Why doesn't Tab indent in a screenplay?

In a screenplay document Tab changes the element type rather than inserting whitespace, because screenplay indentation belongs to the element and is applied for you. Tab walks the six-element cycle forwards, Shift+Tab walks it backwards. Inside a dual-dialogue column Tab is swallowed and does nothing, which is deliberate: the alternative was focus jumping out of the manuscript and into the ribbon.

How do I make two characters talk at the same time?

Type both speeches one after the other as ordinary character cues and dialogue, select exactly those two speeches, then press Dual Dialogue on the Script tab. Each half must begin with a character cue, and the selection may only contain character, parenthetical and dialogue lines. Pressing Dual Dialogue again with the cursor inside the pair splits it back into ordinary lines.

Why is my Outline or Note line missing from the exported PDF?

Summary, Outline 1, Outline 2, Outline 3 and Note are non-printing elements. Storskarvia tints them on screen, hides them when the script is printed or exported to PDF, and leaves them out of the page count. They still travel: Final Draft export carries them as Summary, Outline 1 and Note, and Fountain export writes them as its own outline, synopsis and note syntax.

Chapter 16 · Formats

Screenplay Elements and How to Type Them

A screenplay is not prose with different margins. Every line belongs to an element, the element decides how that line prints and how it pages, and almost all your typing is spent moving between six of them. This chapter covers all seventeen, the two keys that do the moving, and the lines that type themselves.

In a screenplay document the Home tab carries an Element type dropdown. It is Final Draft's Elements menu in Final Draft's order, because writers reach for these by position: General, Scene Heading, Action, Character, Parenthetical, Dialogue, Transition, Shot, Cast List, New Act, Sequence, End of Act, Summary, Outline 1, Outline 2, Outline 3, Note.

The six you use constantly carry their shortcuts in the menu itself: ⌘1 Scene Heading, ⌘2 Action, ⌘3 Character, ⌘4 Parenthetical, ⌘5 Dialogue, ⌘6 Transition. Read Ctrl for ⌘ on Windows and Linux, as Chapter 10 sets out.

The menu always shows the element your cursor is in, and beneath it sits the reminder line Tab cycles · Enter advances · tinted = not printed.

Enter and Tab

Two keys do the work. Enter ends the line and starts the element that usually follows. Tab retypes the line you are on without ending it.

Element	Enter starts	Tab changes it to
Scene Heading	Action	Action
Action	Action	Character
Character	Dialogue	Transition
Parenthetical	Dialogue	Dialogue
Dialogue	Character	Parenthetical
Transition	Scene Heading	Scene Heading

⇧Tab walks the same cycle backwards. Both keys stay inside the six; everything else is reached from the menu.

One behaviour saves a keystroke every few lines. Pressing Enter on an empty line retypes that line instead of adding another one. Finish a speech, press Enter to get a Character cue, change your mind, press Enter again: the empty cue becomes an Action line where it stands. Blank elements never pile up.

Elements that form themselves

Three things are recognised as you type them, so you rarely reach for the menu at the head of a scene:

A scene heading. Start a line with INT., EXT., INT/EXT or I/E and it becomes a Scene Heading on the dot or the space. Case does not matter going in; what you typed is capitalised for you.
A parenthetical. Type ( as the first character of a dialogue line and the line becomes a Parenthetical. It fires only from dialogue, which is where writers reach for it.
A transition. A line in capitals ending in TO: becomes a Transition. CUT TO: and DISSOLVE TO: both qualify. Capitals are part of the test, so cut to: stays as it was.

⌘4 and the Parenthetical menu item behave the way Final Draft's do. On an empty line they open () with the cursor between the brackets; on a line that already has text they wrap it. The brackets identify the element if the script is ever rebuilt from plain text, and a parenthetical without them drags the dialogue beneath it into action.

Character extensions

Beside the element menu is an Extension… dropdown offering (V.O.), (O.S.), (O.C.), (CONT'D) and Remove. Put the cursor on a character cue, pick one, and it is appended to the name.

