Fabula One.

Documentation

Fabula One is a screenwriting workspace that runs in a browser tab. The story line, the treatment, the structure, the cards and the script are one project, and the screenplay comes out in industry-standard format.

If you have ten minutes, read Get started and nothing else. It covers a whole project end to end, and everything after it is detail.

Start here

• Get started One project from an empty page to a PDF: the four views, what each is for, and the order most people use them in.

Writing

• The script Elements, the keys that move between them, character autocomplete, find and replace, and where the printed page breaks.
• Story line and treatment The film in a breath, and the film in a few pages. Prose, not screenplay format.
• Characters Who is in the script, who speaks how much, and a profile for each — want, need, wound, lie, flaw.
• Settings Where the film happens, read off its own scene headings — and the one question the app has to ask you about your own language.

Shaping

• Structure Acts, sequences and beats as headings in the script itself — how to apply one, swap it, and read the pages it reports.
• The structure templates All seventeen, and what every beat in them is for. Three-act, beat sheets, short-film shapes, and traditions the three-act model does not describe well.
• Cards and the outline One card per scene. Reorder by dragging, write synopses, and see the shape without dropping into the page.

Drafts, notes and files

• Drafts and notes Freeze a draft before a rewrite, and send one to somebody for notes — no account needed at their end, and it reads on a phone.
• Co-writing Write as a team: a lead invites co-writers, each forks a frozen draft and sends a pass, and the lead reconciles them one change at a time.
• Import, export and backup Fountain, PDF and project bundles; where your work is kept, and how to get it out.

Worth knowing early

Your work is on your machine

Everything you write is stored in this browser, on this computer. No account is required to use any part of the app, and nothing is uploaded unless you sign in and ask for backup. The consequence is the one you would expect: clearing your browser data clears your projects, and a project written on a laptop is not on your phone. See Import, export and backup for both answers to that.

Nothing here locks your screenplay in

The script is Fountain — a plain-text format that any other screenwriting tool reads. Export a project bundle and you get a folder of ordinary files: the screenplay as text, the treatment as Markdown, the characters as JSON. You can open every one of them in a text editor, with or without this app.

If something here is wrong

Account ▾ → Send feedback… in the app, which takes a bug, an idea, or the thing that confused you. An address is optional and only used to write back — the app is young enough that the thing you found is quite possibly the thing nobody has reported yet.