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Help

Sixteen short pages: what Drafter is, writing in Fountain, in Classic Mode, or a novel, how Drafter works, running it yourself, and what’s new.

  • What is Drafter?: What Drafter is, in one minute; why a writer might choose it over Final Draft; what it offers productions; whether you can trust it; and, for technical people, how it is built and tested.
  • Why Drafter: Free with no catch, no login ever, the big features, and how Drafter compares with other screenwriting apps.
  • Fountain cheat sheet: Every Fountain element with its mark, its rule, and an example: what the element bar writes for you.
  • Classic Mode: Typing a script with Enter and Tab, the way many screenwriters expect, with names and places filled in, over a file that stays Fountain.
  • Novel: Writing a novel in plain Markdown: chapters, sections, and parts, the Outline and Cards, focus on one chapter, and word targets.
  • Production: Locking pages and scene numbers, revisions in colors with marks in the margin, A-pages and A-scenes, and OMITTED scenes.
  • Saving and your browser: What Save does in each browser, keeping scripts in a synced folder, autosave, and installing Drafter as an app.
  • Drafts and cuts: Numbered drafts you can read, compare, and restore, and everything you cut, kept for ideas.
  • Story map: A picture of your script or play to send to anyone who asks what you are writing: making one, what goes in, and what never does.
  • Drafter for Claude: Let Claude, or another AI app you use, read the scripts, drafts, and cuts in folders you choose: setting it up, and what goes to the AI service.
  • Self-hosting: Run the web app from your own computer or server with Docker, so nothing loads from drafter.dev.
  • Keyboard shortcuts: Every command and its keys, for a Mac and for Windows and Linux.
  • Privacy: No account, no cookies, no telemetry: your script never leaves your device.
  • Open formats: Every file Drafter writes is an open format you can read without it, including the open specification of the .drafter package.
  • Third-party licences: The spellchecker, its dictionaries, and the fonts inside Drafter, each with its licence.
  • Technical details: How Drafter is put together, for the curious: its packages, workers, storage, offline use, the desktop app, releases, and dependencies, with diagrams.
  • What’s new: What has changed in Drafter, newest first, in plain words.
  • Download Drafter: the desktop app for Windows and Linux, and how to build it on a Mac.

In Drafter, the Help menu at the top right (Help in the desktop app’s menu bar too) has these pages, Take the tour, Sample scripts (a tiny screenplay, stage play, novel, and Markdown document, and a guided first screenplay and stage play whose notes teach each element, each opened as a new script of your own), Report a problem… and Suggest an idea…, Check for updates…, and About Drafter: the version you’re on, with a button that copies it for a bug report, and links to the source code, the releases, the changelog, and the open specification of the .drafter file.

Reporting a problem

Found something wrong, or have an idea? Choose About → Report a problem… or Suggest an idea… (in the search too, and in About). Write a title and a few lines, and the dialog shows exactly what will be sent, with your version info if you leave it on. Open on GitHub opens GitHub’s new-issue page with it all filled in, and you submit it there. That needs a free GitHub account. Drafter sends nothing itself, and never includes your script.

Your report is never lost. Copy report, Write an email, and Open on GitHub each put the whole report on your clipboard, so if GitHub doesn’t fill it in, or your email app gets only the start, you paste it. And Drafter keeps it on this device until you choose Clear.

No GitHub account, or offline? Copy it, or email cschweda@gmail.com. An email goes from your own email app; Drafter itself sends nothing. For a security problem, please don’t open a public issue: report it privately, or email the details. The privacy page says what leaves your device, and when.

Finding your way around

The Drafter mark at the top left is the menu for the script you have open: its template, History, drafts and cuts, its exports, Stats, and Settings. Help is its own menu at the top right. Between them are the script’s title (with a red dot and Unsaved while there are changes to save), the Fountain | Classic switch for how you type, File (New, Open, Save As, your scripts in this browser, and the samples), Save (its arrow has Save As, Revert to Saved, and History), and Export, the search (Ctrl+K, ⌘K on a Mac), and buttons for the Structure strip, focus mode, and the theme.

