Classic Mode

Classic Mode is a way of typing a script where Enter and Tab move you from one part to the next, and the left side looks like a script. It isn’t Fountain typing; it’s what many script writers expect, and your file stays Fountain.

It works the way writers of apps like Final Draft expect: start a name, let it fill itself in, and press Tab to go on. You don’t need to learn a single Fountain mark. The Script pane, exports, and everything else read the same file as before.

Switching

The top bar has a Fountain | Classic switch beside the script’s title, there the whole time you write. Click Classic. On a narrow screen it’s one button with the mode’s word, and a tap changes it; in focus mode the word is a small button too. Drafter starts in Fountain, and remembers your choice for every script you open.

You can also choose Writing mode in Settings (Writing), search for Switch to Classic Mode or Switch to Fountain Mode with ⌘K (Ctrl+K elsewhere), or press ⌘⌥0 on a Mac (Ctrl+Alt+0 elsewhere), which switches either way.

A switch changes nothing you’ve written. Your place stays where it was, Undo still reaches what you typed before it, and the cursor goes back into the text. A Markdown document has no switch, since it isn’t a script; your choice applies again at the next script.

Your first scene

Start on an empty script, and type:

1. int. and it turns into INT., a scene heading. Type the place, or pick one already in the script, and then a time, such as NIGHT, which goes on to Action.
2. Type what we see. Enter starts a new paragraph of action, and Tab goes to Character.
3. Type JU, and JUNE is offered. Tab or Enter takes it and goes to Dialogue.
4. Type what she says. Enter goes to the next Character, and Tab to a Parenthetical, such as (quietly).
5. After a Parenthetical, Enter goes back to Dialogue.
6. Enter on an empty line lets you choose any element: a Transition, a Scene heading, and the rest.

Headings, names, and transitions come out in capitals as you type. The status bar shows what Enter and Tab will do where you are (“Enter: Character · Tab: Parenthetical”), and the element bar’s chip names the element you’re in, an empty line’s next element too.

Enter and Tab

On a line with text, at its end:

On an empty line, Enter opens the chooser, and Tab walks a row of elements without writing anything: Action, Character, Transition, Scene heading, and round again. Shift+Tab walks back. On the empty line under a name, Tab makes a Parenthetical, and Shift+Tab goes back to the end of the name. In an empty Parenthetical, Enter, Tab, or Backspace takes it away.

In a stage play it’s the same, with Stage direction in place of Action. An Act goes on to a Scene, a Scene to a Stage direction, and a Stage direction’s Tab to Character. On an empty line, Tab walks Stage direction, Character, Act, and Scene.

Elsewhere on a line:

• Enter in the middle of a line splits it. Split a name, and the rest becomes the speech; split a heading or a transition, and the rest becomes Action.
• Tab never splits a line: it does what it does at the end, wherever the cursor is. With text selected, Tab goes to the end of the selection, and the next Tab moves on.
• Shift+Enter starts a new line inside the element, without moving on: a second line of action, or of a speech.
• Shift+Tab on a line with text goes back to the end of the element above.
• Backspace at the start of a line joins it to the element above, in one press. On an empty line, it takes the line away, which undoes an Enter.
• The arrow keys step over the blank line between two elements, as there’s nothing to type there, and over anything hidden.

Wandering leaves nothing behind. If Enter or Tab made an empty line, or an empty (), and you go elsewhere without typing, it’s taken away. Blank lines that were already in the script stay.

Action stays Action. A line of capitals typed as action, such as BANG, stays action: a name is reached with Tab or the chooser, never by typing capitals. Only on a fresh line you’ve just reached, in a screenplay, does a line you start with INT. or EXT. become a scene heading (straight after a speech too), and a line of capitals ending in TO: become a transition.

Names are typed in capitals. For a name with small letters in it, such as McGRAW, type it once in Fountain Mode, as @McGRAW; after that, autofill offers it in Classic Mode.

Autofill

In a Character, a Scene heading, or a Transition, a list opens from the first letter, with what’s already in your script:

• Names, the one who spoke most recently above the cursor first.
• Scene headings: after you choose Scene heading (in the chooser, on the element bar, or with Tab’s row), INT., EXT., INT./EXT., EST., and I/E; then, once a heading has its INT. or EXT., the places you’ve used, most recent first. Taking a place offers the times of day, and taking a time writes it with its dash (INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT) and goes to Action. Close the list with Esc and there’s no dash left behind.
• Extensions, such as (V.O.) and (O.S.), when you type a space or ( after a name. (CONT’D) isn’t offered: the page adds it for you.
• Transitions, those in the script, then CUT TO:, DISSOLVE TO:, SMASH CUT TO:, and FADE OUT.
• A play’s scenes, the scene titles you’ve used.

