Chapter 17 · Formats
Scene Numbers, Title Pages, and Revisions
A script is a document right up until it is distributed. After that it is an address: the first assistant director has a schedule keyed to page 12, and page 12 has to stay page 12 whatever you write next. This chapter covers the furniture that makes that possible.
The Script tab
Open a screenplay and the ribbon gains a Script tab. Everything in this chapter lives there, alongside the dialogue tools of Chapter 16. Its production group holds Lock Pages, New Revision, Omit Scene, Reports, Breakdown and Highlight Cast.
None of it is switched on for you. A first draft has no business carrying locked pages; a script going out on Tuesday has every business carrying them.
Scene numbers
The Scene #s checkbox draws a number in the left margin of every scene heading, and the typeset PDF prints the same number in both margins, left of the heading and at the right edge, the way Final Draft does. Numbers sit in the margins, so turning them on never moves a line or a page break.
Until you lock them, scene numbers are a running count: insert a scene at the front and everything below renumbers. Lock Scene #s on the Script tab fixes them. Every scene heading keeps the number it shows at that moment, and from then on:
- A scene written between 12 and 13 becomes 12A, then 12B.
- A scene written before scene 1 becomes A1, then B1.
- A new number always sorts between its neighbours: between 12 and 12A it is A12A, and between 12A and 12B it is 12AA.
- A cut scene keeps its number and prints OMITTED, so nothing after it moves.
- A scene you move keeps its number wherever it goes.
Locking turns Scene #s on, because a locked number nobody can see is no use to a production. Unlock Scene #s clears every stored number and counts 1, 2, 3 again. Both ask first, because a schedule or call sheet keyed to the old numbers stops matching.
The numbers are held on each scene heading, the same place Final Draft keeps them. A script
imported from Final Draft therefore arrives with its numbers already locked, and they ride back
out on FDX export untouched. Production reports and the breakdown print them. Where a scene has
no stored number, a report falls back to the ordinal with a hash in front, so a scene reads as
#14 rather than pretending to a number it does not have.
The title page
Title Page opens a dialog with four fields:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Title | Printed in capitals, centred. Prefilled from the document title. |
| Written by | Your name. Left empty, the "written by" line is omitted rather than printed above a blank. |
| Draft date | Free text, in whatever form your production uses. |
| Contact | A small block: name, email, phone. Bottom left of the cover. |
Press Save and it is stored with the document. Only the owner can save it: a collaborator finds Save disabled, with a note saying so. Stage plays carry the same button and take their title, author and contact from it; the rest of a play's front matter comes from Play Setup.
What each export does with it
The cover page is assembled per format, and they do not all carry the same fields. This is worth knowing before you hand one to somebody.
| Export | Carries |
|---|---|
| Typeset PDF | Title, written by, author, contact. No draft date. The contact prints as one line at the bottom left, cut off at 70 characters, so keep it short if the PDF is the copy going out. |
| Print / PDF (browser) | All four, with the contact's line breaks kept. |
| Word (.docx) | Title, written by, author, draft date, centred. No contact. |
| Final Draft (.fdx) | A real TitlePage element: title, written by, author, draft date. No contact. |
| Fountain | A title block with Title, Author, Contact and Draft date. |
Never open the dialog and there is no cover page: the PDF begins on page one of the script.
Locking the pages
Lock Pages asks you to confirm, because it is a commitment rather than a view setting. Confirm and Storskarvia stamps every block with a lock id, records which one begins each page, tells you how many pages it locked, and reloads.
The measurement uses the layout your PDF actually prints in, single or multi camera, so the locked numbers agree with the pages you send out. After the lock, a page beginning with material that existed at the time keeps its number. A page beginning with new material is an insert, and takes a letter after the page it follows: 12A, then 12B. Inserts before page 1 put the letter first, A1 and B1, so they sort ahead of page 1 rather than colliding with an insert after it. A long insert can pass Z, and continues AA.
