Stats in many templates) turns the story into charts. It's most useful for longer works, where it shows how the parts connect: who appears where, how the tone rises and falls, how long each scene runs. Which charts you see depends on the template and on what you've filled in.

The overviews at the top sum up the whole story, for example the cast's gender and race, the overall tone, and how many scenes are interior or exterior, by day or by night.
The characters list counts each character's scenes. Select one or more to highlight the scenes they share in the charts. Click an empty part of the view to clear the selection.
The charts have a bar for each scene, in story order and colored by act: word count, characters per scene, tone and the other values the template tracks, and a chart of plot threads. Point at a bar to see its value.

The features articles explain what each chart measures: see Scene Features and Character Features.

Scene Details

Click a bar in any chart to open that scene's details in a panel on the left: its heading, its text, its values, its characters and its plot threads. Click a plot thread's event to move the panel to that scene.

The Stats view with a scene's details open in a panel on the left, beside the charts

Click another bar to see that scene instead. To close the panel, click the same bar again, or click an empty part of the view.