Flashback and special scenes

In one line: how to mark flashbacks, dreams, montages and intercuts in a .script file — all four with three things you already have.

One field does it

The 3.x scene detail panel had a Flashback scene toggle. 4.0 put away the row of planning fields that used to sit under each heading: they took up space in every scene and none of them helped while writing.

Special scenes now go through the annotation field on the scene heading: click the (+) at the trailing end of the heading row, type, and it prints in parentheses after the time.

Where the annotation prints

Hollywood
INT. YOU'AN SCRIPTORIUM - DAY (FLASHBACK, Yong'an 9) Taiwan
12. 內景　You'an Scriptorium　日（FLASHBACK, Yong'an 9）

The annotation is free text — a year, a corner of the same place, CONTINUOUS, whatever the page needs.

The annotation runs through the same renderer as everything else, so what you type carries to the preview, the PDF and Word exports, the share page and the read view on a phone. The time button only has four values — DAY / NIGHT / DAWN / DUSK — so a year, and a word like FLASHBACK, always live in the annotation.

Flashback

Put FLASHBACK in the annotation, with a year or an age if you need one.

Industry convention marks the end of a flashback with a line reading END FLASHBACK. Slima has no dedicated element for it — write it as an action line, or put it in the transition slot at the foot of that scene (transition text is free; you aren't limited to the preset list).

When a whole episode is a flashback, it's simply a .script whose every scene carries the annotation. One episode per file helps here: the file name itself says what it is.

Dream sequence

Same field: DREAM.

Keep dreams and flashbacks clearly apart — a flashback happened; a dream didn't. The reader has only that one word to go on, so don't mix them. On the scene where the character wakes, leave the annotation empty or write CONTINUOUS.

Montage

A montage isn't done from the heading — it's a shot. MONTAGE is one of the eleven shot types.

EXT. LINZE HARBOR - DAWN

MONTAGE

Shen Yan finishes the last page before first light, every day.

Boats leave the harbour in groups, and come back in groups.

The ink on her cuff thickens. The letters do not change.

BACK TO SCENE

Points worth keeping:

• A montage carries no full dialogue — only short action lines. The rhythm comes from short sentences, not from speech.
• For a run of shots of the same kind, SERIES OF SHOTS reads better than MONTAGE.
• Come back with BACK TO SCENE.

The full list of shot types is in Action, transition and shot.

Intercut

Cutting between two places — both ends of a phone call, parallel chases — is done with the transition. The Hollywood preset list already includes INTERCUT:. The Taiwan list has only three presets, but transition text is free, so typing INTERCUT: prints just as well.

Write each place as its own scene, then:

1. Put INTERCUT: in the first scene's transition slot.
2. Press Enter on that filled transition to open the next scene.
3. Give the new scene the other location.

Keep the thread legible as you cut back and forth: the reader has to know which end each line comes from.

Which one to reach for

The effect you want	Use
This scene happens in the past	Heading annotation
This scene isn't really happening	Heading annotation
Time passing, or feeling accruing	A MONTAGE shot plus short action lines
A run of images of the same kind	A SERIES OF SHOTS shot
Two places cutting against each other	An INTERCUT: transition
Back from an inserted image	A BACK TO SCENE shot

Related

• Docs: Scene heading
• Docs: Action, transition and shot
• Docs: The script element types
• Docs: Split and merge scenes
• Docs: Format switch: Taiwan and Hollywood