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Script 360 does that — and you get two of them
Sooner or later somebody asks for a synopsis. A producer wants to know what they are being handed before they commit to 110 pages. A contest form has a box for it. A manager asks you to paste one into the email. Writers who can hold a whole screenplay in their head often lose an afternoon to it anyway, because a synopsis is a different job from writing the script: it is the story told straight through, in order, with everything that does not change the outcome taken out.
Script 360 writes it for you, and it writes it twice.
A full page and a half page, written together
Every run produces two versions of the same story:
- The full page — 450 to 600 words, four to six paragraphs. This is the one that goes out with the script: the page a producer, an agent or a contest reader takes in before deciding whether to open it.
- The half page — about 250 words. The length that fits in a query email, a submission form, or the box on a pitch deck where nobody is going to read more. On a television script it is also the right size for your Episode Synopsis, the paragraph that sits under the logline on the script’s page.
The short one is not the long one with sentences removed. It is written from scratch, as the whole story told by somebody with a quarter of the space — usually one protagonist, what they want, what stands in the way, the turn that matters most, and how it ends.
It tells the ending
This is deliberate, and it is the thing that most often surprises writers. A synopsis is not a teaser and it is not a logline: the person reading it is deciding whether to read your screenplay, not watching your film. Withholding the ending only means they have to open the script to find out, which is the opposite of the job. Both versions carry the story through to its last beat, and on a pilot they also say what the episode leaves running for the series.
Two ways to write it, and you can have both
Open the Synopsis tab in the AI Extras widget on your script’s Summary page and you are offered two buttons:
- Write one from the story breakdown — the cheaper and faster of the two. It works from the Story Breakdown already saved against your script, so it knows the spine of the story rather than the detail of every scene. If the script has no breakdown yet, this button quotes you the breakdown and the synopsis together, and does both in one go — and the breakdown is yours to keep, with everything else the AI does for that script cheaper afterwards.
- Write one from the screenplay — it reads all of your pages, from page one, for the purpose of writing this synopsis and nothing else. It costs more because of that, and it can be specific about the middle of your story in a way the other cannot.
Which of them writes the better page genuinely depends on the script, so every synopsis is kept. Run one of each, read them against each other, and throw away the one you like less. Each version sits in its own section, and each can be deleted on its own. What you will spend is always shown and agreed before anything is written — see AI credits and what each feature costs.
Nothing lands on your script until you say so
A synopsis is shown to you, not applied to you. Each version carries a Use button, and only that button writes anything: Use as the story synopsis puts it in the Story Synopsis field, which appears on your script’s page, on its public link and in its Script Library listing. On a television script the half page also offers Use as the episode synopsis. Either one can be edited afterwards in Edit Script Info, in your own words — most writers change a line or two, and that is exactly what it is there for.
What it looks like
Below is a real, unedited example: both versions written for Close Proximity, a feature screenplay about the captain of the SS Californian, the ship that lay a few miles from the sinking Titanic and did not come. It was written from that script’s Story Breakdown, and this is exactly how the two sections appear on the script’s page — click either heading to fold it away.
LORD is a self-made steamship captain who has built his whole life on the doctrine that reason must govern feeling. Commanding the Californian through the North Atlantic, he holds his officers, and his young son STANLEY, to the same standard of icy discipline. One night the ship halts in a field of drifting ice rather than risk running blind. Junior officer GIBSON wakes him to report unexplained rockets flaring on the horizon from a distant ship. Lord, roused only briefly, dismisses them as signal flares or fireworks and goes back to bed without investigating.
At dawn the Californian steams into a field of wreckage and bodies. It becomes clear the rockets came from a sinking liner, and that Lord's ship was close enough to help. Terrified for his career and his son's prospects, he denies to the rescue ship Carpathia that Californian saw anything, orders the ship's log altered to erase the rocket sightings, and sets course for Boston as though the night never happened.
An initial inquiry clears the Californian's conduct, but the story will not stay buried. Wireless operator EVANS's account of an unexplained contact, and stoker ERNEST GILL's decision to sell his own version of events to the Boston American, drag the "mystery ship" back into the press and before the Senate. Around Lord, other men are being tried in public: White Star's ISMAY is pilloried for surviving in a lifeboat, while Titanic's second officer LIGHTOLLER gives calm, heroic testimony that only sharpens the contrast with Lord's silence.
Senator William Alden SMITH will not let the matter rest. He uncovers a twelve-minute discrepancy between the two ships' clocks that lines up their positions exactly, proving Californian could have seen Titanic's distress rockets in real time, and he reopens the dismissed inquiry. Fourth officer BOXHALL's testimony about a light seen from Titanic's deck becomes the key corroborating evidence against Lord.
Under Smith's cross-examination, Lord is confronted with the torn-out page of the original log, its rocket entries missing. He cannot account for it. What was meant to be a defense collapses into an incoherent, guilt-stricken silence on the stand. He is forced to resign his command. His disgrace follows him home: Stanley is bullied at school over his father's name. Alone, Lord takes up a straight razor in a moment the story leaves deliberately unresolved. What happens next is not shown directly; instead he is found weeping without restraint in his wife's arms, undone at last by the feeling he spent his whole life refusing, while she watches him with love, pity, and no certainty about what comes after.
Reading leaves Lord's razor scene and the exact sequencing of the first (dismissed) inquiry versus Gill's press account somewhat open; ordered here for narrative clarity without inventing new events.
LORD is a steamship captain who believes feeling must always bow to reason. When his ship, the Californian, halts for the night in an ice field, his officers see unexplained rockets fired by a distant vessel and fail to wake him in time to act. By morning, sailing through a field of wreckage and bodies, Lord realizes what those rockets meant, and what his inaction cost. To protect his career and his son's future, he denies seeing anything, orders the ship's log altered, and sails on to Boston.
The cover-up holds only briefly. Press accounts and surviving witnesses drag the story of the mystery ship into public view, and Senator William Alden SMITH, investigating the disaster, uncovers a clock discrepancy proving Californian was close enough to have seen the doomed liner's distress signals. He reopens the case. Under his cross-examination, confronted with the torn-out page of the true log, Lord cannot answer for the missing entries and breaks down on the stand, his composure gone.
Stripped of his command and his reputation, Lord returns home to a son bullied over his disgrace and a private reckoning he cannot suppress any longer. Alone with a razor, in a moment left deliberately unresolved, he does not harm himself; instead he collapses in tears in his wife's arms, finally admitting the fear and guilt he spent his life refusing to feel, while she watches him, uncertain what comes next.
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