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Scene-level notes: pinning a remark to one line of one scene
Last updated September 10, 2026 · 6 min read
In one line: leave a note, a todo or a foreshadowing marker on a line of your screenplay, and find it again later.
Where a note lives
Halfway through a scene you want to leave a message for tomorrow's version of yourself. The motive is thin here. This scene needs a cutaway. That line is a plant, paid off in episode nine.
In 4.0 that remark is pinned to a line, not filed in a tab called Notes. The line you right-clicked, in the scene you right-clicked it in, is its anchor. Come back next week and it is still sitting there.
The anchor is a line. A note attached to a scene but not to any line will not show in the margin — there is no line to hang the icon on. So put the cursor on the line that actually bothers you before you make the note.
Making one
Two routes.
Right-click the line, and open the expandable Add note group at the bottom of the menu. Four kinds:
| Kind | For |
|---|---|
| Add Note | A thought, a reference, a message to yourself |
| Add Todo | Something unfinished you must come back to |
| Add Setup (Foreshadow) | Something is planted here |
| Add Payoff (Resolve) | Something planted earlier pays off here |
Or type / on an empty line and pick Note from the palette. Its sub-label reads "Author's note (not exported)", and it makes exactly the same thing.
Either way:
- The title is prefilled with the first 40 characters of that line. On an empty line the category name is used instead.
- The notes panel opens and drops straight into editing, which is where you write the body.
- A small icon appears in that line's margin.
Finding it again
- On the page: look at the margin. An icon means a note; click it to open that note in the panel.
- From the panel:
Ctrl/⌘+Shift+Nopens it, and the note can jump you back to the line it is anchored to.
Notes you have marked resolved do not vanish. The icon changes style and stays put. Resolved is a state, not a deletion.
One file is one "chapter"
The notes panel was built for prose, and its filter level is called a chapter. One episode is one file, so a .script file behaves as one chapter in that filter. To see only episode three's notes, filter to that file.
The old Script Studio's Work / Season / Episode / All scope filter, and its By Type / By Scene board views, went with the hierarchy.
Notes are never exported
They stay out of preview, out of PDF, out of Word, out of Fountain. They are yours. Anything the production needs to read belongs in an action line, or in a comment.
Notes and comments are not the same thing
Both can be pinned to the same line, and they do opposite jobs:
Note
- For you
- Four kinds, can be resolved
- Panel:
Mod+Shift+N - A read-only collaborator cannot make one
Comment
- For other people, and it holds a conversation
- Right-click → Add Comment or Suggest Edit
- Panel:
Mod+Shift+C - A read-only collaborator can leave one
A director or producer who opens your share link can comment. Commenting changes nothing in your draft, which is why even a read-only reader is allowed to. Long-pressing a line on a phone offers the same thing.
What is worth pinning
- "Shen Yan goes from tired to alert here — do not let the performance stay exhausted all the way through."
- "Gu Sui says too much. Try him just pushing the key across." Something like that is really a todo.
- "The first page of the Tide Record is planted here." Mark it Setup, then mark the payoff in episode eleven.
- "Should this scene move to episode five?"
Related
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