Formatting & Elements

Screenplay mode formats as you type in the Write Workspace.

The six elements

Scene Headings are treated with extra care in Throughline. You don’t type them on your page directly; they’re created intelligently based on Settings attached to your Beat in the toolbar at the top of the editor.

Action lines, Characters, Dialogues, Parentheticals and Transitions are exactly how you know them from other software. Tab cycles between them at your cursor, so you’re never reaching for a menu mid-sentence. Typing a character’s name automatically attaches that Character’s card to your Beat, or asks if you’d like to create a new one.

Scene headings

Built in the toolbar from three pieces: INT/EXT, a location, and a time of day.

Project language

Set the Project language in Project Details (Cmd/Ctrl+P). English and German are available, and a new project starts in the language you use the app in. The project language sets:

• Scene headings: INT. and EXT. in English, INNEN and AUSSEN in German
• Script terms in the Screenplay PDF: (MORE) and (CONT'D) in English, (MEHR) and (WEITER) in German, and the default credit line on the title page (“written by” or “geschrieben von”)
• Document exports: headings and labels such as “Characters” and “Settings” (in German, “Figuren” and “Schauplätze”)
• Structure Decks: the language of new Structure Cards you place from a deck
• Spell check: the dictionary for every text field

So a German script reads German from the first scene heading to the last page, even if you run the app itself in English. Fountain files always use INT. and EXT., the way other apps expect them.

Character cues

Type a name and Throughline autocompletes it from your project’s cast. (V.O.) and (O.S.) cues stay attached to whichever Character they belong to, so a voiceover line reads correctly wherever it shows up.

(MORE) and (CONT'D) are automatic in the Screenplay PDF. A dialogue block that runs across a page break gets them without you touching a thing. A Character who speaks again in the same scene with only action in between gets (CONT'D) on the new cue too. Typed one yourself? It prints once, never twice. What they mean and when to use them: (MORE) and (CONT’D) in a screenplay.

Dual dialogue

Two people talking over each other get the classic two-column layout. Toggle it from the toolbar on a dialogue block and that speech prints beside the one before it.

It round-trips through Fountain, which marks dual dialogue with a ^, and it renders in PDF export the way it looks on screen.

Numbering

Scenes and dialogue lines can both auto-number. A new insertion between existing numbers gets a letter suffix: scene 42 gains a scene 42A rather than renumbering everything after it. You can also clear numbering entirely if you’d rather work without it.

Open the controls with the # button at the top of the Beat sidebar. Scenes and dialogue each have their own options: number them, number only the new ones, clear them, and choose whether the numbers print in PDF export.

Scene numbers show at the start of each row in the Beat sidebar, where you can also change one by hand.

Only the active version of a Beat participates in numbering; see Scene Versions for what that means.

Round-tripping through Fountain

Fountain export carries your scene structure and dialogue faithfully, but it’s plain text: no dialogue numbers, and no room for the fields only Throughline has, like a Character’s Want, Need, and Flaw or a Setting’s description. Those live in your project and travel in .thrl exports. If you need numbered pages for production, export Screenplay PDF instead.