We are proud to announce that the first iteration of our Scene Boards are here - a visual card-based representation of a script that let's you see the flow of your story within any of the typical structural frameworks most writers use. Three Act, Save the Cat, Hero's Journey as well as a variety of typical television script structures.
Additionally, our Scene Boards allow you to lay out your board several ways, so you can choose the look that works best for you.
The Scene Board Listing Page
In the sidebar on your dashboard, you will now see a new item - Scene Boards. Click that to show the list of all your current boards, along with two buttons that allow you to create new boards:
Viewing a Board
Just click on the desired board, which will bring it up, ready for you to look it over or make changes.
Creating a blank scene board
Click on the New Board button, enter a name for your board (probably the current title of the script you might write) and click the Create button, which will create a brand new, blank Scene Board, ready for you to pick a layout and structural framework, then to start creating scenes and placing them in the board wherever you want them:
Creating a board from an Existing script...
You can quickly create a Scene Board from any of your Script 360 scripts in seconds, transferring all the script's scenes to the new board - ready to move them to the proper beat in the story:
Once you have selected the script and clicked the Open Board button, you will find all the scene in the Unassigned column, which is the holding area for scenes that have not been placed within the structural beats that make up our scene boards:
Drag and drop the scenes...
Arranging the script into the structural beats is as easy as dragging scenes (initially from the Unassigned column to the board itself) to start placing them into the proper story beats. Click on a scene, drag it where you want it, and release the mouse to complete the move:
Ctrl-Click and Shift-Click to move more than one!
To select a range of scenes in the Unassigned column (like all the Inciting Incident scenes), click on the first scene and then shift-click on the last scene to select a bunch of scenes, all of which will move with a single drag. To select one here and one there, use Ctrl-Click to select (or unselect) individual scenes:
When the script changes...
For boards created from your scripts, when you later make changes to your script, adding or deleting scenes as one example, when you next go to the script's Scene Board the scenes will be updated, with any new scenes placed in the Unassigned column, ready to drag over to the proper story beat. Deleted scenes, likewise, will just not be there, and changed Scene Headings (like location changes) will get updated.
Creating a script from a board
If you create a blank scene board to flesh out a proposed screenplay, once you are ready to turn it into a script you can do that with a click. Remember, this feature is only for scene boards not tied to a current script, and it is currently a one time action, but creating an editable screenplay with the scenes laid out in proper order will save a bunch of time when you are ready to start writing the script for real.
So, first click on the Create Screenplay button and accept the Are you sure box that reminds you of the process, which brings up the typical, New Script popup box. This allows you to enter a logline, upload a poster image, select the genre and other typical script info, and then when you click the Create Script button and edit that script, you will see a script with your scenes, ready to get going:
This new, advanced feature is just the start of our upcoming Idea Collections, where you can jot down story ideas, flesh them out, then with the scene boards start to flesh out the scenes that will make up your screenplay.