Picking a second extension replaces the first. JANE (V.O.) (O.S.) is not a thing, and getting there by accident would otherwise be easy. Remove takes the extension off and leaves the name. The extension lives inside the cue text, which is how Final Draft stores it, so it survives a round trip to FDX. With the cursor anywhere but a character cue, nothing happens and the status bar says Put the cursor on a character cue first.

What each element looks like on the page

Element	On the page
Scene Heading	Full width, capitals, bold, extra space above.
Action	Full width, as typed.
Character	Indented, shown in capitals whatever case you typed.
Parenthetical	Indented under the cue, italic, narrow.
Dialogue	Indented, roughly two thirds the width of action.
Transition	Right aligned, capitals.

Those widths are not cosmetic. The page count is measured from them at Courier's ten characters to the inch, which is why a screenplay's page count means something a word count never will. Chapter 13 covers the difference.

The Home tab also carries a Single-camera and Multi-camera choice. Single-camera is standard screenplay format and the default. Multi-camera is the sitcom layout: centred character cues, double-spaced dialogue, capitalised action, underlined scene headings. It is a document setting rather than a different format, so a script can switch without retyping anything.

The elements beyond the six

The rest of the menu is structural. Most of it goes untouched on a feature and earns its place on a television script.

Element	What it is for
General	A line with no screenplay formatting. Enter keeps you in General.
Shot	A camera direction on its own line, in capitals.
Cast List	The cast block at the head of an episode, in capitals.
New Act, Sequence, End of Act	Act and sequence marks, centred, capitalised, bold and underlined. Enter after New Act or Sequence starts a Scene Heading; Enter after End of Act starts a New Act, the order a television script is written in.

Tab out of any of these lands in Action, not eleven presses into the cycle.

The four that never print

Summary, Outline 1, Outline 2, Outline 3 and Note are for you and not for the reader. They are tinted on screen with a coloured left bar, Note in its own colour, and they are:

hidden when the script is printed or exported to PDF;
left out of the page count, so outlining in the margin never inflates your page number;
indented one level per outline depth, so Outline 2 sits under Outline 1;
kept on the way out. Final Draft export carries them as Summary, Outline 1, Outline 2, Outline 3 and Note; Fountain export writes outline levels as # headings, a summary as =, and a note in [[ ]].

Enter on an outline line keeps the same level, because outlining means writing several beats in a row at one depth. Tab steps down a level and wraps from Outline 3 back to Outline 1.

Dual dialogue

Two characters talking over each other print side by side. Storskarvia builds that from ordinary lines rather than a special mode:

Type both speeches one after the other, as normal character cues and dialogue.
Select exactly those two speeches.
Press Dual Dialogue on the Script tab.

Each half may hold a character cue, parentheticals and dialogue, and has to begin with a character cue. If the selection holds anything else, or resolves to one speech or three, nothing changes and you get: Select two consecutive speeches (CHARACTER + dialogue, twice) to make them dual. That is a description of what to select rather than an error to work around.

To undo the arrangement, put the cursor inside the pair and press Dual Dialogue again. The columns are unpacked back into ordinary lines in the order they were written. The button is a toggle, and splitting is not destructive.

Tab does nothing inside a dual-dialogue column. The usual cycle names an element the column may not hold, and an unhandled Tab used to hand focus to the ribbon and take you out of the manuscript. Swallowing the key was the lesser evil. Use the element menu or ⌘3 to ⌘5 inside a column.

When it does not do what you expected

What you see	What is happening
Tab does not indent	It never does in a script. Indentation belongs to the element, and Tab changes the element.
Typing INT. did nothing	The rule fires on the dot or the space, at the very start of a line, and not on a line that is already a Scene Heading.
`cut to:` stayed as action	The transition rule requires capitals. Retype it, or press `⌘6`.
The extension went nowhere	The cursor was not on a character cue, or the cue had no name yet. The status bar says so briefly.
No Element type dropdown	The document is not a screenplay. A novel gets styles and an Insert tab instead (Chapter 15), and the project type is fixed when the project is created.

Getting a finished script out as PDF, Final Draft or Fountain is Part VIII. Everything here survives the trip, including the elements that do not print.

Updated 2026-08-23 · Full contents · Something wrong or missing?

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