On a wide screen the editor is always on the left, with the element bar and its own buttons (line numbers, typewriter scrolling, sync scrolling) at its top. Everything else opens on the right, in the Inspector: Script, Outline, Cards, Stats, and Scaffold are tabs there, and More holds Notes, Problems, Compare, Cuts, Drafts, and the tabs of any modules you turn on. Each tab’s own buttons sit at the right of the Inspector’s header. The status bar at the bottom has the file’s name (which opens History), the pages and running time, the words, the problems, and the template.

Below 1024 pixels, as on a phone or a narrow window, Drafter shows one thing at a time, with a bar at the bottom: Write (the editor), Script, Outline, and More for the rest. A phone opens on Write. When the top bar runs out of room, its buttons move into More actions (⋯) at its right end, and menus open from the bottom of the screen.

Settings (Ctrl+,, ⌘, on a Mac) is one scrolling list with a list of its sections beside it: General, Writing, Script, Spelling, Files, Modules, and About. Choose a section to jump to it; nothing is hidden, so you can also just scroll, or Tab through every setting. Page colour there chooses paper pages (the default) or a dark page for writing at night; printing and every export stay on white paper. Drafter opens dark. Pick light with the theme button, or turn on Match system appearance to follow your computer; Drafter keeps your choice.

Contrast. The Contrast button in the top bar opens a slider for each pane, the Source and the Script, each on its own. Slide right for crisper text, left for a softer page; the colours change as you slide, in the light and the dark theme. Both start near the highest, and both are in Settings too (on a narrow screen, the button is in More actions). Printing and every export are unchanged. Under each slider is the WCAG 2.1 contrast ratio of that pane’s text against its background (4.5:1 is AA for normal text, 7:1 is AAA), and for the Source its weakest colour too, measured from the colours on screen as you slide.

Typewriter sounds and typewriter scrolling are two different things.Typewriter scrolling, the text-cursor button in the Source’s header (and in Settings), keeps the line you’re writing in the middle of the pane, silently. Typewriter sounds, in Settings → Writing or the palette (“Turn on typewriter sounds”), plays a typewriter’s key as you type in the Source and its bell when you start a new line. Sounds are off unless you turn them on, are made in your browser with no audio files, and a shortcut makes none.

Stats and Scaffold

Stats (Show stats, or Stats… in the counts) opens a tab beside your script. Overview has today’s writing, the script’s pages and running time at your own minutes a page, and the last 30 days. Characters lists everyone who speaks: their speeches, the scenes they’re in and the scenes they speak in, their words, their share of all the dialogue, their screen time (the length of their scenes), and who they share the most scenes with. Character by scene is a grid of who is in each scene, with how many speeches, a dot for being there without speaking, and the long absences (20 pages or more) outlined and listed; List says the same as text.

Scaffold (Show Scaffold) opens a tab that shows who is in the scene your cursor is in, where it is, and how long it runs, and follows the cursor as you move. Every name opens that character’s page (their scenes, screen time, dialogue, absences, and every line they speak, each going to its place in the script), and every place opens its location’s page. Cast and Places list them all, and Back (or Alt+←, ⌥← on a Mac) goes to the page before. Stats and Scaffold count the same way, so their figures always agree, and neither changes your script.

Who is in a scene. Someone is in a scene when they speak in it or their name is in its action: a mention counts as being there, and a voice-over, such as (V.O.), counts as speaking in the scene. Until the dictionary has answered, a name counts in the action only in capitals (TOM), and a name that is also an ordinary word, like Will or even Tom, always counts only so. A name of two words or more counts only as the whole name, never one word of it.

A speech is a character’s cue and what follows it. A speech before the first scene, or between an act’s heading and its first scene, counts toward the character’s speeches and words but puts them in no scene. A Markdown document has no scenes, so it has no Scaffold, and its Stats tab has its words, headings, and reading time.