Tab or Enter takes the highlighted one, and ↑ and ↓ move in the list. Typing fast is fine: JU and Tab gives JUNE even before the list has drawn. Esc closes the list and writes nothing, and it stays closed until your next letter, so if you want JO and not JOHN, press Esc, then Tab. Ctrl+Space opens the list anywhere. Suggestions come from your script and a short list of standard ones; nothing comes from the internet.

The chooser

Enter on an empty line opens a small list, Choose an element. In a screenplay it has Action, Scene heading, Character, and Transition, then Centered, Lyric, Section, Synopsis, and Page break; Dialogue and Parenthetical join them inside a speech. In a stage play it has Stage direction, Act, Scene, Character, Centered, Lyric, Synopsis, and Page break.

↑ and ↓ move, and Enter picks. Each one has an underlined letter that picks it at once (A for Action, S for Scene heading, C for Character, T for Transition, and so on). Esc closes it, and a click or a tap picks. Picking writes nothing but the blank line that sets an element apart: the element waits for your first letter. A page break, and a Parenthetical’s (), are written straight away.

The element bar does the same: on an empty line its buttons choose what comes next, and on a line with text they change that line’s element. ⌘⌥1 to ⌘⌥7 on a Mac (Ctrl+Alt+1 to Ctrl+Alt+7 elsewhere) are its keys. Its chip and its ? open this page.

Leaving the text

In Classic Mode Tab moves through the script, so it doesn’t move you out of the text. To leave the text, press Esc, then Tab (or Shift+Tab) within two seconds. If a list is open, press Esc twice: the first one closes the list. In focus mode, Esc leaves focus mode too.

• Ctrl+M (Shift+Alt+M on a Mac) makes Tab move focus until you press it again, if two seconds aren’t enough.
• F6 moves to the Inspector, on a wide screen and outside focus mode.
• ⌘K (Ctrl+K elsewhere) opens the search from anywhere.

On the title page, and inside a note or a cut, Tab does nothing, as they aren’t part of the page’s flow; Esc then Tab leaves from there too.

On a phone

A phone’s keyboard has no Tab, so in Classic Mode a Next button sits first in the row above the keyboard. It does what Tab does and says where it goes (“Next: Character”). The row shows whenever the keyboard is up in Classic Mode, in focus mode too, whatever the Element bar setting. Enter on an empty line opens the chooser above the keyboard, and a tap on a suggestion takes it and moves on. Keyboards that compose words, as many Android and Chinese, Japanese, and Korean keyboards do, get their capitals once the word is in.

What’s hidden, and why it’s safe

A Fountain script uses a few marks: @ before a name, . before a heading, > before a transition, ** around bold, and the like. Classic Mode adds them for you, only where they’re needed, and hides every one, so the left side reads like a script. It also hides:

• the brackets of a note, [[ ]]: the note stays in place, in italics, with a thin rule at each end;
• the marks of a cut, /* */: what’s cut is struck through;
• the hidden block at the end of the file where Drafter keeps the script’s template and settings. It can’t be selected or deleted in Classic Mode, so Select All then Delete leaves your template in place.

Scene numbers stay visible, as you need to see them, a page break shows as a thin rule with the words “Page break”, and a dual name has a small “dual” tag.

Nothing is taken out of your text: the marks are only not drawn. Copy and Cut give the true text, marks and all, so what you paste into Fountain Mode, or another app, is the same script. Search finds the true text too, so a match can be a mark you can’t see. To see every mark, switch to Fountain: one click.

Marks typed in a line, such as *word* or [[a note]], work as Fountain reads them, and a lone * shows as itself. /* starts a cut, which runs to the next */: that’s Fountain’s own reading. So a /* typed with no */ after it runs on into the hidden block at the end, and closes there: the rest of the script looks cut, and the block’s template and settings aren’t read, until you type the */ or take the /* away.

Is my file still Fountain?

Yes. A script typed in Classic Mode is plain Fountain, the same as you could have typed in Fountain Mode, key for key. Nothing in the file says which mode wrote it, and a switch changes nothing you’ve written. A script opened in Classic Mode is shown as it is, with nothing changed. Drafts, snapshots, exports, the command line, and Drafter for Claude all see the same text, and the file still opens in any app that reads Fountain.

Final Draft is a trademark of its owner, and Drafter isn’t connected with it.