Screenplay structure: acts and beats against files

In one line: where a screenplay's structure lives now — one episode is one file, the season's shape sits on a .beats board, which beat a scene belongs to sits on the scene card, and the old structure dialog and act editor are gone.

Structure is two levels now, not one dialog

The old Script Studio did it in one place: enter the scene board, a "Choose a structure" dialog appeared, and picking one grew act columns on the board. After that you could rename acts, add them, delete them, and save the whole arrangement as a custom template. All of that is gone — the dialog, the act editor, "Save current structure as template", "Manage my templates".

4.0 splits structure in two, because a screenplay's files are already in two layers:

Screenplay/
  Episode 01 - The Copyist Girl.script
  Episode 02 - The Word Bureau.script
  …(one file per episode, twelve in all)
Notes/
  Screenplay Outline.md
  Story Skeleton.beats

The season's shape: four structures on a beat board

The four public-domain structures (three-act, the Taiwanese TV three-act/six-beat rhythm, kishōtenketsu, Freytag's five parts) are now the built-in templates of a .beats file. What each one contains, which stories it suits, and whether you can change it afterwards is covered in full in choosing one of the four structure templates — it isn't repeated here.

What that article doesn't cover is the screenplay side of it:

• One board for the season. Acts as your three acts, beat cards as the rhythm points, then drag each episode's .script from the file tree onto the beat it belongs to. Beats with no episode on them are the parts you haven't written; a beat with three episodes stacked on it is probably a stretch that drags.
• One board for one episode. When a micro-drama or an anthology episode needs a complete arc of its own, the six cards of the Taiwanese TV template are about the length of one episode. Here the board holds a plan for the scenes; the scenes themselves still live in the .script.
• One column per episode. Twelve episodes, twelve acts, each column being that episode's rhythm. You scroll sideways, but "episode 7 only has two beats" is impossible to miss.

When a file card points at a .script, the card shows its scene count and its list of scenes, so you know how much of that episode exists without opening it. Templates ship no file cards — you drag the episodes on yourself.

Inside an episode: the beat field on a scene card

Open a .script and switch the toolbar to Board: a column of draggable scene cards. The bottom right of each card has a beat dropdown, reading + Beat when it's empty.

Inside is a fixed list of the standard three-act beat names, with Custom as the last of them. It is a picker, not a text field: there is nowhere here to type a name of your own, and the list is the same on every screenplay file — it does not follow whichever structure you chose on a .beats board.

Next to the beat is the scene's estimated runtime (~Nmin). It is calculated live — the scene's dialogue and action are re-scanned, dialogue read slower than action, plus a little transition time per scene. The toolbar shows the whole episode's estimate against a target you set in minutes, and the colour walks from green to amber to red as you approach it.

+ Beat
  Opening Image
  Setup
  Catalyst
  Debate
  Break into Two
  B Story
  Fun and Games
  Midpoint
  Bad Guys Close In
  All Is Lost
  Dark Night of the Soul
  Break into Three
  Finale
  Final Image
  Custom
  … and any beat already sitting on another scene of this same file

Acts: still read, but new files don't grow them

The old scene board's columns were acts, acts came from the template you picked, and you could rename or add or delete them afterwards. A new .script has no way to create an act — the structure picker on the empty state was removed in 4.0.

What wasn't removed is reading them: a .script converted from the old studio that already contains acts still groups by act in the Outline panel, so no data is lost. What you'll actually run into is:

• A screenplay carried over from an old project: the Outline panel groups by act, but you can't edit those acts.
• A screenplay you just created: Outline → Scenes is a flat list.

If you want acts, use the act columns of a .beats board — those you can rename, add, delete and drag. That is also what replaced "custom structure templates": a .beats file is your template. To reuse the same rhythm on your next project, copy the file. One layer of abstraction less than the old template manager.

Foreshadowing: notes now, anchored to the line

The old setup/payoff tracking was a column in the old notes tab that collected two note types (setup, payoff) for the whole show. The column is gone, but both note types survive, and they got more precise:

Right-click any line of the screenplay and the bottom of the menu has four note types: Add Note / Add Todo / Add Setup (Foreshadow) / Add Payoff (Resolve). The note anchors to that line — not to the scene, to the line.

The gain is that it isn't screenplay-only any more. Novel chapters, planning files and beat boards use the same notes, so "every setup in this book that hasn't paid off" is one question instead of two. AI can read notes and write them too — see setup and payoff notes and notes and AI.

Related

• Docs: Multi-thread planning: beats for shape, timelines for time
• Docs: Choosing one of the four structure templates
• Docs: What a beat board is
• Docs: Creating and arranging beats and acts
• Docs: Setup and payoff notes
• Docs: Notes panel overview
• Docs: Splitting and merging scenes
• Docs: What you see when you open a screenplay file