Ordinary Animator
4.7
Scriptwriting
Scriptwriting is where you craft your dialogue, scenes, and actions to form the foundation of the story. This includes:
Plot and Character Development: Defining the plot, characters, and key events.
Dialogue and Pacing: Refining dialogue and pacing for emotional impact and clarity.
Depending on the complexity of your script, you may want to write treatments, outlines, and/or beat sheets before starting on a draft of your screenplay.
Treatment: A more detailed version of the pitch, usually a few pages long. It outlines the plot, key characters, and major events of the story. A treatment can also include tone, themes, and visual style.
Outline: A step-by-step breakdown of the screenplay's structure, often in bullet points or scene-by-scene form. It may not have dialogue but describes the sequence of events and character arcs.
Beat Sheet: A more granular breakdown of the screenplay, often breaking the story into "beats" or smaller narrative units. Each beat represents a significant moment or shift in the story, such as a turning point or emotional shift.
Ordinary Animator supports importing of scripts written in Fountain Markup for screenplays as well as Final Draft XML (.fdx) files (a popular text editor for writing screenplays). You can create short scripts inside Ordinary Animator directly, but for longer creations it is recommended to use a Google Doc with Fountain Markup, or a file on your local computer using your favorite editor (.fountain or .fdx).
As a rule of thumb: use the in-app editor for short, simple scripts (a few scenes, no collaboration needed). Switch to a Google Doc when your script is longer, when you want to share it with collaborators, or when you want Google Docs version history. Use a local .fountain or .fdx filewhen you prefer a dedicated screenplay editor such as Fade In or Highland.
The most important Fountain conventions are to start each scene with a line beginning with "EXT." (for exterior scenes) or "INT." (for interior scenes). These lines are known as "scene headings."
It's also recommended to add scene numbers at the end of the scene heading line surrounded in #.
After the scene heading, write action directions in paragraphs with a blank line before and after.
For dialog, write the character's name in all caps on a line, followed by an optional line in parenthsis for voice acting instructions, followed by dialog.
Ordinary Animator relies on scene headings to split your screenplay into scenes. If a heading is malformed, the scene will not be detected and you may end up with missing scenes or unexpected regeneration behaviour. Watch out for these common mistakes:
Missing or misspelled prefix. Scene headings must start with INT. or EXT. (with the period). Writing INT (no period) or INTERIOR will not be recognised.
Character name not in ALL CAPS. A character cue must be entirely upper-case on its own line. Mixed-case names are treated as action text, so the dialogue that follows will not be attributed correctly.
Missing blank lines between elements. Fountain uses blank lines to separate scene headings, action blocks, and dialogue. Omitting them causes elements to merge and breaks parsing.
Malformed scene numbers. Scene numbers must be surrounded by # at the end of the heading line — e.g. #4c#. A lone # or numbers placed elsewhere in the line are ignored.
Create a new script in a Google Doc using Fountain Markup and preview it in Ordinary Animator.
Create a new project using the "Julie and Sally" template. This will give you a project with some preconfigured characters and sets.
Create a new Google Doc and copy and paste the above screenplay into it.
Create a new episode and select "Google Doc" to hold the script. Copy and paste the "share" link of the Google Doc into the provided field.
Proceed to the next page to preview the screenplay.
Click on the green right arrow button to open scene 1.
Print page to PDF to capture the screenplay in a printable format.