Locking again is safe: blocks that already carry a lock id keep it. The ids travel in the Final Draft export, so a locked script can go to Final Draft and come back with its page map intact.
Issuing a revision
New Revision advances the revision number and marks everything changed since the most recent saved version. The comparison is against a version, not against your memory of the last draft you sent, and Storskarvia checkpoints on its own every ten minutes. If a revision is to mean "since the draft that went out", save a named version at the moment it goes out; Chapter 7 covers how.
The status bar reports either the number of changes marked or that nothing changed since the last checkpoint. The comparison is order aware: a scene dragged into a different act is marked in both places, and a deleted speech marks the block now standing where it was, because that page still has to be reissued. Marks are cleared and recomputed on every run, so undoing an edit and revising again does not leave a page flagged forever.
Revisions are named by colour, in the order productions have always used them.
| Revision | Colour |
|---|---|
| Original draft | White |
| 1 | Blue |
| 2 | Pink |
| 3 | Yellow |
| 4 | Green |
| 5 | Goldenrod |
| 6 | Buff |
| 7 | Salmon |
| 8 | Cherry |
| 9 | Second blue |
| 10 | Second pink |
White is the original draft rather than a revision, so the cycle never returns to it. After second pink it begins again at blue.
Printing a revision
Two marks show a revision.
- Asterisks print in the right margin beside every line carrying the current revision's mark. They need nothing but a revision.
- Coloured stock tints the whole page in the revision's colour, and requires locked pages. A coloured page is an addressed page, and without a lock there is no stable number to put on it.
The header line reading Rev. and a name comes from Export ▾ → PDF with revision stars…, which only the owner sees. It lists your saved versions, asks which to compare against, then asks for the name to print, something like Blue 7/6. That flow also stars anything whose text changed since the version you picked, and prints the same name on the cover page beside the contact. With no saved versions it says so and stops.
The running header
Header on the Script tab sets a line printed at the top of every page after
the first, on the line with the page number, as in Final Draft's Header and Footer. Type any text
and insert fields: {title}, {draft} (the draft line from Title Page),
{revision} (the current revision's colour, such as Blue) and {date} (the
day that revision was issued, or the day you print when there is none). Choose left or centered.
Tick On revised pages, show the revision colour and date and every page carrying a
change from the current revision also prints, for example, Blue Rev. 09/26/26 beside its page
number. The dialog shows a preview; the editor itself does not draw the header, the PDF does.
Omitting a scene
Deleting a scene from a distributed script renumbers everything after it, and a call sheet naming scene 41 then points elsewhere. Omit Scene is the alternative. Put the cursor on the scene heading, press it, confirm, and the heading keeps its number and becomes OMITTED while everything under it up to the next heading is removed. A removed line that was a locked page anchor is emptied and kept rather than deleted, so the page map and every A-page label after it survive the cut.
The change happens on the server and the editor reloads, so the browser's undo will not bring the scene back. Restore it from Versions.
When it refuses
| What you see | What happened |
|---|---|
| Not done, your last change has not reached the server | All three tools push your pending edit first, because the work is done on the server's copy and that has to be the copy you see. Check the connection and press again. |
| Could not omit: That block is not a scene heading | The cursor was inside the scene rather than on its heading. The confirmation comes before the check, so this arrives after you have said yes. Click the heading line. |
| Put the cursor in the scene you want to omit | There is no cursor in the manuscript. Click into the script first. |
| Could not lock: Document not found | Production tools belong to the owner. A shared editor or reviewer cannot lock, revise, or omit. |
| Production tools apply to screenplays | The document is a stage play, an audio drama, or a novel. Those formats have their own Script tab. |
The paperwork a production asks for next, breakdowns, element tagging, stripboards and Day Out of Days, is reached from Breakdown in the same group. It belongs to Part V, where the project's own tools live.
Updated 2026-08-24 · Full contents · Something wrong or missing?